Worst riding year ever

This was the worst year for mileage in my 38-year motorcycling career. I only rode a pathetic 2,361 miles in 2016 and only made it to one rally. God willing, 2017 will be better.

Here is my accumulation of pins from rallies, events, organizations and other things. My first rally was the 1986 BMW MOA rally at Laguna Seca Raceway near Monterey, Calif.

Blink, blink, blink

Coming home from dinner last evening, I noticed the red and green navigation lights of our neighbor boy's Christmas drone, blinking merrily from the upper branches of a 40-foot-tall tree on the east side of their property and I wondered how many people who got drones for Christmas had a similar experience.

This is the week when newspapers and wire services pretend that people give a shit about their lists of the Top News Stories of 2016. It always struck me a silly self-indulgence to compile and publish those lists.

At the same time, I am mindful that the world that will greet us on Jan. 1, 2017 is very different from the world we inherited at the first of 2016.

A lot of celebrities and other people didn't live to see the new year, but there were some really wonderfully hopeful events in 2016, like the Brexit vote in Britain that may signal the collapse of the ill-conceived European Union and a resurgence of national pride in the UK. Also, the Chicago Cubs won their first World Series in more than a century.

But the most profoundly hopeful event in my adult life - the landslide victory of Donald Trump - came on Nov. 8. It, likewise, signals a resurgence of national pride in the U.S.

And like a demon being exorcised, Barack Obama is doing as much damage to this country as he possibly can between now and Jan. 20. I'm hopeful that whatever Obama can do, Trump can just as easily undo.

The last time I felt this positive and optimistic about a new president was 56 years ago when John Kennedy won the White House. That was back when you could be a patriotic American and a Democrat. My parents were both and they would be horrified to see what has become of the party they followed in those days.

Lisa!

Granddaughter Lisa loves the Alexander Hamilton biography we sent her for Christmas.

Out of retirement

Maria and I came out of retirement as wedding photographers today to shoot the wedding of our neighbor's son.

We just finished reviewing the images and are pleased with the results.

Driving Miss Sadie

I picked up Sadie Jo on the road this morning and returned her to her family who were worried sick because she didn't come home last night.

The neighbor boy, who was jogging past when I got her into my car, said they have continued to feed her and that she slept at their house last night, contrary to the expressed wishes of her owner.

This has all the earmarks of a neighborhood feud and I have no desire to be involved.

In the meantime, I took Sadie Jo to the post office before I got a Facebook Messenger response telling me where she lives.

So true

It can never be easy

Maria asked me to repair the faucet in the kitchen sink today because it had been dripping.

I found the screw that holds the handle in place was so tight that it snapped the head off of the tool, leaving the head in the screw, probably permanently.

I think the only fix is to drill out the screw and replace the handle assembly, which will require a trip to the hardware store over the weekend.

Testing, testing...

Testing a 14-year-old Nikon D100 that hasn't been used in more than a decade. The batteries were beyond recovering, so I bought replacements.

This is the view out of our front door at a yard full of leaves that I'm trying to ignore.

The temperature is 55º which is probably the warmest it will be for the next week or two, since Arctic weather is bearing down on us from the northwest.

Boscos comes up with a really lame mug

Yesterday was "New Mug Day" for Mug Club members at Boscos Squared restaurant in Memphis.

Jonesboro BMW riding friends Charlie and Deb introduced us to Boscos several years ago and I joined their mug club in 2012. For $60, you get a numbered mug of your own to use through the coming year. It holds more than a regular glass of beer and lives in a rack above the bar. And you get to take it home at the end of the year.

The 2012 was the coolest I've seen - a clever design mocking the Mayan calendar prediction of the end of the world. It was downhill from there. The next year's mug looked like something out of your grandmother's kitchen and the following years brought similarly unimaginative designs.

This year, the price jumped to $80 for a special 25th anniversary commemorative mug. I had high expectations that were cruelly dashed yesterday when I saw the cheesy 2017 mug made by Libbey Glassware with a metal emblem attached. It holds maybe 20% more beer than the previous mugs, but I think it looks cheap. I was hoping for something more British or German-looking.

In fact, if I'd known what it looked like in advance, I wouldn't have renewed my membership.

Sold

I just sold this WWII German soldier's shaving kit on Ebay for $100. Woo-hoo!

Semper Fi!

I'm reading a biography of the legendary Marine Lt. Gen. Lewis "Chesty" Puller, which makes me even happier that Donald Trump is apparently going to name retired Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis as Secretary of Defense.

Somewhere, Chesty Puller is smiling.

Sadie Jo

I was in my upstairs office about 45 minutes after Maria left for work when I heard barking- from the garage. I investigated and found our neighbor dog Sadie Jo looking forlornly out the window. She apparently slipped into the garage and got trapped when Maria put the overhead door down. I gave her a handful of IAMS and made sure she was outside when I lowered the door.

19 years gone

My Dad died on Nov. 23, 1997 at St. Elizabeth Health Care Center in Delphi.

I miss him every day.

Five years of Gentleman Jack

We brought Jack home from Briarbrook Kennels in Carthage, Mo. five years ago today.

Like today, Nov. 20, 2011 was a Sunday.

Maria found Briarbrook online and we narrowed our choices down to a black tri puppy initially named Luke who had charmingly stuck his tongue out and smiled for his online portrait.

Maria held him much of the way home after he pooped and barfed in the crate we brought along in the back of the Subuaru Forester.

He made unearthly, bizarre sounds that first night away from his mom and littermates, but quickly adapted to his new forever home.

Two of his grandfathers were Best of Breed at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Shows and he has a very noble bearing, in addition to a very sweet disposition.

Dad's jigsaw

I bought this Black & Decker jigsaw as a birthday or Christmas present for my dad way back in 1964 or 1965.

I don't know that he ever used it and it was still in the house when we cleared it out after Mom died in 2000.

I haven't used it since then - until yesterday when we ran into a problem threading a steel braided water supply line for the new dishwasher through two offset holes in cabinet partitions. Maria asked if we had a coping saw and I suddenly remembered this saw on the bottom shelf in our tool/utility room.

It worked like a champ and saved us much time and anguish.

Thanks, Dad.

Dishwasher problem solved

I never got a return call from Strong Arm Appliance Service yesterday so Maria and I drove down to Lowe's and bought a $350 Whirlpool on sale for $270. We had it loaded into the Lexus and spent most of today removing the old machine and installing the new one.

All by ourselves.

Thank God for YouTube instructional videos.

WTF?

We've been without a fully functional dishwasher for more than three weeks and spent $353 on repairs that didn't fix it - $148 to put in a new heating element and another $205 for a new circuit board. Today saw the arrival of a third technician who determined that we need a new keypad - the buttons you push to select various features and start the wash cycle. It will be another $180.

That would mean $533 to get the dishwasher working and we still have a 10-year-old dishwasher.

Lowe's is running an early Black Friday sale and will sell us a new, more energy efficient model for $279.

I left word with the appliance repair folks that they have until 5 p.m. to tell me they will waive the charge for a new keypad (since there is now some question about whether I needed to spend $205 for a circuit board) or else they can cancel the keypad order and I'll go to Lowe's.

I didn't mention that I will share this nasty little saga on social media.

Relieved

I didn't realize what a toll the political scene was taking on my mental well-being until I woke up Nov. 8 to a Trump victory.

Now, more than a week later, the sense of relief is still present and strong.

We may still be in grave peril, but at least my gut feeling that the country would repudiate the Democrat policies and vision was validated beyond my wildest imagination.

At first, I was annoyed by the liberals who posted endless screeds cataloging every imagined evil associated with a Trump presidency. I cut them a lot of slack, remembering how crushed I was eight years ago when those same morons elected Obama.

Now, reflecting in the wake of their week-long temper tantrum, I've come to regard them as just pathetic. They imagine they can reverse the will of the electorate, pretending that Hillary won the popular vote, which she did not, and that they can somehow influence a huge change in the electoral college through maverick electors or by abolishing it altogether.

I would pity them if their aims were not so dangerous.

This is what we get for letting progressives run the schools and teach revisionist history to a couple of generations.

Carpe diem

The 5½-year-old battery in my BMW K1200GT is on its last legs and I had serious doubts whether I could nurse it through the winter on a trickle charger and wait for warm weather to ride to a dealer for a replacement.

The forecast for today and tomorrow was sunny and warm, followed by a rainy cold front on Friday and cold and rain for the rest of the month.

So I called Performance Plus Specialists, the Memphis BMW dealer, this morning and discovered they could put a new battery in for me today. I left about 10 a.m., arriving at their shop around 11:50. About a half-hour later, they were done and I was loading my tank bag and GPS for the trip home. I arrived home about 1:15 p.m. from a trip that I fully expected would have me still on the road when the sun sets at 4:53 p.m. The cost was about $20 more than the $247 I paid in May, 2011 at Bloodworth BMW Motorcycles in Nashville, but there is something to be said for working quickly.

Now I can look forward to the 2017 riding season with confidence.

Who knows? I may make it to Daytona next year.

Four years gone

Our beloved Pete, our first Aussie, left us to go to the Rainbow Bridge four years ago today.

He inherited a defective liver that finally caught up with him a little past his seventh birthday.

He was the sweetest dog I ever knew and I miss him.