Upping my Ebay game

Getting serious about selling odds and ends on Ebay with my new light tent.

It was a bitch to assemble because the Tinker Toy-style connectors were crazy tight on the structural rods, to the point where I had to pound them to get the fabric over the frame.

And the LEDs are certainly bright enough but they have a bluish cast that has to be corrected in Photoshop.

That said, it makes for impressive product photos.

87 years ago this month

That's my mom center top. I suppose the placement indicates she was class president. I'd forgotten that, if I ever knew it.

Out of the past

It's been 2½ years since we moved back to Indiana from Arkansas, but we still have a lot of stuff still in moving boxes.

I've been unpacking a few at a time as I figure out where to put the contents and discovered my 3rd generation iPod Touch. It has 60 GB of memory and held my entire music collection when I set it aside in favor of my first iPhone - the iPhone 5 - which had a similar capacity. It's been idle since March, 2013. Happily, I still have a pre-Lightning charging cable, so I plugged it in and recharged the battery with little expectations that it still worked.

Damned if it didn't come to life after more than seven years in drawers and boxes!

I've tried a couple of times to resuscitate my first iPod, a 5th generation iPod Classic that Maria and my sons gave me for my birthday in July, 2006, but it doesn't seem to want to wake up.

A horseshoe in the front yard! Who knew?

Our front yard continues to yield up surprises.

I spent an hour Saturday morning digging targets that my Garrett ACE 300 metal detector found before the long-awaited heat and humidity took me out of my comfort zone. I dug a pull tab some scrap metal and a bottle cap before I hit paydirt with a deeply buried yellow bungee cord. I figured that would be hard to top until I dug a solid 71 signal that turned out to be a horseshoe. It was about three feet away from the sidewalk and about 5 inches down. My initial thought was that it was left over from someone's game of horseshoes. But upon closer examination, I noticed there as still a bent-over nail in it, suggesting it fell off of a horse that was standing in front of the house sometime after it was built in 1903.

The original garage was still standing when we bought the place in December, 2000 and its construction suggested it was built to house a horse and buggy. The original occupants undoubtedly got around in a horse-drawn buggy, since automobiles were still in their infancy at the time.

Gazing out across the lawn, it's hard to imagine what else lies beneath the surface. I've had visions of gold and silver jewelry, but so far it's given up a few pennies, some toy cars, and a lot of trash.

I'm still not very good at spotting the targets in the holes I dig because everything is the same brown clay color. I'd be completely helpless without my Garrett pinpointer to guide me to the target once the hole is dug.

I'd be digging this afternoon were it not for the rain - .85 inches of it since midnight. I refuse to dig in mud. I guess that makes me a fair weather metal detectorist.

Hostage situation grumbling

I feel like I'm being held hostage by the pandemic and the weather and neither is getting better fast enough.

Because I'm pushing 75 and therefore in a high risk group for Covid-19, I have severely curtailed my travels away from home. That got even more restrictive last week when our 2002 Subaru Forester's transmission informed me that I would be lucky to get a block from home before it failed completely. The car has more than 250,000 miles on the odometer and isn't worth the estimated $2,500 it would probably cost to fix the transmission. So it sits deep in the driveway while we decide how to best dispose of it - sell it for scrap or donate it to some charity.

For the last several weeks, I've just used it to go to the post office to check our box. It's only about a 1 mile hike round trip, but this is turning out to be the coldest, most persistently crappy spring I can remember and not the kind of weather that makes me want to go for a longish walk.

Which brings me to my other complaint. The weather has been cold, rainy, and windy more days than not which dampens my enthusiasm for metal detecting in our yard. I know there's still lots of targets out there, but I need sunny calm days in the upper 60s and above to feel comfortable poking around with my Garrett ACE 300 metal detector. So I gaze out the window and curse the weather and the lack of encouragement in the forecast.

And today was especially aggravating because our electrical power failed at 1:41 a.m. and wasn't restored until 9:01 a.m., meaning my morning coffee was postponed and Maria and I had to do our early morning routines in the cold and dark.

My new day job.

I got interested in metal detecting earlier this year when I found myself watching hours and hours of metal detecting videos on YouTube.

Towards the end of January, I decided to pull the trigger and ordered a $245 Garrett ACE 300 detector from Amazon.com. It arrived on Feb. 3, but the cold weather hung on for what seemed like several months. In the meantime I continued to accumulate equipment - A hip/thigh pack for finds and gear (free from the Vine program), a pair of cut-resistant gloves for $11.49, a plastic backpacker's toilet trowel for $4.61 - later replaced with a purpose-made serrated digging tool for $8.57, a sand scoop for $7.73, a serrated shovel for $29.99, a Garrett Pro-Pointer pinpointer for $127.45, and most recently a pair of Garrett gloves for $9.95 because the cut-resistant gloves were a touch too big. That's a total investment of $451.67, thus far... And as of today, I have recovered 88 cents in change.

The Corona virus pandemic severely limited my access to detecting sites, which was fine with me because I want to learn as much as I can within the privacy of my own yard. The front yard is getting most of my attention because the back yard was mostly churned up by an abortive garage project in 2007. The house was built in 1903 and there are plenty of targets in the front yard. My first hole yielded a discarded piece of flashing from the replacement windows we had installed in November, 2017.

So far, the most interesting things the yard has given up are a matchbox-size 1940 Mercedes touring car, a tow truck, a small toy gun, some bottle caps and some can slaw (what's left of cans after they get shredded by a mower). The only other location I've searched is the city park diagonally across the street from my house, focusing on the pea gravel surfaced playground area. That's where the sand scoop comes in. Its holes are just right for sifting pea gravel and have yielded up a bunch of small change and a matchbox Mustang. My first foray to the playground was the day my pinpointer arrived, but I didn't think I'd need it. I took it along the next time I detected the playground and quickly realized how wrong I had been - it's a huge help in narrowing down a search.

I posted this photo of my Monday discoveries, noting that a quarter and eight pennies is not enough to quit my day job. Then I realized that metal detecting IS my day job.

Hunkered down

The Coronavirus has come to the U.S. and, like most other folks, I'm more-or-less quarantining myself.

Among other things, it was a good reason to dig out the thermometer I got a year or two ago from the Amazon Vine program. As you can see, my forehead registered 98.0 degrees, just like it has since I put new batteries in the thing.

The governor has advised all restaurants to go to carry-out only and no dining in for the foreseeable future. Consequently, my trip to the Lafayette Sam's Club revealed that the food court is closed and cordoned off. Likewise, all of the tables and chair at Starbucks are stacked in a corner and every order is to go. Suits me. I always get my mocha cappuccino to go anyway.

It's disturbing to find myself in a high-risk group for coronoavirus - 74 years old and a Type 2 diabetic. But I know a lot of other people who are probably more vulnerable than I am. For instance there's my next-door neighbor who has COPD and went to the hospital overnight earlier this week because he had trouble breathing. My list of vulnerable friends includes a woman who is morbidly obese and her heart patient husband, my insulin-dependent mother-in-law, several similarly elderly (!) members of the Indianapolis BMW Motorcycle Club, my ex-wife who is only a year younger than I am, the husband of a cousin who is a profoundly compromised heart patient who has spent months at the Mayo Clinic, probably all of the members of my high school graduating class, and on and on.

I was heartened today to hear reports of a possible cure in the form of an inexpensive malaria drug that is being tested in France. If it works, it could stop this nasty virus dead in its tracks before we find ourselves with a replay of the 1919 influenza pandemic.

In the meantime, I'm staying home as much as possible and checking my temperature several times a day.

They call it the Garrett "carrot"

My Garrett pinpointer arrived this morning and everyone on the metal detecting sites tells me it's a game-changer.

However, I left it at home this afternoon when I went to a nearby park to sift sand around the playground area. I figured the pinpointer wouldn't be necessary. As it turned out, I could have used it to save myself a lot of scooping.

This was my first hunt away from our yard and I'm moderately pleased with the stuff I unearthed in the space of an hour.

I found a little Mustang and 14 cents in change, along with a nail and some other trash. I'm a long way from being able to understand what my metal detector is telling me, but I'm having fun and learning.

Stepping up

Four and a half years is an eternity in iPhone development. We finally retired our well-used iPhone 6 phones and stepped up to two matching iPhone 11s. Let the learning curve begin.

First new phones since Sept. 29, 2015. We keep our vehicles a long time too.

Targets galore in the front yard

My Garrett ACE 300 metal detector arrived today. I assembled it and did a short survey of our front yard, with the sensitivity set for "jewelry."

I got several strong hits, but I'm smart enough to know that I still have much to learn and it's a little early to start seeing dollar signs.

Words from a friend, now long gone

I was cleaning out my email this week and found this - the last email I received from Mouseketeer Doreen Tracey on June 16, 2005, responding to my happy birthday message a couple of months earlier:

Dear John,

Thank you for remembering. I kind of skip over the birthdays the past few years. As well as not going into my in-box to check emails. Too much work. Anyway, things are fine here in my world. Hope all is going well with your family. Will bring you up to speed, once I open my all my emails which is now over a thousand +. Always doreen

Doreen died of pneumonia as a consequence of cancer two years ago this month.

Happy birthday K1200GT, still running like new

My 2003 BMW K1200GT was born/built in Berlin on this date 17 years ago.

The photo was shot at 11:03 a.m., Feb. 22, 2003 at Revard BMW Motorcycles in Indianapolis the first time I sat on the bike and wondered if it could be a worth successor to the 1991 K100RS that carried me more than 160,000 miles.

It was.

I took delivery of the GT with 15 miles on the odometer at 10:04 a.m. on March 8, 2003. There were several inches of snow on the ground, but the roads were clear and I don’t remember being particularly cold on the ride home to Thorntown.

Since then, I’ve ridden it to 10 BMW MOA rallies:

2015 - Billings, MT
2014 - Minneapolis, MN
2012 - Sedalia, MO
2010 - Redmond, OR
2009 - Johnson City, TN
2008 - Gillette, WY
2006 - Essex Junction, VT
2005 - Lima, OH
2004 - Spokane, WA
2003 - Charleston, WV
It carried me to Daytona Beach Bike Week in 2010 and 2013, down the Pacific Coast Highway a couple of times, to Las Vegas and Portland to visit my sons, a few times to visit friends in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and back to Indianapolis three times for MotoGP.

All this riding and more add up to 79,790 miles on the odometer as it sits in my shed today.

The GT, for those who care about such things, was the K1200RS with color-matched saddlebags and amenities like an electric-powered windscreen, electronic cruise control, and heated seat and handgrips. The model was introduced in 2003 and I had the first one sold by Revard’s.

I added MotoLight caliper-mounted halogen driving lights after a year or so and upgraded them with LED bulbs in 2012. I also added a removable passenger backrest at Maria’s request in 2003, but haven’t used it in years because she’s not keen to ride these days. The Marsee tank bag purchased when I bought the bike finally started falling apart a couple of years ago and I replaced it with a Nelson-Rigg bag with a solar panel in October, 2012.

I also had a Gerbings power cord connected directly to the battery in 2013 after I discovered the accessory circuit didn’t want to run my heated gear and my Garmin Zumo 550 GPS at the same time. That discovery meant I rode to Daytona and back without electric heat, other than seat and grips.

I added a Pirates Lair sidestand footpad in 2003, but it fell/sheared off a few years ago at a Return to Shiloh Rally and I never got around to putting it back on.

Maria bought me an XM Roady satellite radio setup for my birthday in 2004. I used it and later a Roady II until March, 2010 when I bought a used Garmin Zumo 550 GPS with XM radio receiver from BMW friend Charlie Parsons. It was the elegant GPS/XM solution I’d wanted for a long time and satisfied my need to more gadgetry.

So, after a dozen years and a bunch of tweaks, I have the bike set up to suit me. (Oh, I forgot to mention I bought a pair of oversized saddlebags from Revard’s sometime around 2005, which come in handy for long-haul touring.)

I look over the new models whenever I visit a BMW dealership, but other than the high tech safety electronic features like traction control, I don’t see anything that makes me want a new bike.

Remembering a friend

My friend Doreen Tracey died two years ago today of pneumonia, ending a two-year battle with cancer.

We hadn't spoken for a couple of years and I was about to email her when I did a Google search today and learned of her passing.

For those of us lucky enough to have memories of the 1950s, the name “Doreen” has a special significance. Doreen Isabell Tracey was an original cast member of the Mickey Mouse Club.

Doreen spent her entire life in the entertainment industry.

She was born April 13, 1943 to Sid and Bessie Tracey. The Traceys were vaudevillians entertaining the troops in England and Doreen was born in London.

The family returned to the States when she was four and moved to Hollywood, where Sid and vaudeville friend Ben Blue opened a place called Slappy Maxie on Wilshire Boulevard.

In a move that would shape his young daughter's life, Sid also opened the Rainbow Dance Studio.

Growing up as a normal American little girl, Doreen had the advantage of an extended show business “family.” Her “Uncle Ben” Blue was a prominent fixture in her life and she lived with him for a time when her mother was hospitalized with tuberculosis and her father struggled to keep his business afloat. Jimmy Durante seized upon her childhood name of “Do-Do” and delighted in embarrassing her by announcing, “Look who's here – it's Sid's little DoDo bird!”

She was an only child, and her best buddy was her cat, Sylvester.

Doreen was answering the phone at the Rainbow Studios that fateful day when the call came from Lee Travers at Walt Disney Studios in early 1955 announcing the search for talented kids for the pilot of the Mickey Mouse Club.
She sang “Cross Over the Bridge” in a Little Bo-Peep costume for the initial audition in March.

As one of the original Mouseketeers, Doreen remained with the show through its entire run.

After the Mickey Mouse Club ended, Doreen went to John Burroughs High School in Burbank where she fell in love with Robert Washburn. The two eloped to Tijuana and, a short time later, Doreen found herself pregnant with a son, Bradley Allen Washburn. The marriage was short-lived and Doreen soon became a single mother.

During the 1960s, she performed with the Andressi Brothers in Las Vegas and elsewhere and appeared on episodes of My Three Sons, Donna Reed and Day in Court.

She also toured Alaska and Vietnam with the USO. Her recollections of Vietnam landed her a job as a consultant on the film "Apocalypse Now!" where she contributed elements of the surfing-under-fire sequence.

Doreen fell out of grace with Walt Disney Studios in the mid-1970s when she did two nude photo layouts for Gallery magazine.

That's when I first made her acquaintance. About the same time as the first Gallery layout, writer Jerry Bowles published a where-are-they-now book about the Mouseketeers called Forever Hold Your Banner High. A press kit turned up on my desk at The Indianapolis News one day with a mail-back postcard to request phone interviews with Doreen and/or Jerry Bowles. I checked both boxes and, about a week later, found myself chatting with Doreen. We hit it off and have kept in touch ever since.

Since the Gallery flap, Doreen and the studios have been reconciled.

Doreen lived in Simi Valley with her son.

In an email exchange in April, 2013, she related that this has been a particularly stressful period with the passing of fellow Mouseketeer Annette Funicello, friend Jonathan Winters and ballerina Maria Tallchief.

“She practiced with the Ballet Russ de Monte Carlo company, as Mr. Balanchine gave instructions to his troupe. He never spoken above a whisper to his beautiful swans. The rehearsals were at Sid's dance studio. I watched in wonder at her dedication. Although, I never achieved the perfection of Ms. Tallchief, she did inspire this lonely little girl to become a good enough dancer to get by.”

Working hard for egg nog

I had a hankering for some Dean's Egg Nog, the brand I've loved since childhood, and I knew they stocked it at the local Dollar General store.

But when I headed for the car, I thrust my hand into my left front pants pocked and discovered my keys weren't there. A quick review told me they were almost certainly locked in the shed, where I had stashed some items that were taking up space in the kitchen.

But the only key to the padlock on the shed doors is on my keyring and almost all of the tools I need to break into the shed were, likewise, locked inside the shed.

I finally decided the only solution was to take the hinges off of one of the doors, but of course, my impact driver reamed out the grooves on a couple of the 14-year-old hinge screws. I finally was able to back it out with channel locks and, voila, there were my keys on the Craftsman multi-drawer tool chest.

With Maria's help, I screwed the hinges back into place and, hoping that Dollar General still had some Dean's Egg Nog, I headed downtown.

My luck was in and I scored the last two quarts in the cooler.

Makes me happy

It makes me happy to have my collection of cowboy china on display again. We packed it away in the summer of 2017 when we prepared to move home to Indiana after a decade in Arkansas.

It remained in boxes and the china cabinet stayed in our storage unit until this week.

Maria repainted the interior of the cabinet and I installed three puck lights to illuminate the top shelf. I'm missing a bunch of saucers, but I'm confident they're in a box somewhere in the house.

I first encountered Wallace china with the cattle brands around the rim in restaurants in Wyoming when my parents took me to Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 1956 and got serious about collecting the genre when I found some on Ebay.

Maria was on vacation this week and we spent the last seven days on projects to bring our house back to full functionality after renters abused it for nine years. The upstairs was a mess - they let their dogs use the carpet for a toilet and the carpet was full of fleas.

We set up our king size bed in the dining room and put the dining room table in the living room while we struggled to set things right. With Austin's help, we moved the bed upstairs to a properly appointed bedroom last Sunday. Maria undertook the Herculean task of pulling the carpet staples out of two stairways on Monday and we moved the dining room table to the dining room and unfurled a new rug in the living room. Later in the week, I hitched up the trailer and we brought the china cabinet and a dresser home from storage and retrieved the buffet as well, along with the table linens I inherited from my mother.

Pete - seven years gone

We said goodbye to our beloved Pete, our first Aussie, seven years ago today.

Pete was the victim of faulty DNA, specifically a hereditary liver problem. His liver failed and his abdomen filled with fluid, putting pressure on all of his internal organs.

He died just a few days after his seventh birthday - much too young. He was a sweet sensitive boy and we loved him dearly.

Come on, winter

I've kinda gone nuts over Duluth Trading Co. clothing, especially after my stepson Austin Dunbar (whose birthday is today) showed up in a pair of fire hose pants his employer gave him.

In the past couple of weeks, I've bought two pairs of fire hose pants. And yesterday I bought a pair of fleece-lined fire hose pants and this ultra-cool infantry-style sweater.

Bring it on, winter. I'm ready.

Happy 49th, Steve

It's hard to believe my son Steve is 49 years old today.

As far as I'm concerned, this is not Halloween, it's Steve Flora Day.

Fire Hose Pants

My son Austin, who has a job as a garage door installer, was here over the weekend sporting a pair of Duluth Trading Co. Fire Hose Pants.

His employer outfitted all of his crew with a pair and I was very very impressed.

So I drove over to the Duluth Trading Co. store on the far eastside of Noblesville this morning and found a pair to my liking that are a perfect fit. This is made even more exciting by the fact that, instead of my usual 40x28 size that I've worn for more than 20 years, I can fit into 38x28.

Thank you very much Trulicity - a once-weekly injectable drug that my doctor prescribed for diabetes that also suppresses appetite.

The pants fit perfectly, feel great and look pretty good.

Remembering Mom

My mother, Eileen I. Flora, left us on this date in 2000. Here she is in my Honda del Sol, out for a jaunt with the top off. I think she kinda liked it.