Telephoto lens coffee mugs!

Somehow I found myself the recipient of a Camera Strap Buddy from photojojo.com. It’s a device that screws into the tripod mounting hole on the base of an SLR for use as a strap attachment point. It makes it possible to hang the camera diagonally over your shoulder for easy access, but eliminates the annoying swinging and bobbing you get when you wear it around your neck. I didn’t order it. It just showed up in my mailbox last week.

I finally got around to visiting the photojojo.com web site this evening and was stunned to see these insanely cool coffee mugs made to look like Nikon and Canon lenses. The longer Nikon is $30 and the Canon is $24. Looks like the ultimate coffee mug for a photographer. Click on the image to see the details.

How to become a famous “well educated” idiot in less than a week

Meet Hermon Raju, a 20-something woman who blew up when a conductor on the Metro North rail line asked her to stop audibly cursing on her cell phone.

Raju, who attended plain old New York University, goes on at length about how well educated she is and the prestigious(?) schools she’s attended.

The result: Google her name and you’ll see more than 21,000 items containing her name posted in the past four days. None of them are complementary.

People who claim to know her say she’s an insufferable arrogant twit who is generally disliked at NYU and elsewhere.

And, based on this performance, I don’t like her either.

Yikes! The fire is out in the flatland and spreading fast!

Here’s the latest map from the Sierra Vista Herald showing the Monument Fire, evacuation and pre-evacuation zones, including the areas where the fire expanded yesterday.
Compare this with the map from my previous blogpost.
The good news is that a lot of the dark blue area that burned yesterday between East Hereford Road and 3 Canyons Road is apparently undeveloped open range. As of 6 p.m. yesterday, authorities said no structures east of U.S. 92 had been burned.

Sierra Vista update

The latest report on the wildfire south of Sierra Vista, Ariz. (where my stepdaughter Morgan and her husband Andrew live) has the fire still raging out of control in the mountains of the Coronado National Forest south of town.

The fire jumped U.S. 92 yesterday and has consumed more than 16,000 acres of mostly forested mountain terrain – bad news for the folks with homes and property in the canyons.

Here’s a map from the Sierra Vista Herald, showing the growth of the burn area from Wednesday to yesterday, the evacuation zone and the pre-evacuation zone:

 

Ramsey Canyon Road marks the northern boundary of the pre-evacuation zone and it’s about 5 miles south of Morgan and Andrew’s place and maybe 4 miles south of Andrew’s parents’ house. From my uneducated perspective, much of the terrain between the burn zone and the south edge of Sierra Vista is flat and more easily accessible to fire fighters than are the canyons.

Considering the assets being brought to bear on the fire, I think it’s unlikely that it will be allowed to advance into the urbanized areas of Sierra Vista, but what do I know? I’m mostly just guessing and high winds and continued dry conditions could conceivably make the fire virtually unstoppable.

The Sierra Vista Herald is doing a splendid job of keeping on top of things. You can follow the fire fighters’ progress at the paper’s web site here.

Who is that Hot Ad Girl?

As I mentioned before, most of my blog hits in the past several months have been the result of searches for information on Suzi Barrett, the actress/comedienne/writer who plays the sarcastic girl in the Esurance insurance commercials.

There is a web site - “Who is that Hot Ad Girl?” – dedicated to identifying all of the attractive women who appear in TV commercials and they include Suzi in their listings.

The cost of staying mobile

I’m blogging over breakfast at IHOP while the guys across the street at Gateway Tire work on our Subaru.
The car sounded like the battery was near death when I started it this morning. The battery terminals have a lot of corrosion on them, so I’m hoping a good cleaning will fix the problem, but I’m also bracing myself for the need to buy a new battery. We repaired the Subaru’s air conditioning just last week.
The A/C failed on the del Sol last week too, which required a new compressor. Maria picked up the del Sol from the repair shop this morning and drove it on to work while I took the Subaru down to Gateway.
Hot weather finds weaknesses in cars and makes them fail and we’ve had weeks of highs in the 90s lately with no end in sight. I was reminded of the way heat kills cars last July as I rode past dozens of stranded motorists along I-15 in the Mojave Desert.
So it’s no huge surprise when automotive systems fail in this absurdly hot late spring (yes, summer doesn’t begin until next Tuesday) in the Mid-South.
LATER: It was a dying battery. I think it was the original battery, which means it's been cranking that car for a long time and we got our money's worth from it.

Cheap gas at Sam’s Club

Would you like an order of flies with that Reuben?

Cregeen’s, the faux Irish pub at the north end of the downtown entertainment district, has one of the best Reuben sandwiches in town.

That is, if you don’t mind a few flies with your food.

I started out at the table nearest the window, but got tired of shooing away 3-4 flies. Asked for a fly swatter, the waitress returned empty-handed.

“We don’t have one. Would you like to move to another table? They seem to like the light from the window.”

But they also seem to like food at the table farthest from the window.

I managed to shield my Reuben from them long enough to wolf the sandwich down, but gave up on the potato salad after one broke through my defensive screen and settled on the plate (see photo above).

The waitress didn’t seem interested enough in the fly problem to send the manager over or offer to reduce the bill – things that should have happened without prompting from the customer.

So I’m done with Cregeen’s, at least until winter when the flies are all dead.

A Mini 9 for Charlie

BMW friend Charlie and his wife Deb are riding their R1200GSs to Alaska next week.

Charlie wants to write a blog on travelblog.org and asked me to recommend a computer for the job. He wondered about using a tablet, but I argued against it because typing on a touch pad is a pain in the ass. I told him I have yet to find a solution better than the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook I’ve been using since March 2009.

The Mini 9 was soon replaced by the Mini 10 which has a larger, more user friendly keyboard, but its big advantage was its Solid State Hard Drive (SSHD) – no moving parts and thus far less vulnerable to vibration and dust. The Mini 9 is out of production, but you can find used  Mini 9s on Ebay.

And that’s exactly what Charlie did. He scored a Mini 9 with a black case with the same tweaks – upgraded to 2GB of RAM and a 32GB SSHD – as mine. (Dell originally shipped the Mini 9 with 1GB of RAM and an 8GB SSHD.) Charlie’s computer arrived yesterday and he brought it over last night for a tutorial and some software installation with my stand-alone CD/DVD drive.

The previous owner had removed the antivirus software, so I gave Charlie the third installation of the review copy of BitDefender Internet Security 2010 that I got through the Amazon.com Vine Program. I also downloaded and installed Irfanview as a lightweight, simple image management program, and the Google Chrome browser. I like Chrome on the Mini 9 because it has less menu crap at the top of the frame than do Firefox and Internet Explorer. He brought along a copy of Microsoft Streets & Trips, so we loaded that too.

I suggested he get a 32GB or larger SD card to live in the SD car slot and serve as a D: drive. I keep all of my images on an installed 32GB SD card so as not to load up the SSHD.

Now, he just needs to spend a little time with the Mini 9 to get used to the keyboard and also to do some dummy blog posts for practice before they hit the road on Saturday morning.

Nice to see vehicles here that are legitimately entitled to these parking spaces

Maria’s K75S and a Harley-Davidson in two of the four Fuel Efficient Vehicles Only parking spaces at Best Buy yesterday morning.

Monument fire grows to 4600 acres, no containment

 The Monument Fire continues to burn uncontained south of Sierra Vista, Ariz., which is where my stepdaughter Morgan and her husband Andrew live. Andrew's parents, brother and brother's girlfriend also live there.
At last report, officials were optimistic they could stop the fire from spreading into urban areas. Morgan shot this photo from her home last night.
Here's a report from KOLD TV in Tucson:
 
Monument fire grows to 4600 acres, no containment

Routers and riding pants

 

I woke up this morning to discover, through the process of elimination, that my D-Link AirPlus Xtreme G Wireless Router had died.

So, after picking up the mail at the post office, I continued my ride down to Best Buy where I inspected their wireless routers and settled on a Linksys E2000 Advanced Wireless-N Router that was on clearance.

I’m embarrassed to say that I never bothered to secure my old D-Link, so our wireless network was wide open to anyone who cared to sniff out the signal. I wasn’t particularly worried, though, since we live in a rather remote spot and anyone close enough to the house to steal our signal would be immediately noticeable.

The E2000 automatically creates two signals – one a heavily encrypted secure access point for authorized network members and the other a password-protected guest access point – so we’re locked down tight, or at least tighter than we have been for the past six years.

The signal seems much more stable than the old router and preliminary tests suggest our Wifi-enabled Blu-ray player may not have the infuriating signal drop-outs with this new router.

It was a steamy 92 degrees about 2 p.m. when the UPS guy delivered my First Gear Mesh-Tex pants, so I pulled them out of the box, put them on and went for a ride.
I was absolutely stunned at how much cooling air gets through the mesh. Wearing these on a hot day is like riding in shorts. They have padding and armor in all the right places, but it doesn't seem to interfere with the air flow. I can see right now that this will be a good summer. In fact, these pants may be downright chilly on a cool morning. I have some nylon warmup pants that may provide a windstopper barrier when worn under the riding pants.
I'm used to riding in cargo style riding pants, so I noticed the reduced pocket space right away. There are two zippered front pockets with horizontal openings at the waistband and another zippered pocket just above the right knee. I can get my wallet into the thigh pocket, but the two front pockets don't seem particularly useful.
The overall fit is good. I normally take a 30-inch inseam, but the 33-inch inseam on these pants works out just fine with my knees bent and my feet on the pegs.
If you shop around, you can find these for less than $60, which is an absolutely killer deal.

Scary stuff

My stepdaughter Morgan and her husband live in Arizona, which is going through the worst wildfire outbreak in its history.

So far, the fires have been far away from their home in Sierra Vista.

Until last night when she looked out her front door last night and saw this.

Maria just spoke with her and she reports it looks like the fire may be out, but there’s a lot of smoke.

Our Internet connection is down this morning and I can’t be sure whether it’s us or the cable tv/internet provider.

I’ve reset the modem and router twice and now can’t even see the router’s Wifi signal, although I can see the signal from a neighbor’s wireless router. The cable tv is working, so I know the cable is physically intact. I tried calling the cable/internet provider, but their number is busy, suggesting other people are having a problem too.

Our router is at least six years old, maybe older, so it may be time to replace it. Happily, the way technology works, a replacement will cost less and be more powerful. Hell, I may just replace the router regardless of where the problem is.

In the meantime, I’m using my Sprint netcard to connect.

Great BMW bike for sale–just like mine

BMW friend Gail Hatch, who lives in Nashua, New Hampshire, is selling her Blue 2003 BMW K1200GT on Ebay.

It’s the same year, color and model as mine and it only has 35,600 miles on it, compared with the 59k on mine.

The bidding starts at $4,500 and the auction runs for another 6 days and 22 hours.

Too damned hot

It’s 98°F, with a heat index of 100°, and the only significant rain is a line of showers dancing across the southern edge of Missouri.
That kind of weather kills my enthusiasm for riding, yard work, or doing anything that involves leaving the air conditioned comfort of my home.
We hit the post office, Farmers Market, Dillard’s and Kroger before it got really hot and I was pleased we found a really spectacular purse for Maria’s birthday.
I tried to talk her into an iPad, a Nook or even a Kindle, but she couldn’t bear to see me spend that kind of money.
TWO HOURS LATER: The temperature dropped about 20 degrees in a half-hour and it's raining like a mofo.

Psychosomatic

I drove Maria to work this morning in anticipation of car-shuffling later today when we hope to pick up my del Sol from the shop where its air conditioning is undergoing surgery.
Now I’m sipping coffee at Seattle Grind where the grassy strip along Stadium Avenue is covered with a flock of pink plastic flamingos, placed there to attract attention to the new yogurt shop next door.
But first, I drove down to Sam’s Club where I filled the tank for $3.44/gallon. Considering the spike in oil prices this week, the falling gas prices seem counterintuitive. Whatever. I’m gassing up and moving on.
I was listening to a local radio station on the way to Seattle Grind. Two drive-time radio guys were going on about sweet tea (For the Yankees, that’s pre-sweetened – usually with sugar – iced tea) and listing the restaurants that serve it. The conversation turned to the making of sweet tea when a caller shared her recipe – a little less than a cup of sugar in the bottom of a gallon jug, put a family sized tea bag in the basket of a drip coffee maker, brew the tea, pour the contents of the carafe into the jug and stir to dissolve the sugar, then top off with water.
One of the radio guys opined that the only way to make tea is to boil it on the stove in a pan his mother always used. This prompted his partner to call him “psychosomatic.”
Really. I swear it’s true.
But wait - it gets better.
I related this story to a local woman. She responded to the punch line with a blank look, then offered, "Well, there are different ways to make sweet tea..."
Lord help us.

Suzi Barrett for SNL

I wrote a very brief blogpost back in March noting that Suzi Barrett is the name of the actress who plays the sarcastic girl in the Esurance insurance commercials.
If you Google her name, my blogpost comes up second, right after her Facebook page.
As a consequence, Google searches for “Suzi Barrett” now constitute something like 90-95 percent of the hits my blog gets every day.
I have no idea how my casual mention of her name shot me to the top of the Google search rankings, but there it is.
Here’s a brief biography from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre web site:

Originally from Michigan, Suzi got her degree in theatre at Western Michigan University, then moved to Chicago where she studied improv at The Second City and io. From there, she headed to Amsterdam, and spent 3 years performing with Boom Chicago-- or as the Dutch often call it-- "De Chicago Boom Boom." A member of the UCBTLA community since 2006, Suzi has studied with Matt Besser and Ian Roberts, and makes frequent appearances in "Worst Laid Plans,""Soundtrack," and "the line in the bathroom at Birds." She also tours the country with the UCB tourco, and plays weekly with the greatest improv team in the universe: Sentimental Lady.

Hometown: Rochester Hills, MI

She has a helluva following and I hereby nominate her for inclusion in next season’s Saturday Night Live cast.

Remembering Revard BMW Motorcycles

Here’s my morning mocha cappuccino salute to the late, lamented Revard BMW Motorcycles in Indianapolis.

Bill Revard and his brothers Jimmy and Charlie opened their dealership on the city’s northeastside, just northeast of the I-465 – I-69 interchange, in the summer of 2000.

The Revard brothers were guests of the Indianapolis BMW Club at our February, 2000, awards banquet and I had the pleasure of giving Bill his first business dollar that evening.

Sadly, Revard BMW went out of business in December, 2004 for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was BMW Motorrad’s bizarre business model.

Bill was a good friend and a great supporter of the club.

If the current Indianapolis BMW motorcycle dealer is even half as good as Bill, the Indianapolis BMW community is very well served.

New hot weather riding gloves

I've had several pairs of Olympia gloves in my 30+ years of motorcycling and have come to regard Olympia as a quality brand, so I wasn't particularly worried when I bought a pair of Olympia 711 Gel Reflector Motorcycle Sport Gloves.
The BMW Air-Flow gloves I'd bought for summer riding in 2006 are finally falling to pieces, so I took a chance on these gloves.
I just completed a 300-mile ride through the Mid-South (Brookland, Ark. to Cape Girardeau, Mo., and back). The temperature was 79 when I left home and 95 when I returned. The gloves are noticeably cooler than their BMW predecessors and my hands felt cool, yet protected, throughout the ride.
The gel in the palm, which makes the handgrips seem slightly larger, took a little getting used to, but I was completely comfortable with it by the end of the ride.
The fit of the XL gloves is excellent - it's almost as if they were custom made for my hands - and enhances the accuracy of my taps on the touch screen of my Garmin Zumo 550 GPS. It's impossible to be precise with some gloves, but these are like having no gloves at all when it comes to working the Garmin's features.
I tested the reflector spots with a flashlight the night the gloves arrived and didn't notice any reflectivity at all. Maybe the guys at the factory forgot the reflective material the day mine were made. That's no big deal because the rest of my apparel and my bike are loaded with reflective stuff.
The closest thing I can find to a flaw is that the inner seams of the fingertips could have been trimmed a little more. But considering how well everything else about the gloves performs, that's hardly a deal-breaker.

ABS problem solved (I hope)

I’m enjoying a rare White Castle lunch along I-55 in Cape Girardeau, Mo. after getting my ABS warning light issue sorted out at Grass Roots BMW Motorcycles.
It appears my original guess/diagnosis was right – the tech did not put enough brake fluid in the rear brake reservoir when he installed new rear brake pads during a 12,000-mile service a few weeks ago. They found no leaks in the brake lines and no other cause for the warning light sequence which, according to the rider’s manual, signals low brake fluid.
So the lights are dark and I’m out of there without having to spend any more money.
I was also supposed to pick up a part for BMW friend Charlie but, of course, it had not arrived yet.
I decided to make this a three-state ride by taking the bridge over the still-swollen Mississippi River to East Cape Girardeau, Ill. and back.
Then I let Garmin lead me to the White Castle where I got my usual order of 5 cheeseburgers and a large Diet Coke.
It’s only about 11:30 a.m., so the serious heat of the day isn’t upon us yet. I must be off.

Hi-Viz Camelbak

I’ve used a CamelBak hydration system every summer for more than a decade and think they’re absolutely essential for hot weather riding.
Being able to sip water as I ride is a far better way to stay hydrated, which means I stay mentally sharp and physically more comfortable, than chugging a bottle of water or Gatorade every three hours or so at gas stops.
My current CamelBak has a 60 ounce capacity. I bought it from an outdoor outfitter in Silverthorne, Colo. to replace a smaller CamelBak that I couldn’t find when I was packing for a ride to the Colorado high country in August, 2007. (I still haven’t found it.)
It’s served me well, especially last summer on a crazy hot July ride from San Simeon, Calif., through the Central Valley of California and the Mojave Desert to my son’s house in Las Vegas.
Summer started early here in northeast Arkansas and it got me thinking about staying hydrated on the bike and off. It also got me wondering if CamelBak makes a hydration system to color match my Fieldsheer Hi-Viz mesh riding jacket.
Yes, they do.
The Hi-Viz CamelBak has retroflective accents and a 70 ounce capacity – 14 percent more than the one I’ve been using.
I shopped around on the internet and found it as cheap as $39.99, but when you add the shipping cost, it ends up way more than the $50 price I got on Amazon.com with free 2-day shipping.
So I ordered one and Amazon.com says I’ll have it sometime Thursday. How cool is that?

Dave self-destructs

Somebody noticed this SUV in a hotel parking lot and posted it to Facebook.

Mitch!

My man Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels at the ABATE of Indiana Miracle Ride.

Sorry he’s not running for president, but I hope he stays in public service. The country desperately needs his unique skills set.

Monday morning stuff

I really must do something about the clutter in our upstairs office. It looks like I’m sitting in front of a trash heap. The cup, by the way, is from St. Bernards Healthcare. St. Bernard seems to follow us wherever we go. It was St. Bernard’s Catholic Church in Crawfordsville, Ind. But the local pronunciation is always counterintuitive. In C’ville, it was St. BERnard. Here, it’s St. B’nard. The t-shirt was a gift from my son Sean.

I took Sunday off from the blog, but I did gas up the lawn tractor and mow.
This may be the week I get my K1200GT up to the BMW dealer at Cape Girardeau and sort out my annoying brake warning light issue.
I thought it had corrected itself early last week when the warning light sequence went away on the morning I planned to ride up to the Cape, but it was just a fluke.
Pretty much every time I’ve ridden that bike since, the warning lights are alternately flashing at 1 second intervals.
Now that I know that it just means I don’t have ABS, but I still have normal brakes, I’m not worried about riding the bike. But I am loathe to embark on any long rides without fixing this problem.
And then there’s the matter of my starter button going wonky after working fine for about 8 or 9 months. One day last week, it took 6-8 presses of the button before the starter engaged. After 4 or 5, you start to wonder if it’s going to start at all and that’s a feeling I really really really don’t like. I experienced it in my son Steve’s garage in Las Vegas the morning of last July 26 and nearly freaked out, it being a Monday (when almost all BMW shops are closed) and me being more than 1,500 miles from home.
I’d ride up to Cape tomorrow except that we’re taking the Subaru in for air conditioner work. The A/C has become an off-and-on proposition, which is completely unacceptable when the heat index is 100 or above.
So maybe Wednesday, weather permitting.
I got an email from former Indianapolis News colleague David Mannweiler over the weekend about the counterfeit Pulitzer Prize certificate I made for him several years ago.
(I had occasion to make a scan of the certificate awarded The Indianapolis Star in 1991 and used it as the basis for tongue-in-cheek counterfeit joke Pulitzers for some of my friends.)
“My Pulitizer, through you, hangs on my garage wall,” Mannweiler said, “where son Eric's girl friend, Michelle, saw it.
”Fast forward to a birthday party for Michelle's grandmother. At the
party is the boyfriend of  Michelle's sister. Grandmother, who is brusque
and outspoken, does not like him,” he said.
”So, grandmother says to disliked boyfriend, ‘Eric's father has a
Pulitzer prize. What has your family accomplished?’”
“Can you get me a Nobel?”
“Stick with the Pulitzer,” I replied. “Al Gore and Obama have demonstrated that anybody can get a Nobel.”

Romney is a global warming fool

I could never vote for Mitt Romney anyway, but this statement told me all I needed to know about how stupid the guy can be:

I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe that the world is getting warmer, and No. 2, I believe that humans contribute to that. And so I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.

Feeling like a stranger in a strange land

I rode Maria’s acid green 1994 BMW K75S down to the D.A.R.E. to Ride Classic motorcycle event last evening in downtown Jonesboro.
I went first to Charlie and Deb’s place and then headed for Main Street with Charlie, who was riding his R1200GS. Deb followed later on her 1975 R75/6, which she entered in the bike show. I assume she would have called by now if she won.
We had dinner at Godsey’s Grill then hung out in the steamy 90+ degree evening air, watching the parade of bikes.
Deb stayed close to her bike, lobbying for votes, while Charlie and I patrolled the street in search of ice cream and interesting things to look at.
My feet were hurting and I decided I’d had enough by 7:30, so I said good night to my friends and walked back to where my bike was parked in front of Gearheads Outfitters.
As I pulled on my jacket, a slightly drunk middle-aged woman opined that she didn’t know BMW still made motorcycles. She and a younger friend apparently found this one-of-a-kind custom painted K75S to be utterly fascinating and had a lot of questions about what is the “best” motorcycle and what I thought might be a good entry-level motorcycle for a beginner.
Midway through our conversation, a guy whose chopper was parked a couple of bikes away decided to fire up his engine and show off his straight pipes to his friends.

One of these things is not like the others.

I told the ladies to cover their ears as I pushed the starter button on the BMW. I could barely hear the engine for all of the Harley noise in the street.
About this time, another bleary eyed drunk woman who reeked of cigarette smoke asked if she could take a ride on the back of my bike.
“Sorry, but you don’t have a helmet. Nobody rides on this bike without a helmet.”
I left her standing there with a dull, confused look on her face.

Did I mention it’s FREE?

My son Steve alerted me to an insanely cool free app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that lets you dictate emails or tweets or posts to your Facebook wall.

Dragon Dictation by Nuance Communications is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon® NaturallySpeaking® that lets you easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages. They claim it’s up to five times faster than typing on the keyboard.

It takes up 5.3 MB of memory on my 64GB iPod Touch.

After you launch it, you touch the screen to start dictating. The free version lets you talk for up to 60 seconds and you can insert punctuation by saying “period,” “question mark,” “exclamation point,” as well as = and @ and / and single double quote marks, parentheses, % $ # and degree.

Press “Done” when you’re done dictating and you’ll see your words in text. I’ve only spent a few minutes with it and send a couple of emails and a couple of Facebook posts, but it’s got every one of my words correct. (It does have a sense of decorum, though. It renders “fuck” and “fucking” as “f*ck” and “f*cking.”)

When you’re satisfied with your text you move to the options screen and do with it what you will.

It accesses your address book for emailing. The developers claim the software “learns” your speech characteristics and gets more accurate over time.

Pretty cool for a free app.

Jedem das Seine

When I think of camping, I think of minimalist travel. Backpacking or motorcycle travel. Sleeping in a tent. That kind of stuff.

But you don’t have to spend much time on Google to discover a lot of people have a looser definition that embraces renting KOA Kamper Kabins (austere bunkhouses for the price of a motel room) or even motor home travel with a car in tow.

A woman whose blog I visit occasionally is, with her husband, a devotee of motor home “camping.” In their case, it’s a 36-foot 10 mpg diesel powered motor coach, dragging a VW beetle behind it.

They’re currently ensconced in a remote Army Corps of Engineers campground near the Pennsylvania-New York border, where they signed on as “work campers,” that is they work the gatehouse and do other campground labor – four days on and four days off - to park and use the facilities free. They’ve signed on to stay there through the summer, although they’ve been forced to flee because of flooding and the area was recently raked by tornados.

I have other friends who have done work camping, but when I hear “work” and “camp” in the same sentence, I think of the slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Makes You Free) over the front gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Being tethered to a campsite and a job all summer sounds like a cruel joke to me and calls to mind the gate sign at the Buchenwald concentration camp: “Jedem das Seine”

Literally, it means “to each, his own,” but colloquially it translates to “you get what you deserve.”

Another reason to like Arkansas

I filled the tank of my del Sol yesterday afternoon at the Murphy Oil station on Stadium Avenue for $3.55 a gallon.
Checking arkansasgasprices.com, I see gas is selling for as little as $3.29 in Monticello, Ark., and in the $3.30s around Hot Springs.
But even at $3.55, I’m paying 10¢ a gallon less than the cheapest price available in Indiana – $3.65 at the Swifty station in New Albany, Ind. – and 39¢ a gallon less than the cheapest price in Crawfordsville.
Here are the lowest prices available this morning in selected U.S. cities:

• Las Vegas – $3.55
• Portland, Ore. – $3.68
• Breckenridge, Colo. – $3.73
• Sierra Vista, Ariz. – $3.63
• Indianapolis – $3.74
• Monterey, Calif. – $3.92
• Nashville, Tenn. – $3.29
• Chicago – $3.91
• New York City – $3.87
• Los Angeles – $3.79
• Key West, Fla. – $3.97
• Burlington, Vt. – $3.82

Murphy's price was down to $3.54 today.

Pete’s liver function test results

We’ve been worried about Pete the Aussie lately, especially since he had another seizure one morning last week while I was making my mocha cappuccino. He came and flopped down against my right foot and seemed unable to move. He barfed a little as Maria sat on the floor next to hiim and comforted him and after a couple of minutes regained his composure, got up and trotted off like nothing had happened.

Dr. Jon Huff, our vet, suggested a liver function test to see if his deteriorating liver was the cause of the seizures, so I took Pete in to get blood drawn yesterday.

Dr. Huff called a few minutes ago to say the test shows Pete has excellent liver function - the liver function of a healthy dog.

It does not tell us how much liver he has left, but what he has is functioning fine. The main purpose of the test was to see if loss of liver function was causing the seizures. It is not.

He isn't showing any signs of a brain tumor and Dr. Huff suspects it may be epilepsy. As long as the seizures are only one a month or so and are as mild as they have been so far, he doesn't think any seizure meds are indicated because they could put a strain on his liver.

He recommends getting another in-house liver check early next month.

In the meantime, we should maintain the medication he's getting and try to relax.

That’s a huge relief.

There is nothing to indicate that he has lost any liver function or that his liver will quit before any other vital organ.

WTF?

I was all set to ride up to the BMW dealer at Cape Girardeau, Mo., this morning.

I suited up and threw three Ebay items into my saddlebag to mail from the post office.

After dispatching my Ebay sales, I returned to the bike, put in my in-ear monitors, pulled on helmet and gloves and fired up the bike. I didn’t notice whether the warning lights flashed at start-up because I was busy fiddling with my GPS, laying in a course for Cape Girardeau and thinking about lunch at the White Castle there.

But when I pulled onto U.S. 49B, heading north, I realized the two previously flashing lights were dark.

WTF?

So I rode around awhile to see if they would come on again. I’m at Seattle Grind in Jonesboro now, having abandoned my trip plan –at least for today.

BMW friend Charlie called yesterday to ask if I could pick up a part for him from the Cape dealer, but it may turn out that I don’t need to make the trip if the lights stay dark.

ABS issue with my ‘03 K1200GT

I sent this video to the guys at Grass Roots BMW Motorcycles this morning.
Dave, the BMW technician, says it just means I have normal brakes and not ABS and it’s safe to ride up to their shop. We’re gambling that all they need to do is just top off the rear brake fluid level.
The forecast is for hot and sunny the rest of the week, so I’ll probably do it tomorrow or Thursday.

Happy 7th Birthday, Lisa!

Today is our granddaughter Lisa’s seventh birthday.

We send her a purple robe, selected from her Amazon.com wish list, and it was delivered to Steve and Nicky’s mailbox on Friday.

It turns out that they hadn’t checked their mail, so we got to watch on Skype as she opened it and tried it on for the first time.

Here she is with Steve on the porch swing they bought yesterday for the patio of their home in Las Vegas. Lisa quickly discovered the monkey bar potential of the porch swing frame.

She is a stunningly pretty and whip-smart little girl and I see my dad’s wry sense of humor in her.

We thoroughly enjoyed our 33-minute Skype visit this morning.

We used to call it Decoration Day–the day we decorated graves

I really miss my parents' "Decoration Day" pilgrimage to the family graves at Ball Hill and Deer Creek with coffee cans wrapped in aluminum foil and filled with peonies.

My cousin Eric and his wife Carol, who live in Greenville, Ohio, made a Memorial Day weekend visit to the Ball Hill Cemetery in rural Carroll County where our grandparents are buried.

They planted the bright red geraniums in front of Irvin and Bertha Flora’s gravestone, and also at the nearby grave markers of our Uncle Joe and Aunt Mary .

Chopped Suey

We’re in the mood to grill some burgers this evening, so we drove down to Bill’s Fresh Market at Hilltop.

I’ll bet you always thought it was Chop Suey. Not at Bill’s.

In their defense, I think they have the best meat in town and we buy it to eat, not to read.

Still at it after all these years

My “shoes for Joplin” story is on the front page of this morning’s Jonesboro Sun.

It’s amazing how this got to be fun again after I fired Gannett in October, 2000, for sucking all the enjoyment out of my job at The Indianapolis Star.

Having a good editor (my wife) helps a lot. Her reporters and photographers at the Sun are lucky to have her.

The Joplin report

The wrecked St. John’s Hospital looms on the horizon in this view into the heart of Joplin’s Ground Zero from the deck of a flattened house on Connor Street.

I didn’t blog yesterday because I was kinda busy.

I was up at 4:45 a.m. and down at Dr. Susan Myshka’s office in time for a 6:15 a.m. departure in a four-truck convoy of shoes, medical supplies and other stuff for tornado victims in Joplin, Mo.

Generous folks in Northeast Arkansas and Jonesboro had donated thousands of pairs of new and gently used shoes over a three-day period. We ended up hauling 10 big washer/dryer cardboard boxes full of them – almost 14 cubic yards of men’s, women’s and children’s shoes – in response to a specific request for shoes from disaster relief folks in Joplin.

It’s about a five-hour drive from Jonesboro to Joplin. We stopped for a quick McDonald’s lunch at Springfield, Mo., and arrived in Joplin a little after noon in the middle of an intense thunderstorm.

My Garmin Zumo 550 GPS guided us to Forest Park Baptist Church where we were turned away because they already had more shoes than they knew what to do with.

Susan called her contact at one of the Catholic churches and we ended up taking our cargo to McAuley Catholic High School where students unloaded our trailers and trucks of shoes and two pallets of baby wipes and stacked the stuff in the school’s two gyms.

Susan noticed a couple and their little girl standing around looking forlorn and discovered they had been waiting for an hour for some shoes. She led them into the gym and made sure they were properly shod. Here’s Hailey Beaman, 7, with her new shoes.

That’s her mother, Vickie Beaman, behind her.

After several phone calls, it became apparent that things are still in chaos when it comes to accepting donations of medical supplies. We ended up stuffing wheelchairs, neck braces, surgical gloves, several pairs of crutches, arm and leg braces and other items into the SUVs of a nurse and a doctor’s wife with a request that they take them where they’d do the most good.

Father J. Friddel, a priest we met at McAuley Catholic High School, said the community needs a week or two to get organized to properly accept, store and distribute the tons of donated materials and supplies that pour in daily from across the country. He urged Susan and others to be patient and hold off on more donations until things are more coordinated in Joplin.

Our mission accomplished, we split up. The two older couples who participated in the project opted to spend the night in the area rather than do another five-hour drive yesterday.

Susan’s assistant Judy and another woman with whom she rode headed back and Susan and I did a brief tour of the disaster area.

I’ve seen widespread tornado devastation before when I was a reporter for The Indianapolis News, in particular the Super Outbreak of tornados in April, 1974, that flattened much of Monticello and Rochester in Indiana. But the devastation at Joplin was significantly worse. I was particularly struck by one house we saw on the edge of the affected area where the whole house had been carried away and smashed, leaving the basement exposed. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could have survived in that basement.

We saw a few families picking through the debris of their homes and a crew of yellow hard-hatted emergency workers busy with what looked like a body recovery in what used to be a house.

Signs advertising free food are everywhere and we noticed a fitness center offering free laundry service and free showers to the newly homeless.

A little context from the local FOX channel:

Officials in Joplin, MO have upped the death toll from last Sunday’s massive tornado to at least 139 people. The updated total that was released Saturday rose by seven. The state has been working to pare down the list of people missing and unaccounted for in the wake of the disaster. The original list of 232 had dropped to 156 by Friday.

More and more of those killed in the storm are being identified. On Saturday, the state of Missouri released a list of 31 individuals whose next-of- kin had been notified of their deaths. The victims ages range from 6 to 92.

The tornado was the deadliest single U.S. twister in more than six decades.

After a so-so buffet dinner at a T/A travel center (truck stop), we treated ourselves to a quick tour of the Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World. It’s the mothership of Bass Pro Shops and the sign over the front door proclaims it”s “The Granddaddy of all Outdoor Shops.”

And, yes, it is. We only saw a fraction of it and noted they have two more buildings under construction at the complex there in Springfield.

I contented myself with buying 50 rounds of 9mm Luger ammo for $16.24, tax included.

I got home a few minutes before midnight, hit the sack and was up about 9 a.m. today.

Now I have to write a story about it for the paper.

Thanks to all of my Facebook friends for the kind words and encouragement on the trip.

Shoes for Joplin

Our friend Susan Myshka’s Walk a Mile in My Shoes project to take donated shoes to Joplin, Mo., tornado victims is succeeding beyond anyone’s expectations.

Volunteers are sitting outside her office on South Caraway Road this afternoon sorting shoes and loading three trailers.

The convoy will leave for Joplin at 6 a.m. tomorrow. I plan to tag along to help, photograph and maybe write a few words for the paper.

In the meantime, I helped Susan work out a route that bypasses the somewhat sketchy Black River bridge at Black Rock and doesn’t involve any road closures due to flooding.

We cleaned out our closet and drawers last night and bagged up three pairs of shoes, about 20 pairs of socks, and more than a dozen T-shirts, including some pocket-Ts with the Indianapolis BMW Club logo on them.