Labor Day Weekend, 1988

Here I am, somewhere in southern Missouri or northwest Arkansas, on a Labor Day weekend ride to the Ozarks with Indianapolis BMW Club friend Rich Nathan.

I was riding my 1981 BMW R100RS and Rich was on his BMW K75.

I know we camped a couple of nights, but the only one I recall with any clarity was on the shores of Northfork Lake east of Mountain View, Ark. after we rode through Branson and explored some of Table Rock Reservoir.

Here’s Rich as we left the Northfork Lake campground.

It was a fun weekend riding some extremely twisty and well-maintained state roads.

Just so I can say I posted something…

The blazing summer heat we hoped we avoided is upon us here in northeast Arkansas.

The 3 p.m. temperature is 95 with a heat index of 108 and the forecast is for hotter weather over the weekend.

So I am hunkered down in the air conditioning with no plans to go anywhere for the rest of the afternoon.

I got out early to ride down to the electric utility office to pay our bill, which was due today. I would have mailed the check earlier, but I spaced it.

After dropping off the payment, I cruised by Panera for a cheese Danish and cup of coffee, but couldn’t think of anything interesting for a blog entry.

I still can’t, but people stop reading you if you don’t post new content every day or so.

As we were drifting off to sleep last night, I got a call from my son Sean. I knew it was him because of the ringtone I’ve assigned to his number. (If you have an iPhone, you’ll recognize it as the one named “Robot.”)

He was at a restaurant and realized he didn’t have his bank debit card with him and wondered it I could shoot him some money by PayPal so he could buy dinner with his PayPal credit card.

No problem. I went up to the office, signed into my PayPal account and threw $50 into his account.

Our lawn needs mowing – one particular variety of grass in the front yard has reached about 12” in scattered spots and is going to seed – but there is NFW I’m going to mow in this weather. Maybe tomorrow morning if the dew evaporates before the temperature rises into the 90s.

Here’s a photo of Sean I scanned yesterday. It was the summer of 1970 – a few months before his brother Steve was born – and we lived in half of a double at 4829 N. College Ave. in Indianapolis.

Flora family politics

I got an email today from my cousin Eric. We exchange emails on conservative subjects frequently and today’s missive had him wondering how our Grandfather Irvin Flora became a Democrat, as did our fathers.

Here’s what I wrote in reply:

I think my dad's politics, and probably our grandfather's as well, grew out of an impulse to root for the underdog, to look out for the little guy.

One of dad's first jobs was working for the Federal Land Bank, which was a subsidiary of FDR's Farm Credit Administration. I think that's what he did after leaving the Carroll County Treasurer's office when Grandpa Flora's term as treasurer ended and before he became an insurance agent.

I don't remember him talking that much about FDR, but he really identified with Harry Truman. He took us on a family trip to Washington, D.C. around 1950 or '51 and I think the fact that Truman was in the White House was a factor. Truman was a farm boy like our fathers and, even though he was a Missouri Democrat Machine candidate, he rose above machine politics.

I'm pretty sure my dad and his father would not recognize what the Democrat Party has become. I was raised in a Democrat household and considered myself a Democrat of varying levels of enthusiasm until the 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern. It wasn't until then that I realized the Democrat Party had been taken over by and was pandering to a constituency that I couldn't identify with and that I had more in common with the GOP.

Even so, Nixon certainly didn't inspire me, neither did Ford or Carter. I bitterly regret that I didn't fully appreciate Reagan when he was in office and I worried about George Bush's judgment when he picked Dan Quayle as his running mate. Quayle was well-known to those of us at The Indianapolis News, since our managing editor, who was also the Adjutant General of Indiana and head of the Indiana National Guard, pulled strings to get Quayle - a relative of the publisher - a safe berth in the Guard during Vietnam.

Bill Clinton's style revolted me and, although it was painful to listen to George W. Bush speak because his mannerisms invited ridicule by people who thought they were smarter than he, I recognized that he was and is a genuinely good man.

In contrast, Obama hates the America we love and his presidency is all about race and revenge.

I liked Mitt Romney, but felt he was too nice and too kind for the savage race he found himself in. That said, I fully believe the Democrats stole the 2012 election through widespread and well organized voter fraud. It the votes had been counted honestly, I have no doubt that Romney would have won.

That's my worst fear going forward - that the Democrat network of voter fraud is so well coordinated and financed, especially in key states and precincts, that they can thwart the will of the people. With the mainstream media refusing to expose them, it may not matter how people actually vote.

Cat poop coffee

I'm trying Starbucks Sumatra dark roast coffee in my mocha cappuccino this morning.

I noticed that the bag has a picture of a tiger on it, which may or may not be a subtle attempt to make you think it could be the rare and expensive "cat poop coffee" of Sumatra.

But at only $6.99 a bag from Kroger.

Coffee and conversation on a humid Tuesday morning

I finished another bag of Starbucks coffee when I made my mocha cappuccino this morning, so here I am at Starbucks in Jonesboro, where I cashed the empty bag in for a free cup of dark roast. It just seemed like the thing to do.

A guy in a neon green safety vest and Centerpoint Energy hardhat accosted me as I parked in front of Starbucks, observing that I had an Arkansas license plate and an Indianapolis BMW Club sticker on my K1200GT.

Turns out it was Mike Causey, a friend of Charlie Parsons, who also rides a BMW motorcycle. He, too, was at the BMW MOA rally last month in St. Paul, Minn., but he took a more circuitous route up across the Mackinac Bridge to Duluth before cruising down to the rally. He was making sure the crew widening Red Wolf Boulevard didn’t dig into the Centerpoint gas line that parallels the roadway.

It was his second BMW MOA rally, having been to the blazing hot 2012 rally in Sedalia, Mo. And, like me, he plans on Billings, Mont. next year.

BTW, images get distorted if you don’t pan the camera straight and level when shooting a panorama photo with an iPhone, which is why my eyes and glasses look a little whopperjawed.

Still planning on Billings next July

The usually calm BMW Motorcycle Owners of America Facebook page occasionally lights up with acrimonious debate over non-motorcycle issues.

Such was the case this morning when a member posted her disappointment that the Billings, Mont. City Council recently voted 6-5 against an ordinance that would attempt to enforce diversity through a non-discrimination law.

As nearly as I can tell, the issue had its genesis in a complaint from a woman who wanted to use a men’s restroom.

This is germane because next year’s BMW MOA Rally will be in Billings.

In a matter of minutes, the page was ablaze with self-righteous proclamations from liberal types that the BMW MOA should not have its rally in such a bigoted and intolerant place. Our rallies inject a lot of money into the local economy and most cities that have hosted us hope we come back.

Some went so far as to announce they would not attend.

That suits me fine. I don’t care to listen to yammering fools who flaunt their liberal ideology in public, just to make themselves feel smugly superior. Let them stay home, or go march in solidarity with their oppressed brothers and sisters in Ferguson, Mo.

I suspect that, despite the vote against the measure, the majority of the council members are fair-minded good people whose chief concern was that such an ordinance could involve the city in pointless costly litigation – something most rational taxpayers are happy to avoid.

Happily, the BMW MOA Facebook page administrators took the conversational thread down a few hours later.

Scanning negs again

I’ve been digitizing some 35mm negatives today, staying put, not burning gasoline, doing stuff that doesn’t cost anything (much).

One of the best images I’ve rediscovered is this shot of my parents on the occasion of Thanksgiving, 1986 at their home in Delphi, Ind. They looked pretty happy and chipper and that’s how I like to remember them.

Here’s another photo from that day, Sean and Steve getting ready to take Grandma Flora’s 1964½ Mustang for a spin. I loved it that Dad had the vision to buy the fifth Mustang ever sold in Carroll County. It was a great little car and I honed my standard transmission skills on its three-speed stick shift before I bought my first car – a 1965 Volkswagen beetle – in August, 1966.

And this is me with Webb Bernhardt and Cindy Fort in July, 1995 at Hunter S. Thompson’s favorite watering hole, the Woody Creek Tavern, west of Aspen, Colo. I got the Staintune t-shirt a week earlier at the BMW MOA National Rally in Durango where I lent my K100RS to the Staintune exhaust system guys so they could fire it up and show prospective buyers what the Staintune sport pipe sounded like.

After the rally, Indianapolis BMW Club members regrouped and gathered at a chalet in Breckenridge for another week in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The ride over Independence Pass to Aspen, with lunch at Woody Creek and a soak in the thermal hot pool at Glenwood Springs is one of my favorites.

Here are some of the club members at the chalet we used to rent for a week every summer. They are (from left) Irmgard Burford, Cindy Fort, John Rode, Webb Bernhardt, and Diana and Wendell Owen.

The bike on the left is mine and the other – also a 1991 K100RS – belonged to Archey Shearer.

Hear here

A woman on an Indianapolis nostalgia Facebook group last week opined that patients at a closed mental hospital were probably put out onto the street “to fin for themselves.”

That got me thinking about people using mis-heard words and expressions and cluttering up the spoken language with stupid utterances that could have been avoided if they read more.

Like saying “high tit” when the expression is “hind tit.”

Or saying “would of” instead of “would have.”

A few minutes of Googling turned up this list culled from various sources:

"Different tack," not "different tact"

The tack in this case is the direction in which a ship is travelling. It's not an abbreviation for "tactic."

"Moot point," not "mute point"

"Taking up the reins," not "taking up the reigns"

The expression is about riding a horse, not about forcing your mother to abdicate so you can rule the kingdom.

"Eke out," not "eek out"

"Beyond the pale," not "beyond the pail"

The meaning is clear — something that's generally unacceptable — but the origin isn't. This has nothing to do with the color of your skin or where a bucket might be located on your property. Here's the origin per the Macquarie Dictionary:

In English history, a fence around a territory and by extension the limit to which a jurisdiction extended; hence the Irish Pale, the part of Ireland ruled by the English in the 14th century and in which English law held sway. Anyone living beyond this boundary was thought to be beyond the bounds of civilization.

"Mine of information," not "mind of information"

"Just deserts," not "just desserts"

"Wait with bated breath," not "wait with baited breath"

No, your breath doesn't stink like fish while you're waiting. Bated in this case is the shortened form of abate, meaning to lessen or withdraw.

"Due respect," not "do respect"

"For all intents and purposes," not "for all intensive purposes"

“Toe the line,” not “Tow the line”

“Shoo-in,” not “Shoe-in”

Different kinds of errors:

"To beg the question" means to assume a fact that has not been established. It does not mean "to prompt the question."

"Uninterested" means not interested.

"Disinterested" means impartial.

"Irregardless" does not exist.

"Discreet" means having or showing discernment or prudence.

"Discrete" means separate.

“If I had known,” not “If I would have known.”

"Supposebly" does not exist. The word is "supposedly".

You don't cut off your nose "despite" your face. You do it "to spite" your face.

"Hunger pangs" not "hunger pains"

"Powers that be," not "powers to be"

"Buck naked," not "butt naked"

“Take it for granted,” not “Take if for granite.”

“You've got another think coming,” not “You've got another thing coming.”

“Espresso,” not “Expresso.”

“Losing,” as in, I'm losing. Often written as “loosing.”

“Et cetera,” not "eckcetra/ect."

Ensure/Insure - Ensure: Make certain of something. One must ensure that one has one's wallet before leaving the house.

Insure: Buy insurance coverage for. Insure your car before you drive it.

And the list goes on and on…

43 years ago this month

I spent August, 1971 on the campus of Humboldt State College in Arcata, Calif. on the first half of a course to become a teacher of Transcendental Meditation.

I learned TM in November, 1969 on the first TM course ever offered in Indianapolis and felt drawn to become a teacher.

The course was taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement. He lectured at length at least twice daily in the Humboldt State College (now University) Fieldhouse. I was one of about a half-dozen folks from Indiana in attendance and we gathered in the afternoons in one of the student apartments where we were billeted to discuss the content of Maharishi’s lectures. That’s where this photo was shot.

Notice that I had an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes (Viceroy) at my side. It was another six years or so before I quit smoking for good.

I’m sure I reeked of cigarette smoke,

which is probably why Maharishi shot me a disapproving look when I sat down next to him to receive instruction in an advanced TM technique about half-way through the course.

I never made it to the second half of the teacher training program, which was held the following year on Majorca, an island off the coast of Spain.

I did, however, take the TM-Sidhi Course in the late 1970s and learned to “levitate.” You can read about that here.

And I also shot about 300 black-and-white and color images during the course.

Progress

A roofing crew was busy at Morgan’s house this morning replacing the roof damaged by freakishly high winds on June 5.

The storm hit just as a cleanup crew went to work in the wake of a flood caused by a broken PVC supply line to the master bedroom toilet. It was not a good day for my stepdaughter.

After a couple of months of assessment and estimating, work began this week to put her house back together. In the meantime, she’s living with us.

A Guide to U.S. Newspapers

I got this insightful guide from longtime BMW riding friend Rich Nathan:

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand the Washington Post. They do, however like the smog statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn't have to leave L.A. to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country, and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority, feministic atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from ANY country or galaxy as long as they are democrats.

10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

11. Nobody reads The Indianapolis Star or the Jonesboro Sun. (I added this one.)

You don't have to know Spanish to love this

Santana's latest album, "Corazon," is the best thing I've heard in years.

Free music, free coffee!

Starbucks offers a free music download weekly and a free cup of coffee in exchange for an empty Starbucks coffee bag.

I’m all about free, so here I am blogging about it on the free Starbucks Wifi.

Minnie Doane and the Fair Train

Since it’s State Fair time in Indiana, it seems appropriate to post this August, 1985 photo of longtime Carmel City Councilwoman Minnie Doane christening the 1985 Fair Train with a bottle of Night Train Express, a fortified wine by Gallo that has long been a favorite of trainyard hobos.

Back in the mid-1980s, the Carmel City Council was discussing an ordinance creating a peddler’s license. During the discussion, Minnie opined that such an ordinance would spare Carmel residence the worry about “darkies” showing up at their door.

City Attorney Steve Andrews, who was sitting at the council table, shot me a horrified look, worried that I might quote Minnie in my story in the next day’s Indianapolis News.

He needn’t have worried. I recognized that Minnie, who was 75 at the time, was a product of her generation and meant no malicious disrespect. I knew that quoting her would create a needless shitstorm of controversy and figured that wasn’t why I was there.

Besides, my forbearance made a longtime friend of Andrews and the other members of the council that gave me insights into Carmel politics that I would never have gained otherwise.

Minnie died in 1992. The gazebo in front of Carmel City Hall has been named for her.

Here’s a photo of a young rider on that Fair Train that ran from Carmel to a point just west of the Indiana State Fairgrounds for several years.

The tracks were later abandoned and removed to make way for the Monon Trail, a hiking and biking route. Today’s Fair Train runs from Fishers to a site on the east side of the Fairgrounds.

Remembering Moselle Schaffer

This is my friend Moselle Schaffer with one of her pet Siberian tigers.

Moselle, who died July 31, 2000 at the age of 75, was about 50 when I shot this photo.

She was an elegant, witty, strong woman with a sharp sense of humor and tons of Southern charm. She was eccentric in spades and lived life precisely on her terms. If you can track down her quirky, funny book titled “Camel Lot: The True Story of a Zoo-Illogical Farm,” by all means, buy it.

Moselle also did a lot of freelance writing and she gloried in animal stories. She wrote several for The Indianapolis News at a time when I was chief of The News' Metro North Bureau, covering the two north suburban counties that included Camel Lot, her exotic animal farm and bed-and-breakfast on 50 acres in Hamilton County. Her menagerie included tigers, llamas, zebras, ostriches, monkeys, goats and camels.

I also discovered along the way that she had been a close friend and confidant of the late Frances Farmer, the ill-starred actress whose tragic life included a final chapter as an afternoon movie hostess on the former WFBM-TV in Indianapolis.

Before she died of cancer in 1970, Frances gave Moselle a charm bracelet she had received when she was featured on the old Ralph Edwards "This is Your Life" TV show. All of the female subjects of the show, which was a kind of precursor to today's "Biography" but featured surprise reunions with people from the subject's past, received a charm bracelet with miniature representations of important places or events in the woman's life. She confided to Moselle that she never liked the bracelet. Miss Farmer is entombed in a Fishers, Ind. cemetery mausoleum.

Moselle also held a commercial pilot’s license and was a member of the Aero Club of Indianapolis.

She is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham, Ala.

Sabotage

The word sabotage comes from the French word for shoe, which is sabot. The word came about when disgruntled French factory workers wrecked machinery by throwing their wooden shoes into the gears.

Here’s an example of another sort of sabotage – sneakers flung into the wires above East 50th Street, just east of College Avenue in Indianapolis in December, 1985. I lived just up the street at 5009 N. College at the time.

69 years ago today

This B-29 dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan on this date in 1945, pretty much obliterating the city of Nagasaki.

It can be seen at the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio.

1977 flashback

I had an impulse to scan some negatives after dinner this evening and found an Indianapolis News neg envelope dated Oct. 3, 1977 that contained a few interesting images including this one.

The scene is my den at our home at 5009 N. College Ave., in Indianapolis and the guy in the chair is Mark Wadleigh, a friend from my Transcendental Meditation days. Mark and the other guy, Michael Lindberg, were TM teachers and we all hung out together.

Mark is now an instructor in the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash. His father was a professor of speech and theatre at WSU.

Michael, who was born in Thief River Falls, Minn., was bright and talented but he had his demons and they drove him to blow his brains out with a .357 magnum revolver on a Seattle park bench one night in the 1980s. I have the coffee table he made as a high school shop project and it’s on loan to my stepdaughter.

Hilarious

This is absolutely hilarious!

The first paragraph tells it all – use this device to fake mileage on your trailered motorcycle.

I’ve always thought that most guys who trailer their bikes are pathetic posers, but this is a way to be even more pathetic.

And at the same time, all of those bogus extra miles reduce the trade-in or sale value of the motorcycle.

I suspect it’s a joke because the listed website – www.trailerboyz.com – seems to not exist.

Oooops

When I went into the garage this morning to fill the Aussies’ food bowls from the plastic bin of Fromm dog food, I found my way barred by a logjam of coolers.

The smaller cooler, it turns out, was full of rotting food – bags of once-frozen lima and pinto beans and a package of sliced Munster cheese, all from a Sam’s Club shopping trip at least three weeks ago. Apparently Maria or I put the cooler in front of the freezer with the intention of transferring the contents into the freezer, but promptly forgot it.

After photographing the stinking contents, I dumped the stuff into the trash can and hosed out the cooler, leaving it open in the driveway to dry and air out.

Happily, the large cooler was clean and empty, so I put it up on the shelf where it belongs.

In other garage news, we now have a generous supply of Tide detergent, Kraft salad dressings, Planter’s peanuts, Red Gold tomato products and other items purchased at insanely low prices, thanks to Morgan’s couponing prowess.

And speaking of Tide:

Thanks again, Paul

Thanking Gen. Paul Tibbets for what he did 69 years ago today.

Chances are my first wife and our two sons would not have been born had he not flown the first atomic bomb mission and destroyed Hiroshima.

In later life, he drove Toyotas. It wasn’t personal.

New router

I spent a couple of hours this morning installing a new router – a Linksys AC1900 Wi-Fi Wireless Dual-Band+ Router with Gigabit & USB 3.0 Ports, Smart Wi-Fi App Enabled to Control Your Network from Anywhere (EA6900).

It lists for $199.99 and sells on Amazon.com for $160.99, but I’m testing it for a review on Amazon through the Vine program.

It replaced a Linksys E2000 Advanced Wireless-N Router that I bought on June 13, 2011 on clearance at Best Buy when my previous router went belly-up.

The setup was startlingly easy and most of the time was spent getting various devices in the house to sync with the new router. I never did get the smart TV in Maria’s sewing room to recognize it, but so far it syncs with my iPhone, my Kindle Paperwhite, my netbook, our Sony Blu-Ray player and Maria’s laptop. When they get home, I’ll get Maria and Morgan’s iPhones and Kindles and Morgan’s laptop connected as well.

I think the coverage is a little better in the living room than with the old router. The new unit has three antennae that presumably can be adjusted to focus the signal. Our desktop computers are hardwired into the router and mine seems to run a bit faster.

David Irvine

David Irvine is an artist/illustrator who improves old and thrift shop artwork by adding images to them.

Check out more of his work here.

Wonky starter button

This is what happens when I want to start my 2003 BMW K1200GT after it has saw idle for a day or two, or sometimes just overnight.

Until today, the record was 21 button presses. Now the record stands at 33.

Once the engine is warm, it restarts readily on the first or second starter button push.

My dealer replaced this control cluster a few years ago. Then this problem developed. They refused to replace it again under warranty because they couldn't replicate the problem.

Still a mystery

This is the most interesting thing my new trailcam has captured so far.

Whatever it visiting my yard triggered it late Wednesday and Friday afternoons but I can find nothing in the frames that looks like man or beast.

Maybe if I put out some kind of bait…

Dora goes to the vet

I took Dora to the vet this morning for her annual checkup and shots.

She is now current on her rabies, parvo, and Dhp vaccinations.

Dr. Huff said she is “healthy as a horse.” She weighs a dainty 35 pounds.

Post office encounter

Approaching the post office on the K75S this morning, I noticed a pickup truck with camper shell pulling into the parking lot through the exit, which is clearly marked “DO NOT ENTER.”

I parked a couple of spaces to the left as the driver opened his door and looked around like a deer in the headlights while his passenger, a grizzled looking little guy went inside to check a box.

When I emerged with my mail, the driver asked, “Whut kind of motorsickle is that?”

“It’s a BMW.”

“B and W?”

“BMW – like the cars – only they’ve been making motorcycles longer than they’ve made cars. The first was in 1923, so were coming up on 100 years,” I said, hammering home the point that he hasn’t been paying attention.

“Well, I don’t think I ever seen one before,” he offered.

So ended my first exchange of the day with one of my fellow Arkansans.

How a bank ought to be

Trailcam mystery

Something is triggering my side yard trail cam every afternoon a little before 5 p.m., but I can’t see anything out of place in any of the resulting photos.

Here’s the pattern of photos I found when I pulled the SD memory card yesterday:

Date	Time	Time	Time	Time
7/24	4:49 p.m.	5:06 p.m.
7/25	4:50 p.m.	4:51 p.m.
7/26	4:48 p.m.	4:50 p.m.	4:52 p.m.	4:54 p.m
7/28	4:46 p.m.	4:50 p.m.	4:51 p.m.

Whatever it is, it took Sunday off.

I took a seat on the front porch with a good view of the area covered by the camera about 4:40 p.m. yesterday and sat quietly until about 5:15 p.m. hoping to see or hear what has been passing through the camera’s field of view with such remarkable regularity, but saw and heard nothing.

Time permitting, I’ll resume my surveillance this afternoon.

Rally wrapup

I finished my post-rally chores this morning, consisting of repacking my tent and air mattress that I laid out to dry yesterday afternoon. I had to pack them wet when I left the Minnesota State Fairgrounds Sunday morning because the ground cloth of my tent captured some water from Friday morning’s rain.

I found my original air mattress inflator right where I left it on my dresser. Now I have two of them, having purchased a new, more powerful unit at the rally.

Here’s an evening photo I shot of some of our bikes parked and covered in front of the canopy that was the centerpiece of our club campsite on the north end of the fairground.

My Jonesboro friend Charlie Parsons entered his 1939 BMW R12 in the Vintage Bike competition and won first place in his division.

The bike is for sale for $23,500 if anyone is interested. You can email him at 143bmw@att.net. I’d buy it in a heartbeat if I could afford it and had room for it.

I spent Monday night at the Hannibal, Mo., Motel 6, parking next to an R1200RT ridden by Jim Minton, an 80-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran from Cape Girardeau, Mo.

We swapped travel stories over dinner at the restaurant next door to the motel. Jim did multiple tours in Viet Nam.

Home again, home again

This morning began with some hiccups in my riding routine, but everything ended well and I made it home from Hannibal, Mo. without serious mishap.

I awoke about 6 a.m., checked the distance to St. Louis from the Hannibal Motel 6 and realized that a departure before 7 a.m. would put me in the middle of the St. Louis morning rush hour.

So I went to breakfast at the restaurant next door and took my time about packing and loading the bike. I was all ready to ride when, seconds after closing the door to Room 110 and leaving my card key on the sink, I realized I’d left my helmet inside. No problem, said the clerk as she gave me another card key to recover my lid.

Moments after I got out onto U.S. 61, I discovered my Garmin Zumo 550 display was frozen and unresponsive to the buttons. I stopped to fuel up a couple of miles down the road and tinkered with it, removing it from its cradle and power source, but to no avail.

So what do you do when you’re trying to skirt the edges of one of the nation’s bigger cities without a GPS or a map? Out comes the iPhone to chart the way home – U.S. 61 to I-64 to I-270 to I-55 to U.S. 67 to Corning, Ark. which is a hop, skip and a jump from home. I repeated the sequence to myself for several minutes as I rode south without the benefit of Miss Garmin’s directions or SiriusXM entertainment.

I was suddenly back to old school touring with just my thoughts to entertain me and it was in this windy silence that I chewed on the problem of a frozen GPS display. And then it struck me: reboot it by removing and replacing the battery.

I stopped 63 miles down the road at Troy, Mo. to examine the GPS and found that none of my pocket knives or my BMW tool kit had a #8 torx screwdriver to remove the battery. Then I noticed an Auto Zone store a couple of blocks away from the gas station where I was parked.

I cruised over to Auto Zone, showed the GPS to the woman at the counter and eventually found the right torx tool to remove the battery. When I replaced it and pushed the on/off button, the GPS booted just like new and I was back in business. But just in case, I invested in a small set of torx drivers that will live in my saddlebag should Miss Garmin have another seizure.

Problem solved for $11 and change.

The rest of the ride was uneventful and the temperature never rose above the low 80s. I gassed a final time at the “Dirt Cheap” Phillips 66 in Deloge, Mo., had a quick McDonald’s lunch next door and rode on home, arriving at 2:16 p.m.

Total mileage for the trip: 1,554 miles.

FYI: this was my 21st BMW MOA National Rally.

Attendance was 5,866.

Saturday morning rally report

Here I am at the Internet Cafe where the phone recharging, Wifi and bananas are free, although a donation is appreciated.

I made the mistake of eating too much too late last evening and paid the price with brutal indigestion about 2 a.m. That, plus the high humidity and lack of a breeze made for a long, uncomfortable night. I didn’t get to sleep properly until I peeled back the rain fly on my tent to let the heat and humidity escape.

I was up with the sun about 6 a.m., chatted with Charlie at the coffee stand he runs and had some interesting conversations with interesting riders from Dallas, Paducah, and British Columbia.

Yesterday was overcast, which kept my tank bag solar panel from properly charging the storage module that, in turn, charges my iPhone, so I grabbed my netbook and iPhone charging cord and headed for the MOA Building.

I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with the rest of the day, except to say that I have no plans to leave the Fairgrounds.

Charlie graciously agreed to haul my waterproof bag full of camping stuff home in his trailer, so I can made the ride back to Arkansas unencumbered.

I spent a few minutes watching people struggle with rudimentary off-road maneuvers on the GS Giants course and concluded there are a lot of GS riders who should never leave the pavement.

I’d like to think I still have enough of my dirt skills from trail riding courses in the 1980s to show these kids how it’s done, at least on a 650 GS. Doing this stuff on a 1200 GS is like trying to get an elephant to climb a ladder.

Rally report

Howard Mudd is here.

Thursday morning

I slept soundly last night and woke up at 4:30 a.m. feeling reasonably refreshed.

The Clarion Inn has a passable free breakfast built around scrambled eggs and hash browns.

The breakfast room was full of old (older than me) and infirm people, which struck me as odd until I heard the PA system announcing a shuttle bus to the Mayo Clinic. Oh, yeah. Rochester. Mayo’s.

I’m taking my time about packing and loading, since I want to avoid as much of the Minneapolis-St. Paul morning rush hour traffic as possible.

It’s only a 90-minute-or-so ride, so it should be a pleasant morning jaunt.

Arkansas to Minnesota in 12 hours

I had hoped to make it all the way to the BMW MOA rally in St. Paul today, but a half-hour construction delay late in the day killed my enthusiasm and I bagged it at Rochester, Minn.

Still, 659.4 miles is the longest day I’ve done in a few years and that leaves me with only 87 miles to ride tomorrow morning to get to the rally.

Wayne Garrison has our club campsite set up and texted me the GPS coordinates while I wolfed down a BLT and a very tall beer in the Clarion Inn lounge a few minutes ago.

Now I think I’m going to watch a little TV and crash early, since I got up at 4:45 a.m.. today.

Another use for the iPhone

I keep a log of every fuel stop, service, and tire change for my bikes, using a program called For Two Wheels Only.

Normally, I make a notation on the gas station receipt as to the odometer reading, then transcribe the mileage, location, volume of gas and amount paid into the software.

But there is the occasional poorly run station that doesn’t properly maintain their pumps and instead of a receipt I get a flashing message saying “clerk has receipt.”

I’m not about to hike into the station to get my receipt. That’s why I only buy gas where I can pay at the pump. So in those cases, I use my iPhone camera to snap a picture of the dollars and gallons on the pump and the odometer on the bike.

That’s what happened this morning when I topped off the tank on my ‘03 BMW K1200GT in anticipation of an early start tomorrow morning, bound for the BMW MOA rally in St. Paul, Minn. Now, with tire pressures adjusted and oil level checked, all I have to do is load the bike and I’ll be ready to roll at or a little before sunrise.

I’d like to do the whole thing in one day – I’ve done 800-mile days before, but it’s been a few years and the weather is uncertain. The sun doesn’t set in St. Paul until 8:48 p.m., so I’m not likely to run out of daylight before I run out of stamina. With more than 300,000 BMW miles in my rear view mirrors, I don’t have much left to prove to myself or anyone else, and I’ll know when it’s time to get a motel.

Not-so-wildlife

I pulled the SD memory card from my new Moultrie trail cam just now to see what kind of wildlife it photographed since I last checked it Saturday morning.

Something triggered it at 9:52 a.m. yesterday but a thorough examination of the photo failed to show what set it off.

I had dumped a bunch of birdseed in front of the camera for bait, but I may have aimed it too high to catch squirrels or other critters feeding.

So this self-portrait is all I have to show so far.

Operator error

Riding home from the post office this morning, I found I couldn’t get the cruise control to work on my 2003 BMW K1200GT.

Oh, shit, I thought. I don’t need this kind of problem on the eve of a 750-mile ride to the BMW MOA rally in St. Paul, Minn.

This is the third or fourth time the cruise control has crapped out since I bought the bike in early 2003. It always came back on its own after I stopped, shut off the engine and restarted it. So I rode on home and parked in the garage in the hope that all would be well when I rode again.

Fast forward to 1:20 p.m. when I set out for a free dark roast coffee at Starbucks, cashing in an empty coffee bag. I turned south on U.S. 49, got up to 60mph and flipped the SET button on the cruise control (it’s that gray thing on top of the left control cluster that looks kinda like a little tongue sticking out of a larger gray plastic piece). The gold cruise control indicator light stayed dark and cruise control failed to engage.

Crap!

I switched the cruise control off and on and off and on to no avail. It occurred to me that the problem might be a blown fuse, but the little red LED next to the gray tongue was glowing, signifying cruise was definitely getting electricity. WTF?

Then I noticed that the toe of my right boot was resting on the rear brake pedal. Application of the front or rear brake cancels cruise control.

I scooted my foot a couple of inches off of the pedal, thumbed the SET/RES tongue and… sonofabitch! The cruise control engaged and the gold indicator light came on.

Feeling like an imbecile, it dawned on me that the previous cruise control “failures” were also due to the same kind of operator error.

So now I don’t have to worry about a malfunctioning cruise control. But there is the matter of having to stab the starter button repeatedly to fire a cold engine. It took 7 pushes to start the bike this morning. The good news is that it eventually starts and almost always starts on the first push whenever I try it later in the day.

And there’s also the matter of managing our cash flow to accommodate the cost of the upcoming trip. I calculate it will cost about $140 for gas. I can eat cheaply – maybe cheaper than I could at home. The rally fee is already paid, so the only remaining expense is maybe $120 or so for lodging to and from the rally. It’s a 13-hour ride, so it’s theoretically possible for me to leave at dawn coming and going and ride the whole distance in daylight. That assumes no delays from traffic, fatigue or weather.

We shall see.

BTW, the Starbucks baristas and their noisy grab-ass behavior is very annoying this afternoon. The only time they shut up is when a customer orders.

St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church–Lebanon, Ind.

Click on the image to see it full size.

Another look at Automatic

Automatic is a module that plugs into a car’s data port and monitors driving behaviors and routes and sends the information to your smartphone.

I got mine from the Amazon.com Vine Program. You can get yours for $99.95 at automatic.com.

It logs each trip separately and gives you week-by-week tallies. I use it all the time in my 2004 Lexus RX330, including July 7-12 when we drove to Indiana to spend time with Maria’s family.

We drove to the rural Amboy home of Maria’s brother Kerstan on July 8 and the map above shows our route from his house back to her parents’ house in Thorntown.

The usual route involves taking two-lane Ind. 47 east from Thorntown to four-lane U.S. 31, then north to Kokomo where it’s two-lane state and county roads to Kerstan’s farm.

Wanting to minimize nighttime driving on two-lane roads, I chose a somewhat longer route back to Thorntown. I gassed at the intersection of Ind. 18 and U.S. 31 at Bunker Hill, then drove north to Peru where I picked up the new four-lane Ind. 24 southwest to Logansport where it connects with the even newer four-lane Ind. 25 continuing southwest to I-65 at Lafayette. From there it was a quick hop over to four-lane U.S. 52 down to Thorntown.

I was pleased to see the Lexus averaged 29 miles per gallon on this drive, compared with the EPA estimate for the RX330 of 26 mpg.

The Automatic device is touted as a fuel economy coach because it scolds you if you brake or accelerate hard or drive over 70 mph. I ignore the device’s preference for a 70 mph speed limit because it’s not practical for Interstate driving.

No Chinese chicken for my dogs!

Dog food and dog treats from China have earned a bad reputation in recent years, sickening and killing hundreds of dogs.

Purina’s Waggin’ Train is among the brands cited and Purina claims to have tightened its quality controls on chicken jerky tenders from Chinese sources.

Even so, I was shocked to find the product in the pet food aisle of Sam’s Club today. No matter what their claims, I will never feed my dogs any pet product that comes from China.

Even if it is 100% real, whatever the hell that means.

The trump card was dealt 69 years ago yesterday

I subscribe to a few World War II-related Facebook groups and every now and then someone posits a scenario they think could have altered the outcome of the war in Europe and let the Germans win.

Sometimes it’s the failure of the D-Day invasion, or a German victory in the Battle of the Bulge or some other pivotal battle. More frequently it involves the earlier appearance of the Me 262 jet fighter in greater numbers, countering the Allied air offensive.

None of these would have prevented an Allied victory.

Want to know why?

It involves something that happened 69 years ago yesterday. The detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert.

Depending on who you believe, the Germans failed to appreciate the potential of an atom bomb and devoted insufficient resources to it or – more improbably, reached the point of a couple of nuclear tests but were far behind us in developing an operational nuclear weapon.

Either way, as of July 16, 1945 the United States held the trump card that could defeat any enemy on earth almost instantly.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were designated as potential atomic bomb targets in advance, but I have never read of any such designation for German cities. Maybe that’s because British Bomber Command did such a thorough job of flattening German cities that by May, 1945, they were out of significant targets.

But my point is that, given the Manhattan Project and the absence of Axis nuclear weapons, Allied victory was assured no matter what the Germans and Japanese did.

New Trail Cam!

I bought a Bushnell trail cam in the spring of 2011 and mounted it on a tree in our side yard.

It worked OK, but I thought the functions were needlessly complex and the on-off switch was wonky. So wonky that it only lasted a few months before I sent the camera back to Bushnell for a replacement.

The replacement only lasted a year or so too before its on-off switch quit working.

So I put this Moultrie MCG-12589 5 megapixel trail cam into my Amazon.com wish list.

And, thanks to my son Steve’s generosity, it showed up on my doorstep yesterday as a birthday gift.

Thanks, Steve!

You can’t hit a home run every time at bat

“Weird Al” Yankovic is releasing eight new videos in eight days.

Yesterday’s release was the second in the series of videos from his new album Mandatory Fun and it was one of the funniest, smartest WAV videos ever.

I hung around the house this morning to see today’s release and it turns out I needn’t have bothered. “Foil” is vaguely amusing, but just vaguely.

So now I’m sipping coffee at Panera waiting to take Maria to a late lunch at 1 p.m. (Her office breaks for lunch from 1-2 p.m.)

The weather here is deliciously cool for mid-July. For the second day in a row we have temperatures in the 70s and sunny skies, thanks to a high pressure cell loaded with cool Canadian air.

Riding in to town, I met a guy on a BMW R1100RS loaded for touring and heading north, almost certainly bound for next week’s BMW Motorcycle Owners of America national rally in St. Paul, Minn. I can only hope the weather will be this nice when I leave for the rally next week.

Red Gold!

We love Red Gold tomato products because they are delicious and they’re from Indiana.

Here’s a link to their online merchandise: http://redgold.mpisecureordering.com/index.php?page=shop.browse&category_id=105&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=53

Absolutely hilarious and long overdue

Watch it full-screen and turn up the volume.

That’s loyalty

Longtime Indianapolis BMW Club friend Martin Radtke recently put out an email request for a copy of the original club logo, not mentioning why he wanted it.

Having edited the club newsletter for ten years, I still have lots of club-related graphics in my archives, so I sent him a high-res image of the emblem that represented our club for many years until BMW Motorrad decided to dictate logo style to BMW motorcycle clubs.

This is what Martin did with it. Martin was an early member of the club and has many fond memories of the men who founded it back in the 1960s.

I hope he and Darlyne don’t need this monument for a long, long time.

The ranks are thinning…

I just got word that a third member of my high school graduating class has died, all within less than a month:

Francis Edward (Frank) Merson died July 3. He was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana to Nola Litton Merson and James Edward Merson. He graduated from high school in Delphi, Indiana and attended Purdue University, where he met his wife, Mary Merson. They had two daughters, Anne Merson Stevens and Julie Merson Martinez. Retiring from the US Air Force as a MSGT after 20 years of service, he worked as a military contractor, then a handyman. He was his mother's caretaker and loved her very much. Another love was animals and he regularly rescued them. One of his greatest joys in life were his furry friends. The family wishes to thank Hospice of San Angelo for all of their help and loving care. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Concho Valley PAWS or Hospice of San Angelo, Texas. He is survived by his mother, Nola Merson; wife Mary Merson; Anne and Walter Stevens; Julie and Aramis Martinez; seven grandsons; one great-granddaughter; brother John Merson of San Antonio; and sister Linda Perkins of Olympia, Washington. No services are planned. Arrangements are by Johnson's Funeral Home.

Robert T. Moore of Delphi passed away on Sat., July 12, 2014 at IU Health Arnett in Lafayette. Robert was born on Dec. 19, 1944 in Lafayette to the late Morris T. and Roberta H. (Bowman) Moore. He was a 1963 graduate of Delphi High School.
Mr. Moore was a retired sheet metal fabricator.
He married Shirley K. Shaw on Aug. 11, 2001 in Delphi and she survives.
He enjoyed hunting mushrooms, camping and loved the outdoors.
He is survived by his wife and step-children: Michael Hines of Delphi and Ginni Ramsey (Marcus) of Noblesville; 5 grandchildren; sisters: Julie McMahan (Nigel) and Judy Glover (David) both of Texas. He was preceded by his parents and brother, Jim Moore.
Visitation will be from 1:00 p.m. until the 3:00 p.m. service on Thursday, July 17, 2014 at Davidson Funeral Home in Delphi. Pastor Jeff Kibler will officiate. Burial will be in I.O.O.F. Memorial Gardens in Pittsburg, Indiana.

Richard L. Bell of Colorado Springs, Colo., passed away on Tuesday, June 17, 2014. He graduated from Delphi High School in 1963. A U.S. Army veteran, Richard owned a glass company in Colorado Springs. He was passionate about restoring old automobiles, especially Hudsons.

Frank and Bob were pals in high school Dick was class president in our freshman year.