Cool stuff from a great friend

Revard BMW Motorcycles, short-lived as it was, was the best, friendliest BMW dealership I've had the great fortune to know in my 35 years of riding BMW motorcycles.

Bill Revard was a good friend and I was lucky to be able to help out with customer newsletters, photography and other odd contributions. It broke my heart when the Revards went out of business at the end of 2004. One of my last links with them was a pair of coffee mugs with the roundel and the shop name.

So it was like being sucker punched in the solar plexus the other night when Maria fumbled one of the cups and it smashed in the kitchen sink.

She knew how much it meant to me, so later that evening the contacted Bill's sister Josie to see if any more mugs could be had.

Fast forward to this morning when I picked up the mail at our post office and found a large Hewlett Packard computer carton waiting for me.

Inside was a cornucopia of neat stuff including Bill and Josie's personal coffee mugs, a brand new with tags Revard BMW denim shirt, a BMW Boxer Cup pilsner beer glass from the 2003 Daytona Bike Week, a portfolio of ready-to-frame BMW motorcycle prints, a copy of the Indianapolis Business Journal containing the story of the shop's opening in 2000, and a very cool BMW business meeting award in the form of a motorcycle brake rotor mounted on a plaque. But the most touching item was the dollar bill I gave Bill at the beginning of the shop's run as the first dollar earned. He said he's carried it in his wallet all these years.

I am moved.

Art's island

I just spent some time this afternoon going through about eight years of email correspondence with my friend Art Harris, who died earlier this month.

The last thing I got from Art was an item he forwarded - we were always forwarding pithy political and humorous stuff back and forth - about Harry Truman, that Art sent six days before he died.

There were lots of emails about former Indianapolis News colleagues, many of them obituaries, and updates on staff cuts at The Indianapolis Star as it spiraled down into the journalistic abyss.

But the one that struck me the most was a response to a birthday greeting when he turned 72 in 2008. He apparently got my email after he returned from vacation on his beloved Sand Island in Lake Superior.

He wrote, "God, I wish I could stay on that Island forever - such peace and quiet, stars so bright, and only the sounds of wind in the pines."

I like to think he's back on his island.

Grandchild in progress

Gender unknown.

Happy 106th birthday, Dad

My father, who died in November of 1997 at the age of 87, would have been 106 years old today.

He was a genuinely good man who was devoted to his family, his church, his community and his country.

I miss him every day.

One-handed, 20 yards

My best target from yesterday.

I'm beginning to feel confident and semi-competent with my Smith & Wesson M&P 9 Shield. This was at about 20 yards, one-handed. I shoot much better one-handed than with two thanks to coaching from Ken Campbell, chief operating officer at Gunsite.

Blazing away

We spent another Saturday morning at the Black Iron Shooting Range, blazing away at targets.

I continue to improve with my new Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm Shield. Maria bought an identical M&P yesterday at a local pawn shop for a very very good price and put several rounds through it this morning. Morgan gave it a try and decided the recoil from a 9mm isn't as severe as she had expected. We drove back to the pawn shop to let her buy a 9mm Shield, but got there minutes after they closed for the day.

Our range coach Greg also let Morgan try out a Thompson submachine gun - the semi-automatic version - and she proved to be very accurate with it.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig

I rolled into my driveway about 1:35 p.m. yesterday completing a 994.7-mile journey to Indiana and back to pay my respects to my friend Art Harris.

The church was packed for the funeral Wednesday afternoon, but there were pitifully few Indianapolis News alumni present. Kudos to Gerry Lafollette, David and Lyle Mannweiler, Jerry Lanosga, Shirley Roberts, Jane and Matt Stegemiller and Jenny Labalme for showing up. Shame on those who could have been there but didn't make the effort. I'm pretty sure Art would have turned up at their funerals if the circumstances were reversed.

The service was the Episcopalian version of a Catholic funeral mass and it was beautifully done.

I also had time Wednesday to hang out with Crawfordsville Journal Review friend Lauri Shillings. She took me to lunch at Piada Italian Street Food and thence on a tour of her Fat Atom workplace. Her life has taken a turn for the better and it makes Maria and me happy.

The drives up and back were relatively uneventful. I was on the road yesterday a half-hour before sunrise and made excellent time, pausing only for McDonald's at Danville, Ill. and Kennett, Mo. and fuel at Farina, Ill. I startled a couple of birds on I-57 just four miles east of I-55 and one of them hit my windshield. The windshield was none the worse for the encounter, but it was probably fatal or severely crippling for the bird. The Lexus performed beautifully and gave me about 27mpg. It is, without question, the best car I've every driven for road trips.

Maria's parents hosted me for the two nights I was in Indiana and I repaid their kindness with dinner at Stookey's Family Restaurant in Thorntown where we each had a monster breaded tenderloin sandwich. I try to have at least one breaded tenderloin whenever I return to Indiana, since it's an unknown delicacy here in Arkansas.

Jack and Dora by Dreamscope

It's a free app from the Apple App Store.

Blood sugar spike!

Jonesboro's first-ever Krispy Kreme Doughnuts opened at 6 a.m. yesterday.

We drove past the place a little before 9 a.m. and there was a line of cars a couple of blocks long waiting for the drive-through. After shopping at Sam's Club and Aldi, we slipped into the Ryan's parking lot next door and went inside where we stood in line for about 15 minutes before we could place an order.

I had coffee and Maria had chocolate milk and we got a dozen doughnuts - four chocolate, custard-filled cake for me and eight standard yeast for Maria. I had two of mine in the parking lot and the other two this morning and I could feel my Type 2 diabetic blood sugar spiking both times. I think I'm done with Krispy Kreme at least for the time being.

Considering a trip to Indiana for my friend Art Harris's funeral this week.

Godspeed, Welton Winans Harris II

I got an email this morning from Indianapolis News compadre Skip Hess alerting me that our former colleague Welton "Art" Harris died yesterday in Indianapolis of a heart attack.

Fellow News alumnus David Mannweiler confirmed the report adding that Art drove himself to a hospital and collapsed and could not be resuscitated.

Art came to The News a year or two after my February, 1967 hiring and covered municipal government for the paper until we were merged with The Star in 1995 and he transferred to the combined News and Star Metro North Bureau in Carmel. His desk was next to mine and he was a joy to work with.

After he retired from the newspaper, he was elected to a couple of terms on the Zionsville town board. My contribution to his campaign was the photo above of him in front of the log cabin he shared with his wife Betsy and his black Labrador retriever Jake. I always thought he got elected because people thought they were voting for the dog. Art had a succession of black Labs which he took duck hunting at a property he owned part interest in near Roselawn, Ind. He was also heir to property on Sand Island off the north shore of Wisconsin in Lake Superior. I know the National Park Service wants to own everything on the island and he may be the last owner before it reverts to the all-powerful federal government.

I still have a couple of books Art lent me before I moved to Arkansas eight years ago. I guess I can keep them.

Art's doctor warned him repeatedly that his Lucky Strike habit was going to kill him. Considering his fondness for tobacco and alcohol, my friend got a fair amount of mileage out of his lanky body.

His father came to Indianapolis to manage the bus and trolley line after a brief career as a professional football player with the Green Bay Packers. Art said his dad scored the first touchdown in Lambeau Field when it first opened in 1957.

Art had a hearing problem that stemmed from a high school summer job working inside metal tanks while they were being riveted together. It got progressively worse as he grew older and he finally yielded to pressure from family and friends to get hearing aids.

Like many newspaper folks, he was a history buff with a particular fascination for the last battle of Gen. George Armstrong Custer. I visited the Custer Battlefield on a motorcycle trip on July 9, 1999 and used my cell phone to call Art at the Metro North Bureau to describe the scene. He knew it well, having worked there on an amateur archaeological dig several years earlier.

I got my last email from him - a forwarded piece about Harry Truman - a week ago today.

The world feels a little stranger without Art Harris in it.

300 miles in the rain

My friend Charlie and I spent much of yesterday hauling a couple of bikes up to Grass Roots BMW Motorcycles in Cape Girardeau.

It's about a 300-mile round trip and most of it was done in rain of varying intensity.

I drove down to Charlie's place about 8 a.m. and helped him load his mid-1970s R75/6 onto his trailer, then we came back to my place where we loaded my 2003 K1200GT. Charlie's bike was going into the shop for a transmission problem and mine is going to sit at Grass Roots until they get to the bottom of my intermittent starter button failure. It is conceivable that we'll trailer them home, but it's also possible that they will come home separately - Charlie's bike probably on the trailer - but I hope to be able to ride mine home.

I got a call from my doctor's office yesterday saying, in effect, that I failed my blood test. My average blood glucose reading jumped from around 140 last time to 160 this week. I have been directed to test before breakfast and dinner daily for two weeks and report the results to the doc for a possible adjustment in my medication. I guess my fondness for Blue Bell cherry vanilla ice cream has consequences.

Blood tests and cardinals

I had a bowl of oatmeal at Panera for breakfast this morning, a consequence of showing up at the Clopton Clinic lab for a fasting blood sugar test and other blood work.

Morgan has gone to Indiana to visit her late grandfather's lady friend who is in hospice care. I think it's admirable that Morgan was willing to drive all the way from Arkansas to say goodbye to a woman who has, thus far, been ignored by her grandfather's family. It speaks volumes about her character.

In the meantime, I'm hunkered down for an all-day rain event that will likely result in flooding in low-lying areas. We live on high ground, so it's just another rainy day for us. In between the noises of thunder and deluge, I can hear the sweet spring song of cardinals. The northern cardinal is the official state bird of six states including my native Indiana. No other bird has been adopted by so many state legislatures. Interestingly, Missouri - home to the St. Louis Cardinals - has the Eastern bluebird for a state bird.

My earliest recollection of cardinal song in spring was the spring of 1953 when I heard a cardinal singing outside my second grade classroom. That was in the days when school buildings had windows that could be opened to let in fresh air and spring breezes. I loved the song then and I love it still and am glad there are cardinals in Arkansas.

M&P Sear Deactivation Lever

My "Aha!" moment for today.

I was beginning to think there was something seriously wrong with my ability to shoot my new Smith & Wesson M&P9 Shield.

Maria and I put in some range time yesterday afternoon and I finally had the epiphany I'd hoped for. It turns out that I was holding the gun too tightly. I tried relaxing my grip and focusing on controlling it mainly with my middle finger and, voila, the shots started falling where I wanted.

We went back this morning with Morgan. I let Maria shoot with my M&P and after three magazines she was convinced that's what she wants instead of her Ruger .380, even though the M&P has no rail for a laser. I took my 1911 Colt Combat Commander .45 and my WWII Walther PPK chambered in 7.65mm. I also spent more time with the M&P (seen here) and came away satisfied that I've cured a major defect in my shooting. This was confirmed by a text exchange with former Boone County (Ind.) Sheriff Ken Campbell who is now the chief operating officer of Gunsite in Arizona.

And I rediscovered the discomfort of Walther PPK slide bite.

31 years ago today

Thirty one years ago today, The Indianapolis News’ zoned suburban editions went live.

I was chief of the Metro North Bureau, covering Boone and Hamilton counties from a circulation office in Carmel.

Jerry Graff covered Johnson and Shelby counties and Mike Ellis covered Hendricks and Morgan counties. For some now-forgotten reason, the decision was made to omit Hancock County to the east of Indianapolis from the Metro project.

The three of us had been working in our new bureaus for a month, building a backlog of feature stories and getting the lay of the land since early February.

We were equipped with Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 laptop computers – the first practical laptops in the history of computing.

The Model 100 had a built-in 300 baud modem that could transmit over telephone lines. The eight-line LCD screen made writing and editing a bit of a challenge. Incredible as it seems by today’s memory standards, the 24K of RAM was plenty for our day-to-day writing needs. You could also connect a cassette tape recorder to the Model 100 and transfer files to the tape for later retrieval. The Model 100 ran on four AA batteries with an optional AC converter power source.

As primitive as it was, the Model 100 intimidated the hell out of reporters from smaller papers who were still stuck taking notes with pen and notebook. I loved it because I could get quotes down with greater accuracy and speed.

(I still have my Model 100. A friend rescued it from the dumpster when the office was being cleaned out after my retirement.)

I volunteered for a bureau job because inept management had poisoned the atmosphere at The News City Room in downtown Indianapolis and I was eager to have 15 miles between me and the craziness.

Managing Editor Frank Caperton conceived the plan for zoned suburban editions, but he worried we might have trouble filling the space allotted to us. One of his solutions was to publish school lunch menus. I thought it was a desperately stupid idea when there was an abundance of real news to be reported and so did my colleagues. We never ran a single school lunch menu.

But even with the new product, The News remained the unwanted, neglected sibling of the morning paper, The Indianapolis Star.

In an effort to introduce the new zoned editions, it was decided to sample the paper for a couple of weeks – deliver it to homes of non-subscribers to give them a chance to see our coverage of their areas.

The obvious way to accomplish this would have been to give News carriers extra copies with instructions to deliver them to homes of non-subscribers along their routes.

But there apparently was concern on The Star side of the building that we might take some of their subscribers, so the company went to the extra expense of creating a master list of people who didn’t subscribe to either paper as targets for sampling.

And rather than use News carriers, the geniuses in circulation chose to hire temporary carriers to deliver the sample papers.

But the unmotivated minimum wage temps had trouble getting the papers where they were supposed to go.

I realized this when I found several bundles of News sample papers in the dumpster outside my Carmel office.

I reported it, but nothing came of it and the sampling campaign was a failure.

I was still startling people in Boone and Hamilton counties 10 years later with the revelation that The News had a special edition just for their counties.

Despite the lack of support from circulation, running a suburban bureau was great fun, especially after I built up a cadre of stringers – part time correspondents who helped to cover governmental meetings and wrote the occasional feature story.

I ran the Metro North Bureau until October, 1995 when The News was merged with The Star and I got folded into a larger bureau covering Boone, Hamilton and Madison counties from Carmel.

And the fun began in earnest 31 years ago today.

TrusTed

I cast my vote for Ted Cruz this morning at the Brookland City Hall.

I asked for a paper ballot just for the novelty of it.

Then I went to St. Bernards Health & Wellness Center and did 1.45 miles on the treadmill.

Now my day is complete.

Cognitive dissonance

The news this morning that the Benghazi heroes are endorsing Donald Trump has heightened my feelings of cognitive dissonance.

So many people whose judgment I would otherwise trust have voiced support for Trump or Bernie Sanders - two candidates I see as irrational knee-jerk responses the insanity of American politics. I was shocked and dismayed when Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter came out for Trump, and it only got worse with Chris Christie, Jan Brewer and Mike Huckabee's endorsements.

Likewise a good friend and one of my sons seem to think Bernie Sanders is the answer. How my libertarian, gun-owning friend can embrace a big government socialist baffles me. My son's politics are sufficiently leftist that I can see how Bernie is more appealing to him than is Hillary Clinton, but I still find it troubling that we are poles apart on what America is and should be.

I'm going to the polls tomorrow morning to cast my vote for Ted Cruz, who I consider the smartest guy in the Republican race and the candidate whose understanding of the Constitution is closest to mine. I'm also voting for the incumbent circuit court judge because his opponents want to make changes in court's operations that would threaten one of the tenants in our commercial building. Altruism in one contest, self-interest in the other.

DCS repaired!

The weather cooperated - 67 sunny degrees with a bit of wind - this afternoon and I replaced seven broken or missing plastic insulators on the Dora Containment System that is an electrified wire along the base of the back yard chain link fence. Now to saturate the base with herbicide to keep weeds from grounding it out.

Happy Birthday to my long-gone K100RS - may your various parts carry on for years to come

My 1991 K100RS was born on this date in '91 at the BMW factory in Spandau, a suburb of Berlin.

I took delivery of it on June 24 of that year and ended up putting more than 160,000 miles on the odometer before it developed a terminally expensive engine problem.

It was a spectacular motorcycle that took me to a lot of fabulous destinations (including Beartooth Pass in Montana, seen here).

I wrote this blogpost on Aug. 12, 2004 when I was in the process of parting the bike out on Ebay:

I've been taking advantage of the unseasonably cool weather this week to return to my otherwise beastly hot garage and take more parts off of my slowly disappearing '91 BMW K100RS.
As you may recall from previous posts, I'm parting it out on eBay to make payments on its replacement - an '03 K1200GT (which now has 18k on the odometer).
Today's project will be the draining, removal, cleaning, photographing and listing of the gas tank. It's the last painted part and the last clue that the bike was once a gorgeous pearl silver piece of mobile sculpture.
Disassembling this bike has been almost like butchering my own child. It's interesting how attached you can get to a motorcycle. A friend of mine had a similar attachment to a BMW he named "Old Blue." He crashed it on a Memorial Day Weekend club ride in Missouri several years ago and wrote a moving piece about the bike for the club newsletter. A few days later, another club member started ribbing him about his sentimentality, saying, "It's only a machine." My friend blew up, stomped out of the restaurant and nearly quit the club over it.
Here's what I wrote about my bike in 1997 when it turned 100,000 miles:

I kept a promise to myself this year.
On June 24, 1991, when I rode my new pearl silver 1991 K100RS out of the dealer's parking lot, I vowed that one day I'd see the odometer turn over 100,000 miles.
I remember chuckling at the audacity of BMW to put an odometer on their K-bikes that would read so high: Most bikes are junk long before their odometers need a sixth digit. But I knew this bike could do 100 grand and lots more.
I really wasn't in the market for a new bike back in the spring of '91. I had 80,000 miles on my 1981 R100RS and still had big traveling plans for that elegant graphite twin that had shown me so much of the country. I figured I'd eventually replace it with another R100RS, since the RS riding position suits me so well.
One afternoon, just to humor my local dealer, I took one of his new 16-valve K100s out for a demo ride. In less than 15 minutes, I was utterly seduced by the power and the handling of the new K. As I headed back to the dealership, I was doing the math to buy one of these amazing machines.
Luckily, this seduction came at a time when my finances made the purchase possible and the new bike was soon mine.
A few weeks later, I headed west for a week in Breckenridge, Colo., with BMW Club friends and then on to the Top O' the Rockies Rally in Paonia, Colo., then down through southern Utah to the BMW MOA National Rally in Flagstaff.
I remember how proud I was riding into the rally at Flagstaff. Heads turned. Riders gathered around to ogle the bike whenever I stopped. This was, after all, the new flagship of the BMW line – the latest example of the legendary BMW engineering prowess.
In the intervening six years, the bike carried me through 31 states and two Canadian provinces.
We've climbed the highest paved road in the United States to the summit of Mount Evans and we've screamed across the Nevada desert at just under 150 mph.
It's performed reliably in temperatures ranging from 20 below zero to 115 above.
Together, we've carved twisties from Deal's Gap to Big Sur, endured savage Kansas crosswinds and Wyoming hailstones. We've split lanes in Los Angeles freeway rush hour traffic and passed solitary hours cruising the Natchez Trace and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
We've raced thunderstorms across Utah wastelands and probed California redwood forests so deep and dense it was dark at midday.
This magnificent machine has carried me across the Golden Gate and down Highway A1A to Key West and up the backbone of the Canadian Rockies from Banff to Jasper.
My memory is flooded with images from the saddle:
* Endless fields of North Dakota sunflowers at sunrise, each turning its golden face to the rising sun that warmed my back.
* The haunting tragic sadness of the Shiloh battlefield.
* Riding the white sands of Daytona Beach.
* The incredible intoxicating sweet aroma of desert flowers after a Wyoming thunderstorm.
* Mount Hood shining at the western end of the Columbia River Gorge.
* An unseen Ponderosa pine forest filling my helmet with fragrance as I rode into Flagstaff at midnight.
* The snow-clad majesty of the Colorado Rockies as I-70 ascends to the clouds west of Denver.
* The hellish sulfur pits of Yellowstone.
* Dodging rubber shrapnel as the car in front of me shredded a tire and veered to the median of a California freeway.
* Climbing to the snowy summit of Independence Pass before attacking the twisty road down to Aspen and lunch at the Woody Creek Tavern.
To be fair, there have been problems. This bike, like many of its generation, had chronic exhaust system problems. It liked to break welds between the header pipes and the muffler and did so in the summers of '92, '94 and '95. In the summer of '93, it broke a baffle in Nebraska. Each time, BMW replaced the $1,800 exhaust system under warranty. Finally, when a weld failed at Mount Rushmore in 1995 and BMW couldn't get a replacement to me quickly, I rode to California BMW at Mountain View and stepped up to a Staintune. A year later, the Staintune ripped itself apart 60 miles west of Oklahoma City. It was replaced under warranty with what was touted as a more robust version. A year later, the header pipe developed a spiral crack and was replaced under warranty in what proved to be the final fix.
The top end of the engine had a bad exhaust port and was replaced at 30,000 miles. I replaced the alternator in Portland, Ore., in 1996. The fan quit in Tennessee in October, 1997, shooting a geyser of coolant out of the right side cover.
When I took delivery of the bike, I only made two minor modifications – I added a front fender extension to protect the radiator and belly pan and I installed a luggage rack.
I love the clean, sculpted look of the bike and took care that subsequent tweaks preserved the look. I upgraded the headlight with a 100/80-watt bulb, added a Hyperlite flasher to the brake light, replaced the right bar end weight with a Wrist Rest cruise control, swapped the stock clock for a Fuel Plus clock/fuel calculator and replaced the wrung-out stock shock absorber with a Works shock. I also replaced the stock black saddlebags with custom painted matching pearl silver bags.
I estimate I've gone through 26 tires – 16 front and 10 rear – and filled the tank about 450 times.
I could go on to tally the quarts of oil and how much I've spent on service, but that's stuff for the bean counters.
And I hate bean counters.
So that's why, when 99,999 yielded to 100,000 at 5:10 p.m. Oct. 19, 1997, all I could think about was how rich in experience and spirit this fabulous machine has made me. It was, without question, the best deal I ever made.
Now, let's see how soon we can get to 200,000.

It never made it to 200k. In the middle of a four-week, 6,000-mile-plus ride to the West Coast in 2002, it developed a disturbing noise deep in the engine. I had it checked out by mechanics at the Santa Cruz, Calif., BMW shop and they opined it would probably get me home. My local dealer's chief wrench diagnosed the problem as disintegrating bushings in the output shaft. With 160,000 on the odometer, he said, the parts and labor would amount to more than the bike was worth. And when it was fixed, I'd still have a bike with 160k on the clock and God knows what other old parts getting ready to fail.
Clearly, it was time to retire the bike and buy another.
My dealer said I'd be lucky to get $2,000 out of the bike, so I decided to see if the sum of the parts was greater than the whole by parting it out on eBay. So far, I've made about $2,400 and I'm just now getting down to the mechanical stuff.

Haircut

I've been feeling shaggy, so I drove in to town this morning and got a haircut at Great Clips. Rachel did the honors.

First World problem

Over time, dishwasher silverware baskets develop holes. It's happened to every dishwasher I've ever owned and it can become a minor annoyance when you pull out the basket to put away the clean silverware.

Maria and I have a running disagreement over which way silverware should be put into the basket - handle up or handle down. I favor handle up because that makes it a little harder for the silverware to slip through a hole and clatter onto the tile floor of the kitchen.

The holes seem to have grown in recent months making getting silverware into the drawer without falling to the floor a trickier proposition.

I finally decided I'd had enough last week and ordered a replacement basket from Amazon.com. Prices fluctuate on Amazon and I was lucky enough to catch a basket for only $23.96 with free Prime shipping. The UPS guy brought it yesterday and I photographed the old basket (red circles around the holes) before consigning it to the trash.

I realize this is truly a First World problem and doubtless seems silly and frivolous to anyone living in more primitive conditions, but it's been nagging me for resolution for years.

Miraculous recovery

I was all set to throw my SanDisk Connect 200GB memory stick into the trash this morning, convinced that I had killed it last Wednesday when I left it in a pants pocket and sent it through the washer and dryer.

But just to be sure, I plugged it into a USB port and was surprised to see the charging light come on. My computer recognized it and I was able to see all of the music, video, photo and document files I'd put on it. But surely, the Wifi feature is kaput. Right?

I let it charge a couple of hours until the charging light went out, then turned on the Wifi and, to my astonishment, everything seems to be working as before.

Naturally, I rewrote my Amazon.com review to relate the miracle.

My only military decoration

I was rummaging through a box of odds and ends from my past this morning when I came across the only military decoration I ever earned.

Yes, I managed to earn one ribbon during my 41-day career in the U.S. Air Force (see earlier blogposts for an explanation of the brevity of my service).

I qualified as an expert marksman with the .30 carbine during basic training at Lackland AFB. I read online that a company is manufacturing the old carbine and I'd love to own one.

Monday update

The weather was warm and pleasant on Saturday, so I decided to ride a motorcycle to the post office.

On an impulse, I tried to start the K1200GT, which absolutely positively refused to start after more than 150 starter button pushes a few weeks ago.

Wonder of wonders, it started on the 17th starter button push. Crap. I was counting on it being doornail dead to facilitate troubleshooting at Grass Roots BMW Motorcycles whenever I can haul it up to Cape Girardeau.

I rode it down to the Valero station and thence to the post office and, of course, it started on the first starter button push both times.

I notice that Daytona Beach Bike Week starts in less than two weeks, so I can cross it off of my calendar for this year because I can't possibly have a reliable touring bike ready by then. Maria suggested I consider riding the K75S. I guess that might be an option if I plan to leave my camping stuff at home and stay in motels or private homes because is has no luggage rack. It's probably a moot point since the weather is notoriously fickle around the first week or two of March. There have been a couple of recent years when ice and sleet storms made it impossible to even get our all-wheel-drive Subaru Forester out of the driveway.

Now, I must be off to pay the light bill, which is due today. I like to hang onto my money as long as I can.

Dora goes to the vet

I took Dora to the vet this afternoon, but she didn't go willingly.

She balked at the back door and I finally had to carry her out of the house and through the garage and then pick her up and put her into the car on the front passenger side. She panted nervously all the way to the vet's office and waited uneasily, her perky ears flattened against her head, for the vet to take her to the back to be weighed and probed.

Dr. Heather Curry gave her a bordetella shot and a thorough exam before pronouncing her healthy and fit.

Dora seemed a little less freaked out on the ride home and stared out of the window.

I think she needs a little more time in the car to feel comfortable with going for rides.

Two steps forward...

The plastic electric fence insulators arrived shortly after noon so I set about overhauling the Dora Containment System. 

I raked the leaves away on both sides of the fence and, with the power turned off, tried to install the first replacement insulator. And, of course, it was made for a chain link fence with lighter gauge fabric.

So I arranged to return the insulators and buy the more expensive kind that I know will work.

I hustled down to the UPS Store to return the bad insulators and consoled myself with coffee, cheese Danish and music.

Mittwoch report

I went to Tractor Supply and Orscheln farm stores yesterday and neither one had plastic electric fence insulators for chain link fences. WTF?

So I whipped out my iPhone in the Orscheln parking lot and ordered insulators from Amazon.com. So much for shopping locally. I ended up getting 25 insulators for $12, with no Arkansas sales tax and free shipping. So there.

I was about to write a review of the SanDisk 200GB Connect Wireless Stick this morning when I reached for it in my pocket and came to the awful realization that it was still in the pocket of the jeans I wore yesterday. Which had just gone through the wash and were now in the dryer. So I can now report that this $120 memory stick cannot survive a trip through the laundry. I'd be really upset if there were some irreplaceable data on it or if it was something I was going to get a lot of use out of, but neither is true and I am surprising myself at how calmly I'm taking this little reversal.

I was able to cheer myself up with a trip to the shooting range where I put about 40 rounds of .45 ACP downrange with more than satisfying accuracy thanks to my CrimsonTrace laser grips. I seem to be more accurate shooting from the hip with the laser than I am viewing the red dot over iron sights in the Weaver stance.

The Arkansas State Police report they have my CCW paperwork and are waiting for a background check before issuing my concealed carry permit, so maybe I'll get it in another week or two.

Wasting time and gasoline

I set out this morning with a couple of errands in mind - to deposit some cash into our bank account and to buy some plastic insulators for the electric fence wire that is attached to our chain link fence.

I determined earlier that the third task - picking up our mail at the post office - wouldn't be possible since today is Presidents Day and therefore a postal holiday.

Turns out the bank is closed today, too, so I wasted a trip to Jonesboro.

And, while Ace Hardware has a variety of insulators, they don't have the kind that attach to a chain link fence. So I'll either have to go to Tractor Supply or Amazon.com to rehabilitate the electric fence system that keeps Dora in our back yard.

Saturday at the range

Maria, Morgan and I went to the local indoor shooting range today and had a splendid time.

Morgan ended up swapping her clumsy .38 special revolver for a Walther P 22 and went from missing the entire target to consistently drilling bull's eyes with a commensurate huge boost in confidence.

I impressed myself with the accuracy of my Colt Combat Commander 1911 .45, shooting from the hip with the Crimson Trace laser grips. (See target above.) I also got decent results with my Smith & Wesson M&P9 Shield.

Maria also put several rounds downrange, but seemed to have more fun watching Morgan and me. I think I see a 9mm semi-automatic in her future.

Morgan is loving the accuracy of her new Walther P22.

New furnace for our commercial building

After two months of searching, my commercial building fixit guy reported this morning that the gas valve needed to repair one of the six furnaces is not available because the unit is too old.

The alternative is to install a new furnace at a cost of $1,900.

It's winter and our tenant's clients are uncomfortably cold in the lobby, so we bite the bullet and buy a new furnace.

Had we known how fragile the building's HVAC systems were, we might not have bought the place.

Making progress

I'm in my third day with the "flipper" partial upper plate and, while I don't think I'm ever going to like it, I'm starting to come to terms with it.

After a few painful (my gums are still very sore from Monday morning's extractions) attempts, I think I finally have figured out the technique for removing the flipper for cleaning and to rinse my mouth with saltwater.

I feel like I'm learning to eat and talk all over again. I don't know if anyone else can hear it, but I can definitely notice a degradation in my articulation.

But, as I discovered with a $2.49 pizza combo lunch at Sam's Club today, the flipper protects against the dreaded "pizza burn" to the roof of my mouth.

Unless the cost is utterly ruinous, I would much prefer to have dental implants rather than spend the rest of my life with this thing in my mouth.

Some good news

The padded dashboard of our Lexus RX330 has developed multiple cracks - not quite as bad as the damage in this photo I got from a Lexus owners group - but nevertheless unacceptable.

I had resigned myself to either living with the deteriorating dashboard or finding some kind of repair kit that would probably end up making the cracks even more noticeable.

Then last week's mail brought encouraging news. Lexus is extending their warranty program to allow for free replacement of cracked dashboards due to normal exposure to heat and humidity.

I called Lexus of Memphis, our nearest dealer, this morning and asked what I need to do to get the dash replaced. The guy told me that our 2003 RX330 is too old to be covered by the warranty, but just to be sure, he ran the VIN and discovered it qualifies as a 2004 model. Who knew?

The bad news is that replacement dashboards for 2004 RX330s are back ordered and there are more than 200 people ahead of me in line at their dealership. The replacement will be made he assured me, but it will be several months but almost certainly before the end of 2016.

Not a happy camper

I spent a fair amount of the past two weeks, and especially last weekend dreading my 9 a.m. Monday dental appointment and the extraction of two teeth.

This dental crisis began last month when I developed an abscess in one of the teeth covered by a bridge that dates back to the time several years ago when my upper teeth were capped.

The upshot of the whole thing is that my two missing teeth are now replaced with a partial upper plate that still feels unnatural and uncomfortable after nearly 24 hours in place. Plus, I feel like I'm going to need a speech therapist because it interferes with my pronunciation of words with the letters C, S, X and Z.

Here I am yesterday after my dental appointment with a mouthful of gauze soaking up the last bit of bleeding.

More than 30 years ago, a dentist called me a "dental cripple." That's how I feel today.

Catching up

I just noticed that I haven't posted to the blog since Sunday. That's hardly the way to guarantee continued readership. Sorry.

I'm working with the new 200GB SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick for an Amazon.com review this week. It's a 200GB thumb drive that can connect with up to three devices using its own Wifi signal. Among other things, it's a great way to archive photos from my iPhone and it's big enough to accommodate my entire music library, which is well under 100GB. It can stream audio and video and do several things that I haven't yet got my brain around. The thing retails for $119.99 on Amazon.com.They have versions with smaller capacities for less, the cheapest being 32GB for $24.99.

The warm weather has deserted us again after several days of being able to leave the furnace turned off - a major gift since we have an electrically powered heat pump.

So far this morning, I've busied myself with updating the two Garmin GPS units we use - a 550 Zumo that lives on my 2003 BMW K1200GT motorcycle and a Nuvi 1350 LMT that lives in my Lexus. Speaking of the Lexus, I got mail from the Lexus mothership this week telling me that the cracking and disintegrating padded dashboard is covered by an extended warranty. I need to call the nearest Lexus dealer, which is in Memphis, and make an appointment to get it replaced. They say the process takes about 4 hours. This is great news. I've been stewing about it for months, wondering how to effect repairs.

Just when I think I've received all of the 1099s and other tax documents needed to figure our taxes, another one shows up in the mailbox. I think I'll wait until next week to contact our CPA and get things rolling on the tax returns for us and our LLC.

In the meantime, I'm watching the mail for our Arkansas Concealed Handgun permits and watching the email for results of our National Geographic DNA tests.

Refunding ATM user fees

I was perusing a brochure about our checking account with Centennial Bank this morning when I discovered a hitherto unknown (by me, at least) feature.

If I use another financial institution's ATM and am charged a user fee, Centennial Bank will reimburse the fee if I present them with the ATM receipt within 60 days of the transaction.

Pretty cool, huh?

Wonky starter button wonks out completely

The starter button on my 2003 BMW K1200GT has an intermittent malfunction that goes back more than five years to the summer of 2010. I took the bike up to Grass Roots BMW Motorcycles in Cape Girardeau, Mo. on July 8, 2010 and they replaced the right combo switch for about $500 in parts and labor. Less than two weeks later, the problem reared its ugly head again when I tried to start the bike after a night in Steve's hot Las Vegas garage.

The turn signal cancelling button, also part of the right combo switch assembly, went wonky on the ride home from Vegas, but has behaved itself since after getting some attention at Grass Roots.

But despite the replacement of the switch, the starter button problem as continued off and on for the past five years. (I made this video in August, 2014 to document it and solicit diagnoses from the BMW motorcycle community.)

Early on, it manifested itself when the bike sat for an extended period or overnight in a hot place. But in recent months, it showed up after the bike was parked overnight in a cold garage. So much for my heat thesis.

The last time I rode the bike was about a week ago for a quick run down to the post office and it took about 35 presses of the starter button before the engine fired. Today, I can't get the engine to start even after more than 150 presses of the button.

Recalling some of the suggestions I've received - that it had to do with a defective sidestand shutoff switch - I went down to the garage a few minutes ago and tried to start the engine with the sidestand up, but it remains inert.

I'm hopeful that it remains inert, so the technicians at Grass Roots. can more effectively troubleshoot the problem that eluded them in the past due to its intermittent nature.

I had an encouraging text message exchange with my local BMW friend Charlie about hauling the bike up to Grass Roots and he said he thinks his schedule will allow for a trip in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, the '94 K75S is my ride on pleasant days.

DNA in the mail

Steve and Nicky gave us a pair of DNA kits for Christmas and we finally got around to collecting samples and packaging them for shipping, which will occur when I go to the post office this morning.

I will, of course, share the results here when they become available.

Gun stuff

We went to the Jonesboro Police Department at noon today and got fingerprinted - the last hoop to jump through before mailing in our concealed carry handgun permit applications.

I just got back from the post office where I sent the stuff off to Little Rock, which will likely take six weeks or so.

In the meantime, I got some tips from a friend who is the chief operating officer at the Gunsite Academy to correct my tendency to shoot low and to the left with my new Smith & Wesson M&P9 Shield semiautomatic pistol.

Happy Birthday, K75S

Today is the 22nd birthday of our 1994 BMW K75S. It was born on Jan. 27, 1994 in Berlin.

I bought it used from Revard BMW Motorcycles on Oct. 31, 2000 with 2,417 miles on the odometer and a ridiculous looking too-tall windscreen.

I bought it for Maria to ride but she never felt really comfortable on it and a car accident a few years later in which a woman with macular degeneration totaled the Buick Maria was driving undermined her confidence.

So it has fallen to me to ride it regularly and keep it in good condition, which has turned out to be a pleasure.

I’ve never toured on it, mainly because it lacks a luggage rack. The longest trip I’ve taken on it was Sept. 28, 2007, when I rode from our home in Thorntown to Jonesboro in preparation to buying a house and moving to Arkansas.

The Sargent seat isn't as nice as the BMW Comfort Seat on my K1200GT, but it wasn't awful, either.

Aside from the chilly start, the weather for the ride down was perfect. It was a warm, but not oppressive, 82 degrees when I rode down through southeastern Missouri and into Arkansas.

The bike performed flawlessly and delivered something like 44 or 45 miles/gallon. I stopped at Boomland for my final fill-up and savored the last 110 or so miles to Jonesboro.

I left the bike with Charlie and Deb Parsons, who were already storing my GT, and caught a ride home the next day with Indianapolis News compadre Skip Hess.

The bike has 18,363 miles on the odometer as it sits in my garage today. It continues to be a joy to ride.

Hard to beat an old Beetle for handling in snow

Last weekend's East Coast blizzard reminded me that the best snow car I ever owned was also my first car - a Fontana Gray 1965 VW Beetle (seen here outside the mobile home I rented while working my first newspaper job at The Tipton (Ind.) Tribune in the winter of 1966-67.

With its rear engine and narrow tires (read small contact patch), that car could go practically anywhere in snow and ice. I bought it on Aug. 1, 1966 at University Motors in West Lafayette, where it had been a demonstrator and frequently used by the wife of the dealer. Diane and I took it on an extensive road trip through Canada in 1968. I finally sold it in the early 1970s with more than 100,000 miles on the odometer. That was a lot of miles for a car of that era, although it doesn't seem all that impressive by today's standards.

Conversely, the worst snow car I ever owned was my 1994 Honda del Sol with its fat tires and giant contact patches that turned into skis on slick pavement.

Not even close

I drove over to my favorite liquor store in Cardwell, Mo. this afternoon in search of Leinenkugel Snowdrift Vanilla Porter.

They had none, so I settled for this stuff instead. I shouldn't have. It lacks the flavor and smoothness of Leinenkugel.

Problems at the Flora Building

Now that winter is here in earnest, the weaknesses in our commercial building's heating systems are revealing themselves.

I just got a call from the north half of the building which I thought was fixed in mid-December, saying nothing has been done.

This after we did repairs on the heating for the south end of the building last week.

We're expecting the first snow of the winter tonight and I hate to think our tenants aren't comfortable.

Magazine loading made easy

Meet the MagLula Uplula, a loading device for semiautomatic handgun magazines. It's made in Israel and I first saw it in YouTube videos by Hickock45, a Murfreesboro, Tenn., firearms expert.

This particular model works with calibers from 9mm up to .45, which includes .38.

I bought one a couple of weeks ago to help with loading the magazines for my Smith & Wesson M&P9 Shield because the magazine springs were insanely tight and made for slow and painful loading. Loading with the Uplula is easy, fast and painless and it will be my constant companion at the range from now on.

I tried it with my WWII Luger, but the rounded bottom of the Luger magazines makes it awkward. Happily, the Luger loading tool, which attaches to the exterior spring compressor, is still the best way to load Luger magazines.

I got my Uplula for about $35 from Midway USA. They come in other calibers too.

Icy start

We awoke to an icy glaze on our cars and on the roads with local TV telling us it's dangerous to drive.

All of the area schools were closed, but Maria's employer was open for business, so she decided to go in a little late. Our next-door-neighbor, who is a teacher whose school was closed, noticed me warming up the Subaru and scraping the glass and called Maria to threaten to kick her ass if she tried to drive on the slick roads.

Maria, who after all learned to drive in snowy icy Indiana winters, assured her she would be careful and went to work. She texted me a short time later to report she arrived safely.

Now it looks like we may get snow Thursday night, which is way better than ice. The only problem with snow and ice here is that Arkansas drivers lack the slick pavement competence of Indiana drivers and become hazards to themselves and each other.

Never a dull moment

We arranged to take Morgan's boyfriend's son to the movies around noon yesterday.

But as we prepared to leave, Maria discovered her wallet was missing. This set off a frenzy of fruitless searching that ended up with me calling the bank debit card center and shutting off her checking account debit card and business account debit card. All of this took us past the start time for the first showings of the movies in question - The Revenant for Maria and the boy and Star Wars for me.

Finally, Maria was able to reconstruct her to-ings and fro-ings and guessed she took her wallet out of her purse while searching for a key in Morgan's garage. We stopped at Morgan's house on the way to the theater and, voila, there was the wallet. Maria loved The Revenant. I enjoyed Star Wars but found it predictable with only one real semi-surprise, which I will not reveal here.

This drama made it necessary for me to go to the bank the first thing this morning and get new debit cards issued.

Now I can sit back and watch the predicted winterish storm this evening, which may or may not paralyze us with freezing rain.

A matter of perspective

The temperature was a brisk 14ºF when I woke up this morning. That's crazy cold for the Mid-South.

It reminded me of when I was filling in as chief photographer at the Jonesboro Sun on on Jan. 25, 2008 and was asked to shoot a picture of a frozen fountain in the front yard of a home on the south side of town. It was, from the perspective of a Hoosier, a nothing shot.

But the editor thought it was such a big deal that it ran three columns wide above the fold on the front page the next day.

Busy Friday

Maria got forced into a curb coming back from lunch on Thursday, resulting in a destroyed right front tire. She managed to limp into the parking lot across from her work.

I drove down to change the tire, but found that the car was on a slight incline which made it want to roll off of the tiny Subaru jack even through I had the transmission in Park and the parking brake engaged.

We chose to leave the car in place Thursday night and I returned yesterday morning and called the U.S. Auto Club road service we have through Shell. The tow truck guy showed up about an hour later with a much more robust jack and had the spare in place in under 10 minutes. I drove down to Gateway Tire, where I buy my tires, and they replaced it under a road hazard warranty for $10.55.

Our cable/internet bill was due yesterday, so I took advantage of the 61º springlike temperature and rode the K1200GT up to Paragould to pay in person. It was my first ride of 2016 and it felt really really good.

Maria gets off work at 3 p.m. on Fridays, so we used the time to go shooting at Black Iron Shooting range. I took my new 9mm Smith & Wesson M&P9 Shield and she took her Ruger LCP 380 with Crimson Trace laser sight.

I did substantially better than my first outing with the new guy and she demonstrated phenomenal accuracy with her comparatively tiny gun. The laser sight more than makes up for the crappy iron sights on the LCP. I'm not ashamed to say she outshot me. I'm seeking coaching tips from former Boone County Sheriff Ken Campbell - now a instructor at Gunsite Academy in Arizona - to correct whatever is making my shots drift down and left.

Here's my best target from this outing:

Happy Birthday, GT

My BMW K1200GT was born/built on this date in Berlin in 2003.

It has 77,321 miles on the odometer as it sits in my garage today, having taken me all over the United States. I've ridden it to 10 BMW MOA rallies, starting with Charleston, W.Va. and including St. Paul, Minn., Gillette, Wyo., Burlington, Vt., Redmond, Ore., and last July to Billings, Mont.

We've been down the Pacific Coast Highway through Big Sur two or three times, to Daytona Beach Bike Week a couple of times and all over Colorado on several occasions.

The bike, shown here with oversize saddlebags - I left the smaller color-matched bags at home - just south of the Big Creek Bridge in Big Sur, has had a few modifications, most notably the addition of MotoLight driving lights. I started out with the stock halogen bulbs in the MotoLights and upgraded to the brighter, longer-lasting LEDs in July, 2012. I added XM satellite radio in 2004, then upgraded to a SiriusXM-enabled Garmin Zumo 550 GPS in March, 2010.

It's been a great bike and I'm looking forward to another good year of riding.

I need more practice

First time at the range with the M&P9 Shield.

No desire to be a victim

There is disturbing news about Middle Eastern men surreptitiously videoing the major churches in town, including our Catholic Church, coupled with a police officer confirming that the FBI investigated the local imam and Saudi students at Arkansas State University - he said about two dozen Saudi students vanished in one day, presumably heading home, as a consequence of the probe. And there are reports of about 1,000 Middle Eastern "refugees" arriving in Jonesboro last week.

This got us thinking about our responsibility as gun owners to protect ourselves and our neighbors - something that requires getting concealed carry permits. I had a permit when I lived in Indiana, but it lapsed a long time ago and I never bothered to apply for an Arkansas permit, partly because it requires a day-long course and a few other hoops to jump through. I've had a 1911 Colt Combat Commander .45 for more than thirty years or so, but rarely carried it because of its bulk and weight, even after I upgraded it a few years ago with a Crimson Trace laser grip.

So I bought a very carry-friendly Smith & Wesson M&P9 Shield semiautomatic Friday evening and, wonder of wonders, discovered early Saturday that the Black Iron Shooting Range near our house was conducting a CCW class starting at 9 a.m. on Saturday. As we were leaving our house, Maria called Morgan to see if she would be interested in the course and the next thing we knew all three of us were sitting in the classroom listening to instructor Jim Magee.

There were 39 of us in the class, ranging from teenagers to senior citizens. The common thread was a realization that we are all responsible for defending ourselves, our families and our neighbors from whatever lawless threat might appear. I don't think any of us is eager to shoot anyone, but neither are any of us willing to become helpless victims like those poor bastards in the rock concert venue in Paris last year.

Terror attacks and a clear signal from the White House that our government won't protect us and is probably on the side of the enemy have spiked gun sales and concealed carry permit applications all over the country and Maria and I are proud to be part of the hardening of American targets.

High school flashback

I got snail mail yesterday from a long-lost high school buddy who I haven't seen in more than 40 years.

It contained this Polaroid photo of me at the wheel of my parents' 1957 Ford Fairlaine 500 (with the Thunderbird Special engine). I'm wearing the USMC Marine Corps M-1944 HBT Herringbone Twill Utility Shirt/Jacket that I bought at McHaley's Surplus in Lafayette and wore frequently from the summer of 1962 to well into my freshman year in college in 1963.

I'm sure I saw the photo when it was taken, but I have no recollection of it now more than a half-century later.

Thanks for thinking of me, Bill. I have fond memories of our days in the high school band, pep band and dance band and often wonder how you're doing.

What could it mean?

Smith & Wesson M&P9 Shield, only $389.99 at Academy Sports. And a CCW course starting this morning at Black Iron Shooting Range, right in our neighborhood.

How to clean a Keurig

My longtime Internet friend Kate Berry writes Housewife How-To's (Yeah, I know the apostrophe is wrong, but the only way to make it readable would be to mix caps with lower case) and has seen a huge surge in web traffic lately because people have discovered her post about how to clean a Keurig, probably because some search engine is sending them there.

Lots of people have a Keurig coffee brewer, including my next-door neighbor and my Las Vegas son. I've used my son's Keurig while visiting last year and found it a quick and convenient way to make a decent cup of coffee. I won't buy one because I prefer cappuccino from the Mr. Coffee espresso machine that same son gave me several years ago. And because of scary stories of bacteria build-up in hard-to-reach places on Keurigs.

Kate demystifies Keurig cleaning and almost makes me want to buy one. Read about it here:
http://housewifehowtos.com/clean/how-to-clean-a-keurig/

Ouch

The view from the dentist's chair.

I spent $1,000 today and that's just the start. Major dental overhaul underway.

Enchiladas Suizas at last!

I developed a fondness several years ago for Enchiladas Suizas (enchiladas filled with chicken tinga & Jack cheese, topped with tomatillo cream sauce and melted Jack cheese) at a now-defunct Indianapolis northwestside restaurant called Cazuela's.

Every time I visit a new Mexican restaurant, I scour the menu for Enchiladas Suizas in vain.

When we stopped by the recently-opened On the Border for lunch Saturday, I was stunned to discover my favorite dish on their menu. I ordered, prepared for disappointment, but was delighted to find that they got it right, at least for my palate. It was well worth $10.99. The queso and chips were delicious also.

I think I have a new favorite Mexican restaurant.

Not a great year, but the best since 2011

I tallied up my motorcycle mileage last night and found that, although I didn't do especially well in 2015, I had the best riding year since 2011.

I rode 5,812 BMW miles in 2015, counting 4,739 miles ridden on my 2003 K1200GT and 1,073 miles on my K75S. I made it to three of my four planned rallies - European Riders Rally in May in Burkesville, Ky.; BMWMOA Rally in July in Billings, Mont.; BMWRA Rally in October in Harrison, Ark., but had to pass on the Falling Leaf Rally in October in Potosi, Mo.

For the record, I haven't qualified for an Indianapolis BMW Club 10,000-mile award since 2004.

(Crap! I misspelled "mileage" in the graph headline.)