BW3

The Jonesboro Buffalo Wild Wings (aka BW3) opened yesterday and we dropped in for an early dinner this afternoon.

The last time we ate at a BW3 was at the end of May, 2010 in Sierra Vista, Ariz. and much has changed with the Buzztime Trivia devices.

We were mildly surprised to discover the FLORAS account is still active and I miraculously remembered the password.

There was very little competition at that hour, so we had no problem dominating the scoreboard.

We look forward to the next time when we can demonstrate our trivia prowess to a larger audience.

Random Monday stuff

I didn’t blog yesterday because I was uninspired and felt kind of crappy – took a three-hour nap in the middle of the day.

Morgan and Ben came over last night for dinner an euchre and a good time was had by all. She got a good boost of self-confidence last week at a library conference in Indianapolis, in addition to visiting with her grandparents and brother and cousin. Looking at her photos kinda made us homesick for Indiana.

Apropos of nothing, I am inordinately please with myself for finally flushing the calcium deposits from our two water heaters. I suspected sediment build-up was compromising their efficiency and I was pretty sure the original owner of the house never flushed them in the two years he and his family lived here, so there was about an eight-year accumulation of calcium and other sediments to be blown out.

It was very easy: just cut the power at the breaker box, connect a garden hose to the spigot at the base of the water heater and open the spigot (with the other end of the hose outside, of course). About 10 minutes of flushing did the trick and now both water heaters are producing significantly hotter water on the same settings as before.

I just finished knocking out four product reviews for the Amazon Vine Program, so my plate is clear for new review items this Thursday.

And, yes, I know today is St. Patrick’s Day. I just don’t care.

Siri knows

I love my iPhone 5.

Does it all end on April 9?

I’ve been using a program called For Two Wheels Only to keep all of my motorcycling records since August, 2000 and I love it.

When Windows 7 came out, I was flummoxed because FTWO wouldn’t run on a 64 bit system. I contacted the developer of FTWO, David Portugal, and he recommended upgrading to a version of Win7 that included an XP simulator that worked with 32 bit programs like his. I did and it works fine on my desktop computer.

My netbook came with XP and allows me to enter data into FTWO from the road or wherever I happen to be.

Happy, happy, happy.

Until April 9, when Microsoft cuts off support for XP, exposing it to hackers, hijackers, malware, all kinds of evil shit.

So if I want to keep using my netbook on the road in various and sundry Wifi environments, I need to jump up to Win7 which is constantly being patched and protected by Microsoft.

But I won’t have FTWO anymore.

I emailed David this morning to ask if he has rewritten FTWO for 64 bit systems, but he hasn’t replied and I doubt if he has updated his program for guys like me.

So I wait for a miracle.

Miss Dora

Miss Dora surveys her world from her favorite chair on the back porch.

Memo to self: clean up the porch floor this weekend!

A treasure trove of Lafayette (Ind.) memories

I grew up in Delphi, Ind., where the nearest city of any consequence was Lafayette, some 18 miles west and south.

That’s where all of the good shopping was – department stores, furniture stores, music stores and, of course, the life-altering McHaley’s Surplus.

I spent a lot of time in Lafayette, so it seemed natural to sign up for a Facebook group called “You know you’re from Lafayette, if…”

One of the posts this week was a photo of the old Columbian Park swimming pool, where I took swimming lessons in the 1950s. Looking for more images, I did a Google search and found aerial photos of the pool by Jesse McGreevy. I recognized the name from the days when I read and carried the Lafayette Journal & Courier. A little exploring brought me to a web site lovingly created and maintained by his granddaughter Christy Marks, who is also a professional photographer.

The site is full of amazing images from McGreevy’s archives, including lots of photos of his kids, who were contemporaries of mine. I never knew them, but my ex wife, a Lafayette girl, grew up with them.

If you grew up in Lafayette or near there in the 1950s and ‘60s, or are just nostalgic for the period, you need to check out The Photos of William Jesse McGreevy.

The North Face of our house where ice persists

UPS is scheduled to deliver a package from Amazon.com today, but the front steps remained encased in sleety ice, despite temperatures as warm as 74º yesterday.

So I got out the spade, chopped it into manageable chunks and cleared them away. Voila! We have a front door again.

Digging again

The ice is gone and Dora is back to her digging.

Fortunately, I caught her in time to block the new tunnel with a couple of logs.

We’re waiting for Dacus Fence Co. to repair the damaged portion of our fence, after which we will install a low electric wire to discourage further tunnels. Unfortunately, it will be another week or so before the fence gets fixed, so we have to watch her like a hawk.

She pauses now and then to see if anyone is watching. I was.

He rode all the way from Kokomo. In the dark!

The first time I saw a kid anywhere close to my age on a motorcycle was in the autumn of 1957.

I was a 7th grader, hanging out with my friends one evening outside Bob’s Cafe on Main Street in Delphi, Ind.

That’s when a high school aged kid rode up on a motorcycle. This was years before the Japanese bikes showed up in the U.S., so it pretty much had to be American or British. Being a Germanophile, I would have remembered if it was a BMW.

It had a big windscreen and I was astonished and unspeakably impressed to learn he had ridden it from Kokomo. That was 35 miles away and it seemed an impossible distance for a kid to ride a motorcycle.

I don’t remember much about the rider except that he struck me as adventurous to the point of being a little scary.

I wonder if I’ve ever left that impression with anyone.

Daytona dreaming…

A year ago tonight, I dined with new friends at High Tides at Snack Jack, a popular oceanside bar and grill on A1A just south of Flagler Beach, Fla.

The best I could manage today was about a 40-mile round trip ride to Mr. T’s Riverside, a mega liquor store just across the state line in Cardwell, Mo. where I bought a six-pack of Dunkel Spaten.

I would dearly love to be at Bike Week this week, but it’s no fun solo and nobody I know would be camping with me at the Holiday Travel Park where I usually stay.

So it goes. Marking the days to the first rally my Indy friends will attend that is within reach – probably the European Riders Rally in May in Burkesville, Ky.

The Mystery of Radio Shack

Radio Shack officials announced last week they plan to close about 1,000 stores.

Brings to mind this brilliant piece that ran on The Onion web site on April 23, 2007:

FORT WORTH, TX—Despite having been on the job for nine months, RadioShack CEO Julian Day said Monday that he still has "no idea" how the home electronics store manages to stay open.

"There must be some sort of business model that enables this company to make money, but I'll be damned if I know what it is," Day said. "You wouldn't think that people still buy enough strobe lights and extension cords to support an entire nationwide chain, but I guess they must, or I wouldn't have this desk to sit behind all day."

The retail outlet boasts more than 6,000 locations in the United States, and is known best for its wall-sized displays of obscure-looking analog electronics components and its notoriously desperate, high-pressure sales staff. Nevertheless, it ranks as a Fortune 500 company, with gross revenues of over $4.5 billion and fiscal quarter earnings averaging tens of millions of dollars.

"Have you even been inside of a RadioShack recently?" Day asked. "Just walking into the place makes you feel vaguely depressed and alienated. Maybe our customers are at the mall anyway and don't feel like driving to Best Buy? I suppose that's possible, but still, it's just...weird."

After taking over as CEO, Day ordered a comprehensive, top-down review of RadioShack's administrative operations, inventory and purchasing, suppliers, demographics, and marketing strategies. He has also diligently pored over weekly budget reports, met with investors, taken numerous conference calls with regional managers about "circulars or flyers or something," and even spent hours playing with the company's "baffling" 200-In-One electronics kit. Yet so far none of these things have helped Day understand the moribund company's apparent allure. 

"Even the name 'RadioShack'—can you imagine two less appealing words placed next to one another?" Day said. "What is that, some kind of World War II terminology? Are ham radio operators still around, even? Aren't we in the digital age?"

"Well, our customers are out there somewhere, and thank God they are," Day added.

One of Day's theories about RadioShack's continued solvency involves wedding DJs, emergency cord replacement, and off-brand wireless telephones. Another theory entails countless RadioShack gift cards that sit unredeemed in their recipients' wallets. Day has even conjectured that the store is "still coasting on" an enormous fortune made from remote-control toy cars in the mid-1970s.

Day admitted, however, that none of these theories seems particularly plausible.

"I once went into a RadioShack location incognito in order to gauge customer service," Day said. "It was about as inviting as a visit to the DMV. For the life of me, I couldn't see anything I wanted to buy. Finally, I figured I'd pick up some Enercell AA batteries, though truthfully they're not appreciably cheaper than the name brands."

"I know one thing," Day continued. "If Sony and JVC start including gold-tipped cable cords with their products, we're screwed."

In the cover letter to his December 2006 report to investors, "Radio Shack: Still Here In The 21st Century," Day wrote that he had no reason to believe that the coming year would not be every bit as good as years past, provided that people kept on doing things much the same way they always had.

Despite this cheerful boosterism, Day admitted that nothing has changed during his tenure and he doesn't exactly know what he can do to improve the chain.

"I'd like to capitalize on the store's strong points, but I honestly don't know what they are," Day said. "Every location is full of bizarre adapters, random chargers, and old boom boxes, and some sales guy is constantly hovering over you. It's like walking into your grandpa's basement. You always expect to see something cool, but it never delivers."

Added Day: "I may never know the answer. No matter how many times I punch the sales figures into this crappy Tandy desk calculator, it just doesn't add up."

Not very welcoming

Even though most of the sleety ice has melted, our front steps are an exception.

Shaded as they are on the north side of the house, they remain impassable unless you have crampons and an ice axe.

This may be why FedEx hasn’t delivered three packages I’ve been expecting from the Amazon.com Vine Program that were due on Wednesday.

Fortunately for us, we do almost all of our to-ing and fro-ing through the garage, to this represents only a minor inconvenience.

The sun is out. but the temperature is only 40 and probably won’t reach the predicted high of 55 today. The forecast is for a high of 65 tomorrow and 73 Tuesday, so we may have front door access again by mid-week.

Free at last!

Our neighbor Shannon came to our rescue this morning with his big Dodge RAM truck and yanked our hapless Subaru Forester out of the slime and onto solid ground.

The shirt says it all

This has been a day of frustration.

The temperature climbed above freezing by mid-morning and the heavy mantel of sleety ice has been melting all day, but the ground is still white everywhere I look.

I made an attempt to free the Subaru about 3:30 p.m. and succeeded in backing it about 10 feet farther into the yard before it bogged down in slush and mud.

And our renter, who texted me on Tuesday that he would make his late rent payment this week, texted me this afternoon to say he won’t be able to pay until next Friday, which is two weeks late. I haven’t responded yet because I’m too angry to compose a civil communication.

We went through this a year ago and Maria let him know in very clear language that the next time he played us like this, he’d better start looking for a new home.

Were it not for the tax deductible interest on the mortgage for that house, I would sell it at a loss just to be rid of it and him.

So here we sit, still held prisoner by ice and slush, since I don’t think the Lexus could get out of our subdivision without getting stuck.

Maybe we can get out tomorrow, but more likely Sunday.

Slushed in

Maria was going to a 3 p.m. meeting in Jonesboro this afternoon, but she never got out of the driveway.

The sun and rising temperatures have melted the sleet/ice into an ultra-slick slush that even defeated the mighty Subaru Forester’s All Wheel Drive.

Maria, like me, learned to drive in snowy, slushy Indiana winters, and she gave it a superb try, but the Subaru and its standard street tires was just not up to the challenge.

The slush is so treacherous that I don’t think the Subaru could have made it out of our subdivision and back. Needless to say, the Lexus would be helpless in this stuff.

So all we can do is wait for the sun to do its work and melt this crap.

Saving bird lives

The ground is still covered with a concrete-like layer of ice and snow, depriving the birds of much of their natural food.

Thanks to son Steve and his lovely wife Nicky, we are able to let the birds dine in style with this Christmas gift of a bird feeder. This morning, it was swarmed by finches.

Dora

Dora just turned 10 months old and is everything we hoped she would be.

A year ago tomorrow evening

This is me, a year ago tomorrow night, putting the cover on my bike outside a motel in Prattville, Ala.

If I look totally fried, it’s because I was after a day of riding in temperatures in the 30s and low 40s without the benefit of my Gerbings electric jacket liner and gloves.

Yes, I rode to Daytona Beach Bike Week and home again last year in miserable cold, kept alive only by the judicious use of windstopper technology.

The problem? My bike’s accessory power circuit couldn’t handle electric clothing and GPS, so GPS won out.

Since then, I’ve had a Gerbings power plug installed that is wired directly to the battery, so there will be no such issues.

Unfortunately, I’ll miss Bike Week this year because it looks like none of my Indianapolis BMW Club friends will make it and I hate camping and touring Bike Week by myself.

Besides, it will probably be Sunday or Monday before the ice melts enough to ride out of our subdivision.

So it goes.

20 years ago at Bike Week

Twenty years ago, I rode from my home in Carmel, Ind. to my second Daytona Beach Bike Week.

It was before I acquired heated electric gear, so I braved frigid northern winds in a snowmobile suit I bought at the ‘93 Bike Week vendor extravaganza at the Daytona Motor Speedway.

I camped at the Space Coast BMW Club enclave at Bulow Campground, some 15 miles northwest of Daytona Beach, and was delighted to find two of the Bradshaw brothers with whom I had grown up in Delphi, Ind.

On the left is Jim “Bo” Bradshaw, who was living in Atlanta, Ga., and the time, his brother Dick, who was running the family business – Delphi Body Works – and, of course, me. I was living in an apartment in Carmel, Ind. at the time.

The Bradshaw house was a block south of the Flora house in the east end of Delphi. Dick is two years older than I and Jim is a year younger. I hope they are well and happy.

Welcome to Ice Station Dora

We’re snow/ice-bound in our home in the woods for the next day or three, but the power stayed on and no trees came down last night.

The freezing rain was short-lived yesterday before changing to sleet, but then it sleeted like a mofo for hour upon hour, building up about a 6-8-inch layer of sleety ice before changing to snow.

The crust, covered with about a quarter-inch of snow, is like concrete, which is why the dogs look like they’re standing on a white floor.

There’s a foot-high mound of frozen sleet piled up outside the garage door. The sun is shining on it right now, but the temperature is 13ºF, so we can expect only some negligible sublimation today. The forecasters say the temperature will remain below freezing until sometime Wednesday and Thursday, with a predicted high of 44º, looks like the first day of serious melting.

Consequently, schools will almost certainly be closed through Wednesday and maybe beyond. I have no expectation of being able to drive anywhere until late Wednesday.

That said, we’re comfortable and well-provisioned and very relieved we didn’t have to use our generator and kerosene heater.

Ready and waiting

I’ve got our generator and our kerosene heater ready for action and we’re waiting to see if the freezing rain, that has yet to start in earnest, will knock out our electricity.

The Lexus is in the garage with a full tank of gas.

My only real concern is trees or limbs falling onto – or through – the roof. Other than that, the much heralded coming ice storm doesn’t concern me that much.

When we left off yesterday, I was waiting for the water heater to drain so I could scoot it away from the wall to accommodate the fiberglass jacket.

That accomplished, I turned on the water and closed the hot water relief valve, but was alarmed to see the valve wouldn’t close completely and a steady dribble continued from the overflow pipe.

Consulting the water heater owner’s manual, I discovered this valve should be tested once a year and, if it won’t close completely, it should be replaced. I have never tested it in the six years we’ve lived here and doubt if the previous owner did either.

Happily, we have a reliable and responsive plumber nearby and he and his wife were here within an hour of my call for help.

He replaced the valve and showed me how to thoroughly flush the water heater tank, which resulted in a huge amount of calcium being blown out. He also checked the hot water relief valve on the other water heater and pronounced it sound. Total cost: $71.

As a consequence, the flushed-out water heater is now much more efficient and gives us water much hotter than we’ve ever had. Once the weather settles down, I plan to flush out the other water heater tank. I figured the knowledge I got about how to maintain water heaters was worth the price of the work.

Then we drove in to Sam’s Club for provisions, stopping at Lowe’s on the way home to pick up a vacuum belt set which I installed after dinner.

So here I sit, watching the Weather Channel website radar and waiting, as prepared as we can be for whatever comes.

Just another quiet Saturday morning

The good news is that my headcold is almost gone. I woke up feeling remarkably good and looking forward to a quiet Saturday at home.

I brought the dogs in and fed them in their kennels, then sat down on the couch with a bowl of cereal.

The first sign of trouble came when Maria decided to put the dogs out and lost control of them. Dora raced into the living room and jumped up onto the couch with me, which is a happy thing.

Then I heard Maria shouting at Jack to “drop it” and saw him charging into the living room via the kitchen, dining room, and foyer with a chewed-open ZipLoc bag of flour in his mouth and laying a thick trail of flour behind him.

We got him stopped halfway through the living room and persuaded him to surrender his prize before being ushered out into the back yard.

Maria went after the flour with a broom and dustpan, fearing the vacuum would create a floury cloud.

I followed up with the Hoover, but once I got to the foyer and adjusted the beater brush for a shorter carpet nap, it locked up and burned one or both belts.

Fortunately, I had a ShopVac in reserve and found it did a better job getting up the flour than did the Hoover.

Flour cleaned up, but now a vacuum to repair, necessitating a trip sometime soon to the hardware store for replacement belts.

We’re expecting an ice storm tomorrow and likely power outages, so it seemed like a good time to wrap the water heater that serves our bathroom with the fiberglass jacket I got last week from Amazon.com.

After clearing away six years of spider webs and accumulated dust, I discovered that whoever installed the water heater put it almost flush against a wall – too close to pass the jacket around.

Fortunately, the water lines to and from the heater are flexible, allowing for the heater position to be adjusted. Unfortunately, a 60-gallon water heater holds 480 pounds of water, making it too heavy for me to shift.

Undaunted, I set about retrieving the hose, which I attached to the drain valve, shut off the water and electric supply to the heater and opened the valve with a screwdriver. But no water drained. WTF?

The water heater owner’s manual, which lives in a large accordion folder with dozens of other operator’s manuals for most of the devices and appliances we own, says to open a nearby hot water faucet to relieve the vacuum. I did, with no significant improvement in the trickle of water.

Then I noticed the hot water relief valve on the upper right side of the heater and opened it. A gurgling sound commenced and I saw water beginning to flow – not gush, just flow – out of the hose onto the driveway.

I was disturbed to notice the escaping water carried chunks of what look like calcium, which suggests this draining is long overdue and may be too little and too late to rescue the water heater from death by calcification.

So now I’m at my desk, waiting for the heater to drain enough to be shifted so I can wrap it in fiberglass, refill it and turn the electricity back on.

Then I can fix the vacuum and prepare for the ice apocalypse.

Spicing things up

I took the advice of Ronni Blanken, an Aussie lover from Florida in the Australian Shepherds Lovers Facebook Group and bought a couple of 16-ounce containers of cayenne pepper from Sam’s Club this afternoon.

I sprinkled a pound of the stuff around the perimeter and in the places where Dora has been digging in the yard, then sent her outside to experience it.

She seemed very interested in it, poked around and licked it, eventually coming back onto the back porch for a big drink of water.

Then I let Jack out and the two of them investigated the new substance thoroughly before retiring to the back porch for an afternoon nap.

Digging seems to have subsided, but only time will tell.

Damn! What next?

The headcold that had me so miserable that I spent most of yesterday in bed, fitfully trying to sleep while intermittently sneezing and wiping a perpetually running nose with crappy, useless Sam’s Club bargain tissues, also kept me from getting to the post office  of making coffee yesterday.

Sometime between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., it seemed to abate a little. Still sneezing, but not so much. Nose running, but not so much.

I felt guardedly optimistic.

Then, a few minutes ago, I took my first sip of a cup of hot & sour soup and discovered one of my crowns (#4 on the standard dental diagram) was adrift in my mouth.

Fuck!

I haven’t been to a dentist in a couple of years and, since Maria’s departure from the paper, have no dental coverage, so this won’t be cheap. I called the last dentist’s office that I visited and am booked for 9:20 a.m. Monday, presumably just to re-cement the crown. But we all know it won’t stop there.

Don’t we?

At least I shouldn’t be contagious by then.

The game continues…

Dora tunneled out again late yesterday afternoon.

This time, she dug under the fence on the south end of the yard – the first time for that direction.

Maria opened the garage door and saw her poking around in the neighbor’s yard. Dora came to her immediately, which we hope is a sign that she wanted back in the back yard, but didn’t know how to get there. All three times she’s escaped, she stayed close to home and came when called.

So we closed the hole with a section of tree trunk and lined the adjacent fence sections with big tree branches that littered the yard from the last windstorm.

She was out this morning, surveying her domain and doubtless looking for a new place to dig.

A cold

Fever. Non-stop sneezing. Runny nose.

I feel exactly like crap.

Good news, bad news

I got an email this morning from the home warranty company that covers our Thorntown house against system failures and other such problems, telling me that they have approved my claim for $340.06 worth of furnace repairs, less a $75 deductible.

All they need to complete the process is for me to FAX the paid invoice paperwork – the same paperwork I sent them as a pdf which led to the approval.

Yeah, I know. But if that’s what it takes, I can drive in to town to the FedEx store and FAX the stuff.

In the meantime, my luck has run out when it comes to avoiding the series of colds that have afflicted Maria for weeks. I had the first symptoms of a headcold last night and it was unmistakable by this morning.

The last time I had a cold was January, 2012, and I seem to have cut it short with hemp seed oil and Benadryl. So I’m trying the same remedy this time and hoping for the best.

Grackles are back!

This huge flock of grackles descended upon our neighborhood this morning. The last time I noticed anything like this was Feb. 12, 2012.

The watchers

We continue to fascinate our Aussies.

We must be very interesting

Ours is a very dog-friendly house insofar as all of the ground floor windows are low enough for a dog to look out. Or in.

The windows in our living room look out onto the screened back porch and the back yard beyond.

Much of the time when we’re watching TV or reading and the dogs are outside, this is what we see.

Good day sunshine

It was sunny and 64 degrees, so I rode the K75S in to town and worked out at St. Bernards Health & Fitness, which consisted of a brisk two-mile stroll on the treadmill.

The FedEx truck brought my computer speaker system this morning and I had everything up and running within 15 minutes.

And dinner was at Qdoba, so I count today as a good day.

Gentleman Jack Flora

Installing a 27” monitor on my hideously cluttered desk this week forced me to sort through the papers piled there.

And that’s how I rediscovered the paperwork we got from Briarbrook Kennels in Carthage, Mo. when we acquired Jack on November 20, 2011.

For various reasons, I never got around to registering him with the American Kennel Club. Chief among the reasons (not counting the paperwork getting lost on my desk) was our inability to settle on an official name for him.

My initial thought was to name him Briarbrook’s Jumpin’ Jack Flash, but Maria pointed out the Satanic vibe to the name and nixed it.

Now, two years later, we’ve had time to observe Jack and appreciate his finer qualities, many of which were brought out by bringing Dora into our home at a puppy last June.

While Jack still can’t be trusted off the leash in the house because of his penchant for stealing clothing items and kitchen counter-surfing, we have been impressed with his loving and nurturing nature when it comes to Dora. He plays with her with infinite patience, gently corrects her when necessary and makes it clear that he is her champion and protector.

As dogs go, Jack has become the consummate gentleman.

So henceforth, his official AKC moniker is Briarbrook’s Gentleman Jack Flora.

Mending fences

We had some rain and high winds late yesterday and this is what I found when I surveyed the back yard this morning.

Happily, the fence is not breached, so our dogs are secure, but it will have to be fixed. And the best news is that it missed our roof by about 20 feet.

This is only the second tree limb fence damage we’ve had in the 6½ years we’ve lived here. The first was during the epic ice storm of January, 2009.

Considering how many trees we have, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often. Now I’m off to call the fence repair guys.

Happy 20th birthday, K75S

This month marks the 20th birthday of our beautiful, one-of-a-kind 1994 BMW K75S.

According to information stamped onto the frame, this bike was born sometime in February, 1994.

I have no idea what the original color was. That year’s K75 was offered in Mystic Red, Astial Blue, Classic Black, and Silk Blue with a list price of $9,590.

The original owner had other ideas, thought. He took it to Holt BMW in Athens, Ohio and had their paint shop wizards transform it with an Acid Green paint scheme. He was apparently too delicate for a stock windscreen, so he put a funny looking tall windscreen on it.

Sometime in 2000, he decided to sell it on consignment at Revard BMW in Indianapolis, which is where I discovered it. I saw it as a logical step up for Maria, who had several hundred miles in her mirrors on an aging 500cc Honda Shadow.

The K75S had only 2,417 miles on the odometer as it sat on the Revard showroom floor. I don’t recall exactly how much I paid, but I think it was around $7,000 when I bought it in late October, 2000.

I put a stock windscreen back on it and had the bike lowered for Maria with a new shock, fork adjustment, low profile tires and scooping some foam out of the Sargent seat.

Unfortunately, Maria never really bonded with the bike, although she did ride it from our home in Thorntown to an Indianapolis BMW Club meeting at Lieber State Recreation Area near Cloverdale, a round trip of more than 100 miles.

A car crash caused by a woman with macular degeneration, coupled with a hectic work schedule blunted her enthusiasm for riding to the point where she hasn’t ridden the bike in about seven years.

So it fell to me to keep the battery up and maintain the bike, which I have done with considerable pleasure. The K75S is a sweet little motorcycle that handles like a dream and is more fun to ride than my 2003 K1200GT.

The bike now has about 15,150 miles on the odometer, which works out to an average of 757 miles per year, making it a supremely low-mileage machine with many many many miles left in her.

BMW produced the K75 model from 1985 to 1995, so ours was built near the end of the series production.

Post-war fantasy

This rather beat-up stein may look impressive to some folks, but those of us who know our World War II militaria recognize it for what it is – a post-war fantasy piece, complete with fake RZM and other marks on the base.

The most highly decorated German serviceman of World War II, Hans Ulrich Rudel was a highly successful Stuka dive-bomber pilot who flew 2,530 millions, claiming 2,000 targets destroyed including 800 vehicles, 519 tanks, 150 artillery pieces, 70 landing craft, nine aircraft, four armored trains, several bridges, a destroyer, two cruisers, and the Soviet battleship Marat.

He was one of only 27 military men to be awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, and the only person to be awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, Germany's highest military decoration at the time.

A large series of these steins, named to prominent soldiers, sailors, airmen and SS troops, was produced in the 1970s. I remember seeing several of them offered for sale in the catalogs of Collector’s Armory along with reproduction Third Reich daggers and other stuff. I bought this one at an Ohio Valley Military Society show at Fort Mitchell, Ky. in the 1980s.

I can see again!

The FedEx truck just brought my new 27” ViewSonic LED monitor and it’s gorgeous.

Visiting Charlie in the new NEA Baptist Hospital yesterday afternoon, I noticed all of the computer stations use ViewSonic monitors too.

Oh, what a beautiful morning!

There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep, the promise of another spring-like warm day, and knowing an eagerly awaited package is “out for delivery” by FedEx to brighten my morning.

And the sound of crop dusting aircraft fills the air. In the north, the advent of spring is heralded by the sighting of the first robin or the distinctive song of the cardinal. Here in the mid-South, it’s the sound of crop dusters buzzing to and fro over the cotton fields.

Our friend Charlie is back in the hospital with a mystery fever and mild cough that may or may not be pneumonia. I was going to brighten his day with a carry-out Mexican lunch, but he texted that he has tests and may not be in his room at lunchtime, so we’ll reschedule his break from hospital food.

My short motorcycle ride yesterday has me jonesing for more, but I’m torn between wanting to ride, needing to work out and wanting to watch for the FedEx truck. What to do?

I love it

I rode about 25 soul-satisfying miles this afternoon, just to remind myself how much I love riding and that spring is, indeed, on the way.

I knew the temperature was headed for the upper 60s today, so I dragged out the tire gauge and compressor and aired up the tires on the K75S last evening in anticipation of today’s ride – 32 psi in the front and 36 psi in the back. The bike handles like a dream and I’m hankering for a real road trip soon. Maybe Daytona, if any of my Indianapolis friends will be there.

More stamping

Maria is sending some quilting materials to a Facebook friend in New Jersey, so I stamped a box for her this evening.

Monday stuff

I had thoughts of buying a semi-automatic rifle at the gun show here last weekened, but the need to pony up $250 for a new computer monitor reordered my priorities and I never made it to the show.

Amazon.com says the monitor has shipped and should be on my doorstep before 8 p.m. Wednesday, so I have until then to clean the crap off of my desk and create an orderly space for it.

The furnace repair folks had to make two trips to our rental house in Indiana before they finally got the downstairs furnace repaired and working reliably. I’m having them email me all of the paperwork so I can submit a claim to the home warranty insurance company and hopefully recover my expenses, less the $75 deductible. The service tech said the filters in both furnaces were filthy, the downstairs one completely blocked, despite the tenant’s claim that he replaced the filters in November. Unless I can get him to reliably change the filters every three months, I’ll live in constant worry that he will destroy the furnaces and air conditioning units.

The temperature is in the low 60s with bright sunshine this afternoon – the warmest weather we’ve seen in more than a month. I may actually be able to go for a motorcycle ride tomorrow when it’s supposed to be even warmer.

To paraphrase Col. Kilgore in Apocalypse Now!, “Someday this winter’s gonna end.”

Dead monitor

The fabulous workhorse 24” Dell flatscreen monitor that I put into service on Dec. 20, 2006, died yesterday.

The screen was dark when I sat down to use my desktop computer yesterday afternoon. I hit the power button repeatedly, checked all of the connections, moved the power cord to another powerstrip, and finally did a manual reboot, all to no avail.

I guess seven years of constant service – I leave it on most of the time – is all I can reasonably expect from a piece of computer equipment.

Since I have the netbook and my iPhone, I can limp along for a few days and don’t have to panic and run down to Best Buy and overpay for a quick fix, plus the usurious Arkansas sales tax. Consequently, I have been shopping on Amazon.com for a replacement.

That said, I’m having a hard time finding a replacement with the same added features – memory card reader, sound bar, USB ports – that I liked so much on my old monitor, but I shall persevere. If I order today, I can have it on Tuesday.

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

I just pulled the trigger on this 27” View Sonic monitor from Amazon.com - $249.99 with free delivery. Should be here on Wednesday.

Roots

Furnace crisis in Thorntown

I got a text message yesterday afternoon from our renter in Thorntown informing me that the blower motor on the furnace that serves the main floor of our big old Victorian house is failing.

I got on the phone to the home warranty firm we contract with for such emergencies and called the heating and cooling company in Lafayette that worked on the AC last summer. A technician named Todd called me a few minutes later and we worked out that he would go to Thorntown at 8:30 a.m., diagnose the problem and then call the home warranty hotline to clear the repairs with them.

I texted the tenant and considered the matter handled. For the moment, anyway.

Then I got a call at 6:45 a.m. today from a woman who apparently dispatches the technicians and who was unaware of the arrangement I had with Todd.

Todd, she said, was going out on another call and she would send someone else. And it is not their policy to deal with insurance companies, so I would have to pay up front and recover what I can from the home warranty folks later.

Not what our cash flow needs at the moment, but there it is.

It’s now 12:15 p.m. Indiana time and I have heard nothing from the tenant or the technician.

This gets a little more worrisome when you consider it’s crazy cold up there and there is a high probability that the pipes serving the kitchen could freeze and rupture. And the tenant’s daughter has a very young baby in the house. The good news is that the furnace that serves the second floor is apparently working fine, so they have someplace they can be warm.

Yes, I hate being a landlord with residential property. Our commercial property is so much easier to deal with.

Your mother doesn’t work here. Pick it up.

I worked out this morning at the St. Bernards Health & Wellness Center.

I found this disturbing sight when I hit the showers – some self-absorbed twit left a water-soaked towel on a shower stall floor.

Someone needs to explain to him that grownups pick up after themselves.

In the good news department, the Safelight Glass Replacement guy showed up about 9:15 a.m. to make a resin repair of the chip in my Lexus’s windshield. He was quite pleasant and got it done in under 30 minutes at a cost of $50 plus tax.

Just another brick in the Wall

Longtime friend Joe Repp sent me a package last week to return a long-forgotten VHS movie I lent him and he included some magazine clippings and this chunk of the Berlin Wall.

This concrete was poured in the autumn of my junior year in high school and I remember quite vividly the Wall going up. I remember even more vividly the joy of seeing the Wall come down.

The Cold War was ending and we thought life would be free of global tension from then on. We hadn’t counted on the extent to which the Soviet Union had kept old tribal hatreds in check and how much hatred there was in the Muslim world.

Dora's personal chair

A smaller canvas this time

Turns out there were more items to send to my son Sean than would fit in the envelope I mailed yesterday, so I decorated a small Priority Mail box this afternoon.

And I had the foresight to use a pair of the Nitrile gloves I got from the Amazon Vine Program, so my fingers came away from the stamping ink-free.

The assistant postmistress seemed a bit bemused yesterday when I presented the heavily stamped envelope.

In other matters, we got about an inch of snow overnight, but it’s melting fast and the ice that turned our neighborhood into a crystalline fairy land has vanished from the trees and shrubs and fences.

The forecast for tomorrow calls for a high of 38, so the snow most likely will be gone by tomorrow night.

The Arkansas Sports Show is this weekend in the Arkansas State University Convocation Center. It hasn’t changed or improved noticeably in the six years we’ve been here and I see no reason to waste my time and money on it.

The last I heard, at least one of the organizers thought it was too classy an event to involve the Robertson clan and their Duck Commander folks. He’s too much of a dullard to realize that Duck Commander involvement would generate unheard of excitement and double attendance at his otherwise mundane show.