Friday stuff

I rode down to the St. Bernards Health & Wellness Center this morning for a stroll on the treadmill.

I chose the K1200GT. I’m always particular about where I park the GT because it’s loaded with valuable stuff like my Garmin Zumo 550 GPS and its SiriusXM satellite radio receiver, along with my tank bag full of useful touring items.

I picked a space next to an extended cab pickup truck that had a friendly looking old (gray muzzle) black Labrador retriever in the back seat, staring out the window.

He was very friendly and let me pet him, so I doubt if he would do much to stop someone from stealing my stuff, but I liked the idea of him watching over it anyway.

You may recall that I went to the main offices of Centennial Bank on Monday to see about getting a new debit card. I was told that, since Maria’s and my card numbers had been compromised in a hack of The Home Depot’s customer database, new cards were mailed to us on Oct. 15.

As of this morning’s mail, they still have not arrived.

Also, the vexing vibration in the Subaru’s steering is still there.

But I was in no mood to remonstrate with the bank and Gateway Tire today, so I’ll let it rest over the weekend and take these matters up on Monday.

In the meantime, the new season of Grimm starts at 8 o’clock tonight on NBC.

Robert Capa "In Love and War" - The greatest photojournalist of the 20th century

Citizenship 101

I’m not ordinarily an advocate of early voting because there could be late developments in election campaigns that would affect a voter’s decision. If you vote early and your candidate is revealed to be a dirtbag, you have no recourse.

That said, I’m convinced that there is nothing that could make me want to vote for nearly any of the Democrats on the Arkansas ballot, so I went with Maria to the courthouse annex and cast my ballot to retire Sen. Mark Pryor, retain Congressman Rick Crawford, and put Republicans in the governor and lieutenant governor’s offices.

While I was in line waiting to vote, I got a call from one of our tenants reporting that their sewer line is backing up. Again. They serve people sentenced to community service time and I suspect one of their clients is flushing inappropriate stuff down their toilet.

I called our fix-it guy and he pledged to have someone there by 3 p.m.

The joys of being a landlord. Happily, they pay their rent on time and are good tenants.

Shhhhhhh!

It’s been more than 20 years since I first saw a “Loud Pipes Save Lives” sticker on a helmet at Daytona Beach Bike Week. I marveled at the idiocy of that statement, almost as much as I am baffled by the stupidity of people who argue that motorcycle helmets cause accidents and injuries.

The sound of really loud pipes triggers the “fight” part of my “fight or flight” response. Loud exhaust creates a negative impression about motorcyclists in the minds of non-riders and makes us all look like inconsiderate Neanderthals.

Edgar G. Ulmer - King of the B Movie Directors

Here's the entire 1:10 movie for your viewing pleasure.

Good stuff

This stuff is dangerously smooth and tasty.

I picked up a bottle while we were at Mr. T’s Riverside yesterday afternoon looking for deals on inexpensive wine.

Very smooth and painless. Oh, did I mention it’s smooth?

Fun

How can you not like a raccoon with a weapon?

We finally got around to seeing Guardians of the Galaxy on Saturday night and ended up liking it more than we expected.

The 1970s soundtrack and the talking raccoon (Rocket) and tree (Groot) help take this space adventure to an unexpected level of engagement and entertainment.

I haven’t bought a movie on DVD or BluRay for a year or two, but I can see owning a copy of this one.

There is a hint or a sequel at the end. We’ll be waiting.

Compromised!

My bank debit card is worn out. It developed a crack that makes if difficult to use with card readers and, besides, it was issued by Liberty Bank before it became Centennial Bank.

So I dropped by the bank this morning to get a new card, preferably with the same number since it’s on record with a few businesses where I have an online account.

But it turns out that my card number, as well as Maria’s, is on a list of compromised debit card numbers from a recent hack of The Home Depot’s database.

The young man at the bank said new cards were mailed to us on Oct. 15 and should appear in our mailbox today or tomorrow.

And since the numbers were compromised, we have new debit card numbers, which will necessitate some extra work online to get accounts updated.

Thanks for being negligent, Home Depot.

Cool packaging

I don’t care if it is made in France, I almost bought it just for the reusable aluminum flask.

Selling fabric on Ebay

Maria has decided to part with some of her high-end quilting fabric, so we have 16 patterns in varying quantities listed on Ebay.

Proceeds will, of course, be used to buy more fabric.

Someone is conspicuously absent

The Subaru report

Our 2002 Subaru Forester developed a worrisome noise in the left front wheel last spring which I supposed was a disintegrating CV (constant velocity) joint.

It came at a time when major automotive surgery wasn’t in our budget, so we parked the Subaru and Maria took over the Lexus while I celebrated late spring, summer and early fall on BMW motorcycles.

Good riding weather won’t last forever, so I decided on Thursday it was time to get the Subaru back in shape for winter.

I drove down to Gateway Tire where it was discovered that the left front wheel hub and bearings were shot. Also, the fuel line was leaking. If we continued to drive the car as it was it was just a matter of time before the wheel fell off or it caught on fire.

So I left the car at Gateway overnight and they made the repairs, plus an oil change and lube in time for me to pick it up after lunch yesterday.

I was a happy camper until I noticed a rather violent vibration in the steering wheel when I got up to 60 mph on the way home.

I took the car back this morning and it was determined that the right side tires were out of round, probably as a consequence of sitting in the same spot for more than three months. We knew the car needed new tires more than a year ago, so I green-lighted a set of tires at $100 a pop.

And the car was filthy, so I treated it to a car wash before I left town.

New rubber notwithstanding, the vibration reappeared on the drive home. I phoned Gateway as I turned onto our road and arranged to bring it back first thing Monday morning.

My nomination for the stupidest product of 2014

“The KOHLER touchless toilet is the no-touch flush for your home. Just hold your hand over the tank sensor to activate the flush. No handle to touch means fewer germs to pick up or leave behind.”

The flush handle is probably the cleanest thing you’ll touch on a toilet. What about (if you’re a guy who is socially responsible) using your bare hand to raise and lower the seat? Where’s the power assist for that process?

And, of course, there’s the potentially problematic business with the toilet paper.

This is on a par with 2010’s moronic Lysol No-Touch Hand Soap System that dispensed a squirt of soap when you waved your hand under the spout.

Why does it matter if there are germs on the conventional pump, since they’re about to be washed off of your hands anyway? And people who wash/sanitize their hands frequently probably have fewer bacteria on their hands to begin with, making the conventional pump marginally cleaner than most surfaces you touch during the day – like money or door handles.

No wonder people in the Third World think we’re insane when it comes to germs.

Snickers

I rarely laugh out loud at cartoons, but this one had me howling when I found it on Facebook this morning.

Success

We have double sinks in our master bathroom. Each sink has a 2 handle Delta faucet and my faucet has a very slow drip.

It’s so slow as to be practically unnoticeable, by me at least.

But Maria claims it’s been going on for months and it’s become a source of great irritation for her.

I watched a how-to video on YouTube and tried tightening a couple of nuts, but the drip continued.

Mind you, this is a drip so slow that left to my own devices, I would be happy to ignore it for years. Unfortunately, I can’t ignore my wife for years.

So I watched another how-to video on YouTube this morning, disassembled the hot and cold water controls, extracted the cartridges and their spring valves, put one set into a Zip Lock sandwich bag, and rode the K75S down to a plumbing supply shop in Jonesboro.

The counterman opined that I didn’t need to replace the entire cartridge assembly – just the springs and rubber gaskets. The cost? A mere $3.97, tax included.

I came home, reassembled the faucet assembly with the new parts and voila! No drip. Now, five hours later, the sink stopper where the drip used to land is bone dry.

And peace has been restored.

BMW Motorcycle Rally Pin of the Day

Why? Because I’ve blogged all of the other motorcycle or trip-related pins in my collection at one time or another, so why stop now?

This is an accumulation of pins that started in 1986 at the BMW MOA Rally at Laguna Seca Raceway near Monterey, Calif. – 28 years in the making.

It includes pins from the 22 BMW MOA rallies I’ve attended plus 10 more other BMW MOA rally pins that I picked up over the years. There are 5 Return to Shilo rally pins, seven Falling Leaf Rally pins, and seven from the Iowa Rally.

Also represented are pins from Wilkerson Pass in Colorado, the Little Big Horn Battlefield, the Experimental Aircraft Association Museum in Oshkosh, Wisc., Indianapolis MotoGP (3), Route 66, Hoosier Beemers Rally (3), Mt. Evans, Colo., the AMA Life Member pin, Patriot Guard Riders, three of the four Daytona Beach Bike Weeks I’ve attended, the Nebraska Huskerally, the European Riders Rally in Burkesville, Ky., the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden, Colo., and on and on…

In the meantime, the 10-year-old Galyan’s Special Edition Eureka tent that I packed wet yesterday morning is draped over the lawn tractor and generator in the garage trying to dry out even though the humidity is about 100 percent, due to a passing line of storms.

Weather be damned, I made it to the Falling Leaf Rally

Theresia Shearer, Jonathan Fishburn, Archey Shearer and I passed a pleasant hour or so Saturday night playing euchre in the Lion’s Den at the 39th annual Falling Leaf Rally.
We, plus Lina Rafai, represented the Indianapolis BMW Club at the rally – the most sparsely attended Falling Leaf of the seven I’ve attended since 1993.
I arrived about 10:30 a.m. on Saturday and was stunned to see the campground mostly empty. I was the 260th person to register and the final attendance count was only 299. The host BMW club, the Gateway Riders, promised rally pins to the first 600 registrants, which means they had 301 pins left over.
I was told they needed 300 registrants, at $22 a head, to break even, so the cold rainy weather dealt their budget a severe blow.
I was in rain off and on from Poplar Bluff to Farmington with temperatures in the low 50s, forcing me to put the liners into my gloves and switch on the handgrip and seat heat.
The sun was out by the time I hit Potosi, but as luck would have it, I arrived during the parade for an invitational high school marching band competition, which forced a detour over back streets before I could get to the rally on the west side of town.
I set up my tent and $5.99 folding chair and kept an eye out for Indy folks until I noticed Theresia and Archey.
The low turnout meant improved odds for winning door prizes, but the five of us came up empty-handed anyway.
Saturday night dinner was chicken and “dumblings” for $7.
Shortly after I arrived, I was dismayed to see my iPhone display a “No Service” notification where the cell signal strength indicator normally is. I managed to get a Facebook message to Maria, advising her that I had no cell signal, using the free Wifi at McDonald’s.
I supposed that the problem was with Sprint until Jonathan Fishburn showed me that his Android Sprint phone was working fine. I fiddled with the iPhone settings, shutting the phone off, and every other trick I could think of but never got a Sprint signal at the rally even though I had good cell reception there on previous years.
I left for home about 9:20 a.m. today – abandoning my cheap chair because it’s a hassle to pack - and stopped at the Frederickstown, Mo. McDonald’s for a parfait and coffee. Once again, I got a “No Service” indication, but was able to get a message out on Wifi on Facebook.
I figured my phone had developed some glitch that would require wiping it clean and reinstalling all of my stuff.
I was in light rain and drizzle most of the way from Frederickstown to the Arkansas line where it began to rain in earnest, making for an unpleasant final hour on the road.
When I got home, I was surprised to see my phone had regained a Sprint signal and seemed to be back to normal.
I felt almost guilty that I only had a three-hour ride to and from the rally, compared with more than five hours for my Indianapolis friends.
Almost.

Going for it

It’s a few minutes before sunrise and a light rain is falling.

I’m packed and ready to head out for the Falling Leaf Rally, but not in the dark in the rain.

The weather radar suggests I may have dry pavement from north of Paragould all the way to Potosi if a second band of showers doesn’t catch me somewhere in southern Missouri.

I must be off.

No rally today

I gassed the Lexus at Sam’s Club this morning with $2.95/gallon regular – the best price in town.

I drove Maria to work so I could have the use of the car to run errands on a rainy day, which brings me to the matter of riding to the Falling Leaf Rally in Potosi, Mo.

There is a swath of rain from Muncie, Ind. all the way to Salida, Colo. and I have no interest in spending the entire day – including trying to pitch a tent and keep my stuff dry – in a downpour.

Tomorrow, however, may be a different story. I’m not ruling out a Saturday ride to Potosi if the weather system breaks up.

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

Down to $2.89 by 5 p.m.

The roof is fixed

The roofers showed up about 2:30 p.m. today and repaired the minor storm damage to shingles over the bathroom and bedroom closet.

They got a little confused with the directions to our house and repaired a similar problem on a neighbor’s house before their boss got them to our place.

Lucky day for our neighbor.

A similar thing happened about a year ago when exterminators mistakenly treated the yard of another neighbor thinking they were doing our yard.

The guy on the roof also did a walkaround and made sure there were no other spots that needed attention.

Good eye, Morgan

Morgan has an uncanny ability to notice defects like, for instance, this shingle that has come loose on our garage roof.

She apparently glanced up and saw it as she was getting into her car to go to work this morning. She called me and I’ll probably call our fixit guy today.

Crap

I’m watching my weekend rally plans slip away as the forecast for Potosi, Mo. continues to deteriorate.

I remain hopeful, but realistic.

Watching the forecast…

My weekend hangs in the balance.

The Weather Channel forecast is for a 60 percent chance of rain at home for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

But the forecast for Potosi, Mo., site of the 39th annual Falling Leaf Rally, calls for a 60 percent chance of rain Friday, diminishing to 20 percent Saturday and Sunday.

I can put up with a rainy ride Friday. I just hope my friends from Indianapolis are game. I let a similar forecast keep me home two years ago and the only rain that fell on the rally was at night.

Will photograph for pork barbecue

I went to work with Maria today to help with the ribbon cutting and open house at Malcolm Family Dentistry’s office in Osceola, Ark.

A large contingent from the Chamber of Commerce turned out and we had a spectacular pork barbecue lunch from the Hog Pen BBQ.

Nancy Malcolm (in scrubs in the center) was, of course, the hostess and I’m pretty sure she had a good time.

Bite me!

Maria baked a batch of tooth cookies for tomorrow’s open house at a dental office in Osceola, Ark., where her dentist employer practices two days a week.

I think she iced them with tooth serum. Heh, heh.

Social irresponsibility in the Sam’s Club parking lot

The drivers of these two motor homes – one dragging an SUV and the other pulling a trailer – apparently thought it was ok to block one of the major parking lot lanes at Sam’s Club this morning.

For the life of me, I cannot comprehend the psychology behind this exercise in wretched excess in travel, especially when I can go three weeks living out of a set of motorcycle saddlebags and a tank bag. And I can stay in deluxe hotels for a year and still spend less than these people do in a month on the road.

The idea of spending close to $400k (the MSRP for a new Dutch Star like the one in the foreground) for a motor home, then having to spend another $450-$500 for every fill-up and endure the hassle of navigating small parking lots while pulling another vehicle strikes me a somewhere between stupid and insane.

Friday morning stuff

Sitting at the kitchen table with my morning mocha cappuccino, something hopping across the kitchen floor caught my eye.

Upon closer inspection, I discovered a little green tree frog that had somehow found its way into the house.

I was feeling compassionate, so I swept him into a dust pan and removed him to the driveway where I left him to find a tree. We hear tree frogs all the time, but this is my first up-close encounter with one. I thought he was a toad at first, then noticed his brilliant green color and somewhat un-toadlike physique.

The cold front and rain blew through about 11 p.m. yesterday and the weather this morning is bright and cool.

I’m having coffee at Panera, having just called in three prescription refills to the Sam’s Club Pharmacy where the pharmacist recognized my voice. This is, without question, the friendliest pharmacy in Arkansas. The attention I get there is so personal, I feel like I’m their only customer.

Rally thoughts

After several days of sunny, pleasant weather, we have a cold front and rain moving in from the west.
It rained a couple of times earlier today and the wind just picked up and filled the air with dead and dry oak and hickory leaves. The principal line of storms is in northwest Arkansas and will probably reach us sometime around midnight.
After the rain blows through, we’re looking forward to a spell of cool autumnal weather. It will be perfect for the 40th annual rally of the BMW Riders Association of the Mid-South in western Tennessee this weekend. If I thought any of my friends was going, I’d plan on it, but I think everyone is saving their time and energy for the Falling Leaf Rally the following weekend in Potosi, Mo.
This will be my seventh Falling Leaf Rally, the first being in 1992 when I awoke on Saturday morning to find thick frost on the seat of my BMW K100RS.
The 10-day forecast for Potosi calls for highs in the low to mid-70s and lows around 50, with only a 20 percent chance of rain – damn near perfect weather to ride and hang out with my Indianapolis BMW Club friends who usually show up in large numbers.
This will only be my second – and probably final – rally for 2014, the first being the BMW MOA Rally in St. Paul, Minn. in July. I had hoped to make the European Riders Rally in Burkesville, Ky. and the BMW RA Rally in Birmingham in the spring, but weather and other considerations kept me at home.

Guaranteed delivery?

We’ve had a couple of electric skillets since we moved here and each lasted a couple of years before they failed.

I ordered this Presto 16” electric skillet from Amazon.com on Monday with delivery promised by 8 p.m. today.

As of 11:30 a.m., Amazon still reports it as preparing to be shipped, but continues to list it as “guaranteed delivery by 8 p.m. Oct. 1.”

It will be interesting to see how they meet that commitment and what happens if they don’t.

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

It showed up a day later.

Seven years ago today

We first laid eyes on our Arkansas home seven years ago yesterday and our offer to purchase was accepted the next day, Sept. 30, 2007.

The house was two years old when we took possession, so everything in it was relatively new. Compared with our 1903 house in Indiana where something always needed fixing, this house has been maintenance free. About the only thing I’ve had to do is replace light bulbs and furnace filters and replace the spring on the garage door opener.

Lawn mowing was the biggest chore. I really hated mowing our 1.23 acre lot with a walk-behind mower, especially after I learned I am much more likely to encounter snakes here than in Indiana. Consequently, we bought a John Deere LA125 riding mower the following May and now I mow and murder snakes with wild abandon.

I miss friends and family in Indiana, but I truly love our home here in the woods. We have a better rapport with our neighbors here than we did in Indiana and really enjoy visiting with them.

There is an abundance of wildlife, especially in the woods that flank our house on the west. We hear or see deer, rabbits, coyotes, raccoons, armadillos, squirrels, owls, turkeys, and a huge assortment of smaller birds that come to our back yard bird feeder.

The fenced portion of the back yard has proven perfect for our dogs. Ruthie and Pete, who came with us from Indiana, have moved on to the Rainbow Bridge where they await us. They’ve been replaced by Jack and Dora who are also a source of endless entertainment and joy.

The financial opportunity that brought us to Arkansas turned out to be a cruel joke, but we’re survivors and have faith in the future.

Arkansas autumn is long and winter is mercifully short and usually mild and I have no desire to ever endure another Indiana winter.

I never would have picked this place to live these years of my life, but now that we’re here, I like it.

Next to godliness

It must be the weather or the approaching Falling Leaf Rally or maybe just craziness, but I washed my 2003 K1299GT this afternoon.

This is only the second time I’ve washed it in the seven years we’ve lived in Arkansas, the first time being June 10, 2013.

To be truthful, it was just a light wash and hardly a detail job. I was never one for spending a lot of time cleaning motorcycle wheels, so the best they can expect is a good rinse.

And, of course, it will all be undone in the first .2 miles on our gravel subdivision road which we were told would be paved once the last lot in our subdivision was sold. But then the developer opened up a second section where another four homes have been built and more lots remain unsold, so it doesn’t look like we’ll see pavement for another few years.

Now I can go back to feeling guilty about not washing the 1994 K75S. Yet.

Bless you, Bergeron’s

You may think otherwise – in which case you’re wrong – but I feel a whole lot safer in a restaurant or business that encourages customers to carry their guns.

I get a little twitchy when I dine at Memphis restaurants where guns are banned, i.e., the patrons are at the mercy of bad guys who ignore the “No Guns” signs.

That also includes:

• Starbucks
• Chipotle
• Panera
• Target
• Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse
• Buffalo Wild Wings
• Ruby Tuesday
• Hooters
• Regal Cinemas

There are many more. These are just the ones that come to mind.

An armed society is a polite society.

Maria’s contribution

David Head auctioned the quilt Maria made and donated to the Pleasant Grove United Methodist Church's 8th annual ice cream social and auction in Jonesboro last evening.

The quilt earned $210 for the church's coffers. David's wife Cheryl, whose mother died earlier this year and left a huge stash of fabric, passed much of it on to Maria and Maria used it to create the quilt.

The Heads own a cattle ranch on the other side of the woods from our house and are great neighbors. Visit their website at http://nineoaksbeef.com/index.html

A standout performance this morning from Clay

Maria and I drove up to Greene County Tech’s campus this morning to photograph our neighbor boy Clay Holland’s football game.

Clay is an outstanding member of his team’s defensive line and repeatedly sliced through the opposition’s line like a hot knife through butter.

His team lost, but Clay was very impressive, making some great tackles.

The oldest family photo I have–it’s a tintype

This is a tintype most likely made in the 1860s or 1870s. (That was the heyday of tintypes.)

I believe one of the couples are my great-grandparents John G. Dietz (1839-1918) and Elizabeth Ray Dietz (1844-1923). They were married Feb. 11, 1871.

I'm reasonably sure it's the couple on the right. John G. and Elizabeth are buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, Carroll County, Ind. If I had to bet, I'd say this tintype was probably made in a studio in Logansport.

I have their kitchen table in my Arkansas kitchen.

Check out the gorgeous quilt Maria made for our neighbors’ church raffle!

http://www.kait8.com/clip/10624019/midday-thursday-ice-cream-social

Cannonball bikes stolen, recovered

Five antique Harley-Davidsons, four of which completed the 3,000+ mile Pre-1937 Cannonball Endurance Run, were stolen yesterday morning along with a pickup truck and trailer from a Tacoma hotel parking lot.

The trailer and bikes – minus spare engines and some parts – were recovered today at the Port of Tacoma where they were apparently about to be shipped overseas. The truck turned up at a different location.

I am reminded of the time in the 1990s when I spent an uneasy night in a Tacoma Motel 6. When I was loading my bike the next morning an Air Force officer loading her car in the adjacent parking spot, said, “I’m surprised your bike is still here this morning.” The officer was in Tacoma visiting her husband who was stationed nearby. She said there was a lot of gang activity in the area and vehicle thefts were commonplace.

I guess it helps that BMWs are rarely targeted for theft because dirtbags see more profit in Japanese sportbikes and Harleys.

I consider this one more reason to give Tacoma a wide berth when traveling in the Pacific Northwest.

Cinnamon and Honey? Seems to work.

I noticed a Facebook posting the other day about the efficacy of cinnamon and honey for a host of ailments, including indigestion. (http://p2t2solutions.com/cinnamon-honey-18-home-remedies-for-better-health/)

So I checked the pantry and confirmed we have a large container of powdered cinnamon, then bought a 5 pound jar of Sue Bee Honey at Sam’s Club.

I’ve been mixing about a teaspoon of cinnamon and a tablespoon of honey in warm milk and drinking it first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

The first change I’ve noticed is that I no longer wake up in the middle of the night with indigestion which I blamed on diabetic gastro paresis (look it up). My stomach feels surprisingly settled and I’ve slept soundly the last few nights.

I was getting over a cold when I started the cinnamon and honey regimen and it went away quicker than expected.

This is all anecdotal, non-scientific stuff, I realize, but I’m going to continue consuming honey and cinnamon for the foreseeable future.

I took the oath and got on the plane 49 years ago today

Forty-nine years ago today, I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and flew to Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas.

We flew from Indianapolis to Shreveport, La., to Houston to San Antonio. (Changing planes in Houston, I ran into another Delphi boy – Ron Crumbo – who was already in the Air Force. Ron was married to my childhood friend Susan Kent for several years and became a pilot.) The last leg of the journey was in an old DC3 twin-prop job.

The photo is from one of those automated photo booths at the BX (Base Exchange).

I can still remember my serial number – an eight-digit number that was years before the military started using Social Security numbers as service member serial numbers.

I had a brilliant 41-day career in the 3703rd Basic Military Training Squadron before I was given a medical discharge for allergies.

During my time I was put in charge of the cleaning crew for the second floor latrine and shower area, did one night of KP (I hated the pots and pans detail) and pulled guard duty several times – in the barracks and outside in the squadron area.

I qualified as an expert with an M1 .30 carbine, earning a ribbon to prove it. The day we went through the obstacle course, the teargas building was out of order, so I missed out on that experience.

Besides teaching me the finer points of toilet cleaning, the Air Force turned me into a proficient shoe-polisher and bed-maker. I already knew how to march, thanks to four years in high school marching band, but it seemed like a real challenge to some of the guys. I learned not to carry stuff in my right hand while walking about, since one never knew when one would encounter an officer and be required to salute.

I had worked as a hand sander in the RCA television and stereo cabinet factor in Monticello, Ind., in the months before I enlisted. As a consequence, I had inadvertently sanded off my fingerprints. They brought me back multiple times for fingerprinting, but I don’t think they ever got a useable set.

I have always been good at orienting myself to the points of the compass, but I never could get and keep my bearings while at Lackland AFB.

I suppose that qualifies me as a Vietnam-era veteran, but that’s a claim I will never make out of deference to the guys who really served and fought.

I came home in splendid physical condition with the shortest haircut I’d had since I was a little kid.

Here I am on my first day back in my hometown of Delphi. Mom photographed me in the back yard with Snoopy, the family dog.

Columbian Park nostalgia

This is where I learned to swim – the public swimming pool in Lafayette, Ind.’s Columbian Park, right across the street from Home Hospital where I was born.

The pool was built in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration and was the place to swim for kids in Lafayette, West Lafayette, Delphi, and other surrounding communities in the 1950s and ‘60s.

I know it was a huge part of the growing-up experience of tens of thousands of kids because I posted a picture of a basket, like the ones we used to put our clothes into in the bathhouse, on a Lafayette nostalgia Facebook page a couple of days ago and it generated a frenzy of reminiscences.

At last count, it had received nearly 400 “likes” and more than 60 comments, which is exceptional.

When you put your clothes into the basket after changing into your swimsuit, you got a safety pin with a corresponding number to pin to your suit and use later to redeem your stuff.

I begged my parents to take me to the Lafayette pool every chance I got in the summers in the late 1950s and early ‘60s. I think it was the summer of my sophomore year in high school that the Carroll County Country Club in Delphi finally got a pool and my friends and I shifted our attention there.

There were similar round WPA pools in Kokomo and Lebanon. I don’t know when or why the Columbian Park pool went away, but I suspect it suffered the same fate as the one in Lebanon – cracks and leaks that were too expensive to repair.

A water park called Tropicanoe Cove has replaced the pool and judging from the comments on Facebook, it lacks the charm of the old WPA facility.

The fair is over

The 2014 Northeast Arkansas District Fair ended last night.

I had wanted to shoot some night photos this year, but the prospect of fighting miles-long traffic jams to get into the fairgrounds parking lot was just too much.

So this shot from the 2012 fair will have to do.

Not as bad as I thought

I shot 30 frames of grade school football this morning at Greene County Tech before I discovered my neighbor boy’s game wouldn’t start for another two hours.

I shot some of his games last fall with good results, but they’ve changed fields this year. The different sun position, the heat and the prospect of spending much more time shooting than I expected combined to dampen my enthusiasm. So I packed my gear and came home for breakfast and a mocha cappuccino.

I figured what I had shot was crap, but reviewing my images just now I found a couple I like.

I told his dad I’d come back on another day and do some serious photography.

In the meantime, I kinda like this image.

iOS 8: backup your data first!

I spent about 90 minutes upgrading my iPhone 5 to iOS 8 this morning and I have to thank Kim Komando for some very good advice.

She recommends doing a synch/backup to your computer before beginning the iOS 8 download and installation so all of your data is recoverable should something go amiss.

I did and it did. My iPhone crashed when it tried to install iOS 8 and directed me to do a restore, which wipes the slate clean and restores the phone to its factory defaults.

Happily, the restore process installed iOS 8 and reinstalled all of my personal content – contacts, music, videos, apps, the works. I don’t recall when I synched the photo before this morning, but that would have been the status which would have been installed had it not done a synch this morning.

Now, I’m exploring some of the new features, like time lapse videos in the camera, keyboard word suggestions, audio messages, etc. You can even summon Siri by saying, “Hey, Siri!” without pressing the Home button when your phone is connected to a power source, like a car charger.

72,000 miles. No big deal.

My 2003 BMW K1200GT recorded its 72,000th mile this afternoon as I rode in to Jonesboro to cash in an empty coffee bag for a cup of Starbucks coffee.

I’m a little embarrassed that it’s so few miles for 11 riding seasons. By the time my 1991 K100RS was this old, it had more than 159,000 miles on the odometer.

That said, my semi-obsessive record keeping tells me I’ve run about 1,800 gallons of gas – mostly 89 octane – through the GT at a cost of about $4,900 with an average fuel economy of 42 mpg.

It’s carried me to the Colorado Rocky Mountains several times and the Pacific Northwest and the California coast a couple of times.

The 1004 K75S that I bought for Maria in the fall of 2000 with 2,417 miles on the clock, now has accumulated another 14,394 miles – some of them Maria’s but mostly mine. It has consumed 328 gallons of gas since we got it, for a fuel economy of 42.4 mpg.

That’s enough stats for now. Time to ride.

Here’s something you don’t see every day

This was my collection of Third Reich flags and banner back around 1990, spread out over much of the back yard of our house at 5009 N. College Ave. in Indianapolis.

I have several more now, but don’t have a convenient place to array them for a similar photo.

That’s the problem with collecting unpopular, inflammatory things. You can’t display them, especially if they’re huge like the biggest one here – a State Service Flag that’s about 10 feet on the short side. If I were to run one up a flagpole, it would be sure to cause a stir.

I took it and some other German stuff to Austin’s high school English class several years ago. They were doing a unit on the Holocaust and the teacher asked if I could bring some things to show. A student volunteer and I got onto chairs to hold up the State Service Flag, which pretty much covered the front wall of the classroom, so the kids could see it in all its graphic savagery.

That was about the time the principal strolled down the hall and glanced in through the vertical glass panel in the door and was transfixed by the biggest swastika he’d ever seen.

I didn’t even know she was sick

Leslie Alig Collins was one of my best correspondents when I was chief of the Metro North Bureau of The Indianapolis News from the mid-1980s to the mid-‘90s.

Her copy was always exceptionally clean and usually needed little or no editing as she covered stories in her hometown of Zionsville and in the county seat of Lebanon, Ind.

She was a Facebook friend in recent years, but I never saw a clue that she was ill with cancer.

So it was like a slap in the face this morning when I got an email from Indianapolis News colleague Art Harris telling me she died Monday morning.

Art got the news from former Boone County Commissioner Wendy Brant and passed it on. Wendy wrote, “The cancer was throughout her body - kidney failure. She was a strong Christian and told me recently she was not afraid to die. The funeral is at Zionsville Fellowship this Friday.”

Godspeed, Leslie, until we meet again.

Around the fire pit

We were discussing what to do after dinner last evening when we noticed that our neighbor Shannon posted a photo of his fire pit ablaze in his back yard.

So we walked over to join the fun. It was Sophie and Shannon and their extended family, sitting around and torching marshmallows, hot dogs and bologna.

I got thirsty after about a half-hour and made a 10-minute (round trip) run to the county line liquor store for a 12-pack of Budweiser, which I shared liberally with our hosts and other guests.

It was cool – in the upper 50s – and pretty much mosquito-free and a good time was had by all.

Jack gets a checkup

I took Jack, aka Briarbrooks Gentleman Jack Flora, to the Animal Medical Center for a routine checkup and shots this morning.

Dr. Heather Curry, who we and our dogs love, pronounced him a healthy boy.