Bike problem, easy solution

I rode the 1994 BMW K75S down to the Lebanon License Branch this morning and shuffled the papers for an Indiana title and license plate.

When I started the bike in the BMV parking lot, the battery seemed weak. Riding away, I noticed the ABS warning light stayed on after I applied both brakes - a move that usually turns it off. Stopped at a traffic signal, I tried a fix that always worked before - turning the engine off and restarting. It started very feebly, died and restarted even weaker and the ABS light stayed on.

Fearing I might not have enough battery for another restart, I rode straight home, ruminating on whether my ABS was dead - I lost the ABS on my 1991 K100RS several years ago and it was very expensive to replace - and whether I should plan to take the bike down to the BMW dealer in Indianapolis. The speedo was also 99 per cent dead, with a little needle movement now and then. I'm pretty sure I know where the loose connection is for that problem.

Then, about 9 minutes into my ride, I realized I don't have to hassle with the dealership because I have reliable motorcycle service just four doors up the street from my house - Grumpy's Gold Wing Service. Grumpy repaired gummed up fuel injectors on the K75S several years ago and also installed new tires on my 2003 K1200GT.

I stopped at the entrance to my driveway and killed the engine, hoping a re-start would solve the ABS problem. The battery just barely turned the engine over and, of course, the ABS light stayed on. I stopped a few yards short of the shed where I keep my bikes and removed the saddlebags so the bike would fit with its younger brother and with our lawnmower and other shed stuff. Then I put it on a trickle charger in the hope of getting a final start, either into the shed or over to Grumpy's.

Grumpy remembered me from when we lived here 10 years ago. He looked up the appropriate battery and ordered it for me, saying it should be here next Thursday. Then we spent the next hour chatting. I was interested to learn he and I were at Indiana State University at the same time. He lived in Sandison Hall and I was next door in its twin, Gillum Hall in the 1963-64 school year. He also thought he could probably remedy the speedo glitch.

The charger did its job and I was able to fire up the K75S and ride it into the shed where it will languish until Thursday.

Proof

Back in the saddle again

There's nothing like a break in the weather to get me moving on outdoor projects.

Today I petitioned St. Anthony to help me find the Arkansas titles to my two bikes. After going through a couple of file boxes and all 27 drawers of the steel cabinet I inherited from my dad, I dug deep on my desk and found a yellow folder labeled "Vehicle Titles" and there they were.

So after lunch I rolled my 2003 BMW K1200GT out of the shed, aired up the tires, put on the saddlebags and the Garmin Zumo 550 GPS, topped off the fuel tank at the Marathon down the street, and rode down to Lebanon and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. I walked out about a half-hour later with a temporary paper plate and title. The Arkansas plate will remain on the bike until May 1 or the arrival of a metal plate, whichever comes first.

Weather permitting, I'll take the K75S in for title and plate tomorrow.

I pretty much lost my 2017 riding season because of our move back from Arkansas and having the bikes in storage much of the year. I have higher hopes for 2018.

Porch cam

I set up a trailcam on the front porch to photograph birds at the feeders yesterday.

I pulled the card this morning and found 1,452 images - almost all of them of passing vehicles and pedestrians and only about 5 of birds. This cardinal is the best of the bunch.

Getting charged up

My high priced BMW motorcycle battery charger/tender charges my bikes through the accessory plug. It also has a cable with conventional battery terminal clamps, but the cable got separated from the charger in the move from Arkansas.

I've done fruitless searches for the cable through boxes in the house and conclude it must be in storage somewhere.

In the meantime, the grass is growing and our yard sprouted hundreds of dandelions over the past few days. It was clear that I had to find a way to charge the flat battery in our John Deere LA125 mower and I had to do it in time for the first decently warm day.

Today was that day, so I drove in to the Lebanon Walmart and spent $30 and change on a battery charger with the desired terminal clamps. It showed fully charged after a couple of hours, which came as a great relief because I figured the battery was probably done for after seven months of inactivity, much of it in freezing temperatures in the shed. I fully expected to have to drive down to the John Deere dealership and buy a new battery.
But wonder of wonders, it started.

I backed the BMW K75S out of the shed to make room to get the mower out, put a couple of fresh AA batteries in my Work Tunes headphones and attacked the yard. We have less than a quarter of the 1.23 acres I'm used to mowing in Arkansas, so a riding mower almost seems a little silly for such a small lot.

Since I had the K75S out and standing in the driveway, I aired up the tires and went for my first motorcycle ride of 2018 - just a short spin of a couple of miles - but enough to get my blood flowing.

Now I have to figure out what I did with the Arkansas titles to our two bikes so I can get them titled and plated in Indiana.

Tesla time

I got a call from my son Steve early this afternoon.

He was cruising down I-215 in Las Vegas, on his way to pick up a bass, in his self-driving Tesla. He sent me this image of his dashboard display, showing the relative position of nearby vehicles as well as speed, posted speed limit, temperature, and the fact that he was on the phone with me.

Outrageously cool.

Adios, memory foam mattress

After sheltering the free full size bed and box springs on our porch for four days, we put it out at the curb last night for trash pickup this morning.

We also put out a king size memory foam mattress that we no longer need.

Someone took the conventional mattress and box springs overnight, so the trash haulers only had to contend with the memory foam.

Free bed

Somehow, we find ourselves with an extra bed that must leave the house to let us configure the upstairs to our liking.

In the past, we've been able to put cast-off items like appliances, furniture and other stuff at the curb in front of our house and someone would come along and help themselves to it - sometimes in less than an hour.

Not so with this bed. Maria and I wrestled it down the stairs and out the front door yesterday afternoon and put it back together at curbside. Then we waited for it to disappear. The Little League Baseball season is underway in the park across the intersection and there was lots of traffic up and down our street, but nobody took the bed. We even advertised it on three local Facebook pages.

Finally, as dusk approached and it looked like rain, we hauled it up onto the front porch.

I suspect the reason nobody wants it has to do with the disgusting lifestyle of the people who rented our house for nine years, up until last August. When they moved out, they put a huge pile of trash at the curb and it reeked so badly that neighborhood kids crossed the street rather than walk past it. It could be that townspeople, knowing what kind of animals lived in our house previously, don't want the bed because they think it is filled with bedbugs and/or hideous stink.

I amended the advertisements to emphasize that it's clean and we brought it with us when we moved here from Arkansas and that there's nothing wrong with it, we just have one bed too many.

If nobody takes it before Friday, we'll put it out for the trash collection.

Happy Birthday, Morgan!

My lovely and brilliant stepdaughter Morgan is 34 years old today. I'm very proud of her.

Happy birthday to a friend

This is the first April 13 in 75 years that my friend Doreen Tracey isn't alive to celebrate her birthday. Cancer and pneumonia took her in January.

Porch furniture

I'm evaluating this piece of patio furniture for the Amazon Vine Program.

It took me about 90 minutes yesterday afternoon to assemble. I could have probably done it under an hour were it not for windy conditions on our front porch.

I think I like it. Maria loves it.

Pardon the porch floor. It will get a new coat of paint soon.

Damned Chinese spammers

I just spent the better part of an hour deleting spam from the comments on my blog, left last night by some asshole in China.

In the process, I found hundreds of other posts from spammers.

I am seriously considering turning off comments.

Gross blog negligence

I'm assembling a profit and loss statement for our commercial building in Jonesboro, Ark. in preparation for filing a tax return for our LLC.

In the process, I've been using last year's blog posts to refresh my memory about what improvements were made and when. I am also reminded of how badly I've neglected this blog, largely because we spent pretty much all of 2017 moving our stuff back to Thorntown, selling our Arkansas house and un-doing the horrible damage done by our Thorntown tenants in the nine years they lived here. I only posted 132 times last year, making it the least active year since I started the blog in the spring of 2004.

Last year's focus on getting back to Indiana also reduced my motorcycle mileage to double digits.

Algot!

What can you do with a closet that's 3 feet deep and 19 inches wide?

It turns out that the IKEA Algot storage system is a perfect fit.

Maria and I spent less than $100 on components yesterday morning at the Indianapolis IKEA story, assembled the lower unit in the afternoon and finished the upper shelves this morning. Maria did all the hard work on the upper shelves.

The closet was a nasty, dirty little space with crumbling plaster when we moved here. Maria wallpapered it a few months ago and we completed the project today. Woo-hoo!

515

A message from the Thorntown Toan Board president was included with a recent utility bill advising that prominently displayed house numbers are needed to help emergency personnel to respond to calls for help.

Our house at 515 S. Pearl St. is among the offenders. I don't recall if it was us or the renters who did it, but there were stick-on numbers - they looked like the numbers the Department of Natural Resources requires on boats - on the north side of our mailbox. They faced north and couldn't be readily seen from the street and the "1" is missing. I peeled them off and threw them into the trash.

"To aid residents with updates to their homes Boy Scout Troop 743 plans to provide decals and help with installation if necessary as part of an Eagle Scout project," the notice says.

Rather than wait for the Scouts to bring me cheesy-looking boat numbers, I bought some fancy brass numbers at Menards and installed them to the base of a front porch column last week.

As far as emergency responders are concerned, we are a little more than 500 yards east of the Sugar Creek Township Volunteer Fire Department's main station, which also includes an ambulance. We can see the station from our front porch.

I was reminded of that about 4:30 a.m. today when Jack and Dora howled long and loud in response to a siren from the fire station, waking us from a sound sleep.

Weather

I'm testing the AcuRite 5-in-1 weather station, courtesy of the Amazon Vine Program.

The mounting site on the privacy fence between our house and our utility shed isn't perfect, but it seems to work OK.

It took me about an hour from the time the UPS guy delivered it until I had everything set up and functioning, which is pretty good.

So far, the rain gauge hasn't gotten any action, but that should change overnight.

Disaster averted

The Samsung microwave oven we bought on Dec. 30 and installed the next day, began emitting an odor suggestive of burning or melting plastic when we used it last week.

We used it sparingly for a couple of days, then stopped using it altogether, pending inspection by a service technician. It is, after all, under warranty from Samsung in addition to a Lowe's extended warranty.

The tech showed up yesterday afternoon and discovered that one of the plugs had been incorrectly installed at the factory in Malaysia, causing a short circuit that was melting the plug and would eventually cause a fire.

He didn't have the replacement parts with him, but I expect him back today or tomorrow to complete the repair.

Thank God, we didn't burn the house down.

Hard day's night

I covered the graveside services for Boone County Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Pickett this evening.

It was the most technically challenging shoot I've had as long as I can remember. I shot more than 400 frames and ended up with only 9 that were worthy of publication. The problem was low light because the funeral procession didn't start to arrive at the cemetery until sundown. But the time everyone was in place, it was full-on dark. If it hadn't been for lighting provided by the TV stations, I wouldn't have gotten anything at all.

I was shooting for the Lebanon Reporter and Maria said she was pleased with the images, but I am painfully aware that my 12-year-old Nikon D200 was right at the edge of its capabilities. If I'm going to keep shooting, I want a new camera. The guy standing next to me had a digital SLR that sounded like a machine gun to my bolt-action Nikon.

This is my favorite shot of the evening. A trumpeter playing taps.

Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, the turkey vultures are back in Thorntown

They’re back.

The sky over our back yard is full of turkey vultures.

They soar silently on huge black wings, seeking out rising warm air and flapping in to a landing in the tops of a line of tall trees 74 yards behind our house. The trees separate a broad expanse of lawn from an abandoned railroad right-of-way that is now the Big Four Trail, a hiking, biking trail that runs from here to Lebanon.

We noticed them for the first time in the spring of 2005. It seems unlikely that we would have missed a roost of 50-or-so turkey vultures for the four consecutive springs that we lived here, so maybe they relocated to our neighborhood after something forced them to move.

I’ve long enjoyed watching them fly. I used to see them when my ex and I took our sons camping at Turkey Run State Park a few miles southwest of here back in the 1970s. That’s when I first looked them up in Roger Tory Petersen’s "Field Guide to the Birds of North America" and learned they are the second-largest birds in North America - eclipsed only by the nearly extinct California Condor, itself a form of vulture.

I admit I was mildly concerned about all those vultures peering down at my 4-month-old Australian shepherd puppy Pete back in 2006.

So I went online to learn more.

Turns out, there’s no need to worry. Turkey vultures don’t kill anything. They won’t touch anything that isn’t dead. Besides that, they will pass on dead carnivores like dogs, cats and coyotes, preferring to dine on dead herbivores like sheep, goats and cattle.

The Cherokees called the turkey vulture the “peace eagle” because it soars like the predatory bird, but does not kill.

They are about 25 inches from end to end with a six-foot wingspan. The average adult turkey vulture weighs in at 6 pounds.

The turkey vultures around here are migratory, wintering in the U.S. south or perhaps as far south as Central America.

I remember seeing a humorous piece on the old Disneyland TV show back in the ‘50s about the festivities surrounding the return of the turkey vultures each spring to Hinkley, Ohio, much the same way the swallows come back to San Juan Capistrano on the same day each year.

My first sighting back in 2006 was on March 8 and here they are on March 8 again.

I also discovered turkey vultures even have their own fan club - The Turkey Vulture Society (https://turkeyvulturesociety.wordpress.com/the-turkey-vulture-society/).

Bill Kohlmoos, president of the Turkey Vulture Society, wrote a fascinating piece about the birds in which he points out they have a rich social life, like to play aerial tag, and will invite other roosts to join them if they find a particularly large meal.

In California, he said, they’ve even been known to tell condors about major feasts and guide them to the scene.

Among his anecdotes:
“…it was reported by a person who had studied turkey vultures for many years that one would wait every morning for his son, a young school boy, to come out of his house. The vulture would follow the boy several blocks to the school bus stop and then wait on top of a telephone pole until the boy got on the bus. In the afternoon the bird would be back on the pole waiting for the boy's return, and then follow him home.”
And:
“One lady wrote us that she has built a small wooden tower-like feeder in her back yard and puts out food for her friends each day. One day she noticed that after eating their breakfast, the vultures had gone down to the lawn in her yard and six of them were in a circle around a soccer-size ball left on the lawn by her grandchildren. The vultures were hitting the ball back and forth to each other by butting it with their head and beak. Each day thereafter they played this game. And although there were four balls of different colors, they always picked the orange one.”
And:
“Turkey Vultures are affectionate and often make good pets. When a bird is injured and taken into rehab he will become emotionally attached to his handler and follow him around and watch him, much like a pet dog. They love to bring an object to a person and then play tug-of-war.”
And:
“A lady in Southern California wrote that she and her husband would drive their car five miles from town and take a daily walk in the country with their dog. A turkey vulture would join them, soaring above and watching them. And then one day at home she broke a leg and the walks were not possible for a while. One day she was in her back yard on crutches and there was her turkey vulture sitting on the fence, waiting to say hello. He had found her in a town of 12,000 people!”

Turkey vultures are covered by an international migratory bird treaty that makes it a federal crime to kill or injured them or to possess one without the appropriate permit as a wildlife rehabilitator.

Beware!

Beware the Giant Cod!