Ride Like You Mean It

A Perfect Day for Some Trail Work

2012-01-21T10:19:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday was cold, dawning in the teens and barely topping out at freezing. But it was clear, with few high clouds, and the harsh bitter winds had calmed down. So early in the afternoon, we set out to do some long-postponed trail work along the stream near the northern property line.

The first order of business was a recent deadfall across the trail at the big pool. We had been watching the tree’s increasingly perilous posture for some time, and finally, a month or two ago, it let loose. It crashed into the fork of a nearby oak, briefly wedging itself high across the trail before gravity finally broke its back and settled it to earth. With a few quick cuts, we cleared the way and set the cut section alongside the trail.

Our big task was clearing a good-sized dam the recent heavy rains had formed just above the second stream crossing. A stately sycamore, rooted in the bank of the stream with water rushing over its roots, had caught several sections of massive logs, which formed the armature of a dam of brush and debris. The dam funneled the rushing water hard against the western bank, eroding and flooding the stream crossing, and eating away the bank and trail immediately downstream. The vast slack water it created upstream has also allowed the streambed to fill with sand and silt, obscuring the rocks we had so diligently placed as stepping stones in the warmth of summertime.

We paused at the upper crossing and changed from our trail shoes to high muck boots. And what an outfit: Woolen cap, ear protectors with face shield, thick layers of warm fleece, chainsaw chaps tucked into/over knee-high rubber boots, and idling chainsaw. I crossed the upper crossing, walked down the bank, and waded into the icy rushing waters. The waters swirled around my calves and undermined the sand on which I stood.

Mary began tearing the dam apart from the western bank, using the larger pieces to shore up the eroded trail edge. While she did that, I started attacking the middle of the dam, grabbing handsful of leaves and muck with one hand while holding the growling saw in the other.

With the loose debris gone, the spine of the dam was laid bare. A tree trunk maybe six or eight inches in diameter that spanned from well onto the east bank to the roots of the sycamore. I was able to easily saw chunks from the center and pass them end-over-end to Mary, who placed the chunks strategically along the stream bank where they would do the most good. The heart wood was a beautiful deep rusty color like cedar, but without any noticeable odor and much denser than cedar would have been.

We cleared more of the loose debris from amongst the logs, tossing the mouldering leaves and twigs into the swirling waters downstream to disappear. Bit by bit, we picked that dam apart, and as we did, the slackwater energized, resuming its temporarily impeded drive towards the river. As it accelerated, it slowly and deliberately scoured away the accumulated sand and silt, reclaiming its deeper channel and gnawing away at the impudent banks.

The heart of the dam was a stout section of tree trunk, maybe ten feet long and fourteen inches in diameter. It appeared scoured and beaten, as though the stream had brought it to this place from some distance, or perhaps has relentlessly scoured it here once it lodged in place. This wood resisted the saw, and I had to work with some effort to free sections from it. Somehow, sand from the stream had found the saw chain and wreaked havoc with its edge, forcing me to push the saw harder than I would have liked, driving the acrid smell of hot wood from kerf, and reducing the ejecta to a dusty rain rather than the confetti-like curls that are the mark of a keen blade.

Once freed, the four-foot long sections were massive and unwieldy, and it was all both of us could do to roll them awkwardly into place downstream, filling a hollow the waters had carved where the trail had so recently passed.

With the heart gone, the remnants of the dam slowly dissipated with the fast-flowing waters, leaving just the worn root ball, stranded high and dry nestled against the sycamore. Together Mary and I wrestled it loose and sent it over the edge into the stream below, to dam or be damned once more. When we were done, we were both feeling the day’s cold in the bottom of the narrow stream valley, with the sun already disappearing behind the grey trees and high flanks of the rocky hills. We abandoned our ambitions for any further trail work for the moment, succumbing instead to the lure of a warm fire where we could dry out and warm our extremities once again.

We have yet to go back and see how matters have settled out since our reengineering efforts. Maybe this weekend: it promises to be cold once again, but this time with rain, sleet and snow as well. Perfect weather for getting outside and doing some trail work, I say.

Halloween 1979

2011-10-12T19:59:00.002-04:00

The cold comes on suddenly on the edge of the Northeast Kingdom, where it never really goes far away. It lurks just out of mind all the time, and drops in impulsively from time to time just to assert itself, lest anyone doubt its primacy.

In late October cold is a given, and the frost was truly on the pumpkins. It destroyed the faltering vines and left ember orange fruit naked and exposed across the roadside fields. Worse luck for the farmer, it was a hard freeze; hard enough to seize up the flesh of the large succulent pumpkins and slowly rend it with a million tiny daggers of ice. The larger the pumpkin, the worse it fared. They sat ruined in the midday sun, slowly deflating into mottled puddles of pulp and seeds, beyond resurrection at the point of their greatest glory.

But here and there, scattered throughout the field, a careful observer could spy smaller pumpkins that survived the cold. Fleshier, drier varieties, with less moisture to freeze and better insulated by their own mass, they managed to pass the cold unscathed. None larger than a man’s head, some as small as a softball, all perfectly shaped and brilliant orange.

The field was a total loss, not worth the farmer’s effort to glean even as feed for his cows and pigs. We had free rein to gather what we wanted. Yet I could find no one among my jaded and aloof compatriots to share my enthusiasm for the task. So I set out alone, walking the dusty shoulder of the road to the farmer’s field with my empty sack over my shoulder and the late afternoon sun warm on my face.

I filled the sack with a half-dozen or so pumpkins of varying size and description, and stuffed two more smallish gourd-like fruit in the pockets of my army jacket. My shadow stretched long and far before me as I returned to my room. There was still time left before nightfall, if I worked without delay.

As short walk and a brief stop in the general store later, I settled in the communal kitchen with my pocket knife and began the work of transforming the lowly pumpkins into Jack-o-lanterns. I did the best I could with the time available and tools on hand; no simple triangle eyes and square gap teeth for me. A Jack-o-lantern must have a personality of its own, and its native shape of course determines its personality. So a certain amount of deliberation must take place in the span between the initial craniotomy and innard scooping, and the final flourish of rind striping intended to release the pumpkin’s inner demon.

The sun was just set, the cool evening air settling rapidly. I now had six Jack-o-lanterns, where just a few hours earlier there were only orphaned pumpkins abandoned in a field. It was time.

I walked briskly and purposefully down the winding gravel lane to the old farm graveyard, sack slung over my shoulder now filled with Jack-o-lanterns. It was a short walk, less than a mile through the rolling hills and fields, but the light faded quickly and stars appeared faintly overhead.

Within the bounds of this tidy plot lay a score of graves, most sharing the name of this ancient farm, and a few others represented as well. I found the boundary stones marking each corner of the sanctified ground, and gently placed a Jack-o-lantern on each, face to the cardinal points of the compass. The others I placed atop the tallest gravestones, facing east. I lit the small candles inside them, and then climbed up the hill behind the graveyard and sat among the balsam fir as the eerie glow countered the deepening twilight.

RDWHAH

2011-02-12T18:50:00.001-05:00

I posted this to an online homebrewing forum, and thought it worth reposting here as well:

For anyone who hasn't been paying attention, the acronym 'RDWHAH' gets tossed around here a lot...it's pretty much my stock response to most questions posted here, as well as a solid philosophy of life. ('RDWHAH' = "Relax, Don't Worry, Have A Homebrew'--which I think Charlie Papazian came up with BITD)

Seriously. This isn't rocket surgery. If you're getting angsty, you're doing it wrong. Remember there are still cultures that make their beer by chewing up grains, spitting them out so the salivary amylase converts the starch to sugar, then letting native airborne yeasts do their thing. They catch a buzz off of it just like any beer, and without software or hydrometers or anything.

Beer=Alcoholic beverage made from fermenting sugars whose primary source is from grain—as opposed to from fruits, vegetables, honey, et cetera. Got a source of grain-based sugars? Got other sugars to add in just for fun? Got yeast? Then you'll get beer--I swear.

I (and my friends and family) have enjoyed, and finished up, pretty much all of the hundreds of batches of beer, cider and wine I've ever made. I can think of two experimental beers I dumped post-bottling and one or two that I forgot about and left in secondary so long I just didn't care to bottle them, but otherwise, wherever I began, I ended many months later with two cases of empty bottle once again.

Don't worry about re-creating something fabulous that someone else has made. That's one benchmark for sure, but if no one ever struck out on their own, we'd still be drinking just murky ales, or that saliva-based stuff I mentioned above. Go for a style, but don't be a slave to it...most great styles were created from a need to adapt to local resources, not for any noble adherence to the rules.

And Reinheitsgebot? ...Don’t even get me started! It's not about beer purity; it was about protecting interests. It's like passing a law saying "you can henceforth only make soup from water, salt, onion and frog. Anything else is not soup."

The list of things you can brew with/from is pretty much endless, and just to mention a couple I will say pumpkin (messy), red beets (great color, gotta cook 'em, mash 'em, and then, well, mash 'em) mint in lieu of hops (absolutely awful, but re-brewed into a kick-ass stout) sorghum syrup (disappointing, but had promise) an entire watermelon (blenderized first--did you know that once strained, it only leaves about a fist-size lump of solids?) and basically anything else in the house that contains or could be converted into fermentable sugars or has an interesting flavor or aroma (I'm looking at you, spice rack).

My basic point is: Follow the basic instructions and observe basic rules of cleanliness and sanitation common to cooking and canning. There is no reason for this wonderful pastime to accrue any stress or worry or angst. It should relieve you of stress. If you are worrying about it YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

I lay awake at night

2010-11-19T19:03:00.002-05:00

...thinking about how much coffee I drink.

On Caribou Barbie:

2010-11-18T19:23:00.000-05:00

"...Palin is running for Prom Queen of America and she’s more than willing to give out free cookies (literally) to bribe the feel-good vote." —from PoliticsUSA.com

Heh. That's funny.

This is Why I Do Not Ride in Groups

2010-11-15T20:54:00.001-05:00

I generally avoid discussing specific incidents, because they don’t often have a broader applicability or relevance. But I will make an exception for last weekend’s horrific accident in California—involving two cars, twelve motorcycles and twenty-one motorcyclists. Four motorcyclists and a passenger in one car died, and a number of motorcyclists were hospitalized for a variety of horrific and life-altering injuries.

Short version: ‘Riceboy’ attempts to pass a group of twelve motorcycles on a remote two-lane highway. Driver of oncoming vehicle panics, drives onto the right shoulder, over-corrects and swerves into the middle of the pack of motorcyclists. Car driver suffers fractures; his passenger dies from a motorcycle impacting the passenger-side door. ‘Riceboy’ fled the scene.

The injured car driver appears to be an innocent victim. ‘Riceboy’ is currently the object of a massive manhunt in both California and Mexico. But…

…But goddamn those motorcyclists. They should have known better.

Look—our roadways and our traffic laws and conventions are intended for units of one vehicle, whether that one unit is a motorcycle or a tandem tractor trailer. They are not meant for social organisms. The rare—and in this case, ironic, exceptions are funeral processions; but even those operate under strictly defined protocols, very constrained circumstances, under a societal imprimatur and generally with an official escort. But a pack of a dozen motorcycles, operating en masse?

Let’s assume the most concise configuration—six pairs of bikes, riding side-by-side, ‘ChiPs’ fashion. That alone will occupy about five to seven standard car lengths. Stretched out single-file, the same bikes could occupy up to fifteen car lengths. Now, in a perfect world, it shouldn’t matter. But as the members of the Saddletramps MC tragically found out, we live in a very imperfect world. Who knows why the driver of the mysterious gold Honda Civic couldn’t bear to stay behind a group of twelve motorcycles any longer? Maybe he didn’t like the sound of twenty-four loud pipes? People have all kinds of reasons for wanting or needing to pass, and we won’t know his explanation until he is brought to justice.

I have on several occasions observed large motorcycle groups under the direction of a “Ride Marshall,” an individual, often self-appointed, with the putative responsibility for overseeing the ‘safety’ of the group. The Ride Marshall generally starts their motorcycle first, then rides or steps into oncoming traffic, bringing it to a halt while the remainder of the group files onto the roadway one-at-a-time—a process which can take several minutes. This commandeering of the public roadway in this manner has no official sanction; it is simply done because nobody has the nerve to object. This group protocol would appear to provide some modicum of safety to the motorcyclists en masse (by excluding automobiles from their midst) but that appearance is simply an illusion. It creates an unnatural situation and an utterly false sense of security. Formation riding on public roadways neutralizes a motorcycle’s greatest inherent safety asset—its superior maneuverability, acceleration and performance.

I cannot fathom what riding gains by being part of a pack of a dozen or a score or several dozen or ten thousand riders; I get uncomfortable when another motorcyclist begins to encroach on any portion of my full lane-width. I know from experience that free range of lateral motion is a critical part of a motorcyclist’s defensive tools. Safe riding often depends on having a generous bubble of open space on all sides that allows me to make full use of a lane as circumstances vary. Having another rider in my space is just a bad practice, regardless of any fellowship gained by riding in close formation.

I know Saturday’s carnage is not the fault of the Saddletramps. But I can’t help but think that it didn’t have to happen to them, and that there were lots of little things they might have done to forestall such a tragic and senseless outcome. Whatever fellowship they set out share with one another in their close formation ride has been irrevocably shattered along with the lives of the survivors.

This is why I do not ride in groups.

Good old H.P. also foresaw the 'Tea Party...'

2010-11-03T19:50:00.001-04:00

...Otherwise, how could he have written this trenchant critique of the movement, 84 years ago?

“…the inability of the...mind to correlate all its contents…a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity…dissociated knowledge…such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein…either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age…a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind…This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly…with undecipherable characters…the seat occupied the centre, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge fore paws which clasped the croucher’s elevated knees…a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarising miasma welling out from this…perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity. The odour arising from the newly opened depths was intolerable, and…a nasty, slopping sound…It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. There was some peculiarly abominable quality about them…mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror…built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars...hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration. Slowly, amidst the distorted horrors of that indescribable scene…the titan Thing…slavered and gibbered like Polypheme cursing the fleeing ship of Odysseus…”

—At least, that's how I read it.

Election Day 2010, seen from three-quarters of a century ago:

2010-11-02T15:44:00.000-04:00

"As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead."

— H.P. Lovecraft, 1936

How One Thing Leads To Another...

2010-10-20T15:54:00.003-04:00

Saturday was a day chock full of overlapping errands, interconnected tasks and nested interruptions—a typical Saturday, made more hectic and frazzled by the expectation of company’s arrival in the coming week.

But certain things cannot be ignored, and the irrepressible enthusiasm of a house-bound dog who believes a walk on a sunny afternoon is imminent ranks high on that list. At one point mid-afternoon, we set our cleaning and other projects aside to take Carrie and Schroeder out for a brief walk, if for no other reason than to calm Carrie down a bit.

We set out down the gravel driveway for the usual round of peeing and sniffing (Schroeder marks, Carrie examines). As we dawdled into the pine woods—where much sniffing was required—we could not help but notice the pine litter everywhere erupting with mushrooms. The piney ground was an undulating carpet, where the pine needles were pushed up and aside by countless clusters of tan mushrooms.

They looked like ‘short stacks’ scattered through the woods—mysterious little clumps of glossy golden brown discs, some perfectly round, others missing a chunk here and there, where some woodland creature had nibbled on them. They were beautiful, and looked utterly benign in the afternoon light.

But the mystery of the mushrooms did not concern the dogs, so we pushed on through the pines, and down the lane, and wound our way back to the house and the chores and cleaning and errands, stopping to chat with the neighbors along the way. But later that afternoon, as the shadows lengthened and the evening light cooled, we revisited the pine grove, guidebook in hand.

Kneeling in the cool fragrant litter with sample mushroom in one hand and taxonomic key in the other, we carefully worked our way through the key, learning proper mushroom nomenclature, mushroom physiology and making a few false starts before tracing our way to a definitive identification: Dentinum Repandum, (also known as Hyndum Repandum, sometimes called 'Hedgehog mushroom' for its teeth on the underside of the cap)—an edible mushroom!

The 'Hedgehog' is our fourth foray into the world of wild fungi: a massive sheepshead mushroom in Pennsylvania decades ago, a solitary morel in Arlington, and another solitary morel a few years ago here.

We picked a handful, marveling at their oddly sticky surface and beautiful coloration. They became the centerpiece of our dinner, sautéed lightly in butter and folded into the center of an omelette made with a handful of the day’s newly gathered eggs. The mushrooms were delicious, delicate and tender, with a mild, subtle yet distinctive flavor.

We survived the night without ill effect, and returned Sunday evening to pick a small basketful. Some of those became part of Tuesday’s dinner, along with fresh pesto and braised carrots; with luck, we will dry enough of the bountiful crop to supply us through the winter. We even recommended some to our neighbors, who were trusting (or bold) enough to take us up on the offer—though, now that I think of it, I haven't heard from them since...

There’s something pleasingly…empowering…about trusting your land and your judgment enough to identify wild mushrooms. I'm very happy we did this; I hope we continue making discoveries like this.

Assert your Individuality:

2010-10-19T11:19:00.000-04:00

An oldie but a goodie from "Basic Instructions" by Scott Meyer, pretty much the consistently funniest webcomic out there.

Noted without comment:

2010-10-05T11:18:00.000-04:00

From the New York Times:

As recently as late December, Monsanto was named “company of the year” by Forbes magazine. Last week, the company earned a different accolade from Jim Cramer, the television stock market commentator. “This may be the worst stock of 2010,” he proclaimed.

Monsanto, the giant of agricultural biotechnology, has been buffeted by setbacks this year that have prompted analysts to question whether its winning streak from creating ever more expensive genetically engineered crops is coming to an end.

The company’s stock, which rose steadily over several years to peak at around $145 a share in mid-2008, closed Monday at $47.77, having fallen about 42 percent since the beginning of the year. Its earnings for the fiscal year that ended in August, which will be announced Wednesday, are expected to be well below projections made at the beginning of the year, and the company has abandoned its profit goal for 2012 as well.

The latest blow came last week...Monsanto’s newest product, SmartStax corn...was providing yields no higher than the company’s less expensive corn...Monsanto has already been forced to sharply cut prices on SmartStax and on its newest soybean seeds, called Roundup Ready 2 Yield, as sales fell below projections...Sales of Monsanto’s Roundup...have collapsed this year under an onslaught of low-priced generics made in China. Weeds are growing resistant to Roundup, dampening the future of the entire Roundup Ready crop franchise. And the Justice Department is investigating Monsanto for possible antitrust violations.

Until now, Monsanto’s main challenge has come from opponents of genetically modified crops, who have slowed their adoption in Europe and some other regions. Now, however, the outspoken critics also include farmers and investors who were once in Monsanto’s camp.

“My personal view is that they overplayed their hand,” William R. Young, managing director of ChemSpeak...They are going to have to demonstrate to the farmer the advantage of their products.” Brett D. Begemann, Monsanto’s executive vice president for seeds and traits, said the setbacks were not reflective of systemic management problems and that the company was already moving to deal with them...Begemann said that Monsanto used to introduce new seeds at a price that gave farmers two thirds and Monsanto one third of the extra profits...But with SmartStax corn and Roundup Ready 2 soybeans, the company’s pricing aimed for a 50-50 split. That backfired as American farmers grew only 6 million acres of Roundup Ready 2 soybeans this year...and only 3 million acres of SmartStax corn...So now Monsanto is moving back to the older arrangement.

Monsanto has also moved to offer farmers more varieties with fewer inserted genes...farmers...often have to buy traits they do not need — such as protection from the corn rootworm in regions where that pest is not a problem — in order to get the best varieties. This issue has surfaced in the antitrust investigation. ...The yield of a crop is mainly determined by the seed’s intrinsic properties, not the inserted genes...Mosanto is bound at some point to face diminishing returns from its strategy of putting more and more insect-resistance and herbicide-resistance genes into the same crop, at ever increasing prices.

Retrograde

2010-10-04T20:43:00.003-04:00

I'm pretty sure I was the only motorcyclist heading from the piedmont to the suburbs to go riding on such a beautiful Sunday morning. It was a classic fall morning, cool and crisp, with broken grey clouds hugging the horizon while they massed their forces for a late-afternoon assault. Outbound bike traffic was steady and constant, and included some relative exotics, including a beautiful Moto Guzzi, along with the usual assortment of sportbiker and hog herders. I think I even saw my first S1000rr, but it went past so quickly...

The point of my retrograde mission was to help BroT inaugurate his new 2003 R1150r. New to him, it's a low-mileage beauty fully equipped with everything you need to have an outstanding riding experience. We met at his house, giving me the opportunity to watch him don his also-new custom Roadcrafter suit-in fluorescent yellow. The suit, combined with his strobing brakelight, nearly sent me into epileptic convulsions as I rode behind him. But the bright sunlight helped overcome the dazzling suit/brakelight combo, and we were on our way.

We left Falls Church and wound our way through McLean, stopping in downtown McLean to gas up before heading north. We hopped on the beltway and wound the bikes out for a short sprint, savoring the thrill of the superslab oh-so-briefly, before exiting to the Clara Barton Parkway towards Great Falls.

I must say, as odd or counterintuitive as it may have seemed to leave the piedmont and head into the suburbs to go riding, it was a kind of homecoming for me. When I worked in town, by lunchtime most days I was ready to get out of the building and screw my head back on straight with a short-but-spirited ride, a condensed road trip that could be shoehorned into a workday.

These were some of my favorite riding roads for a quick out-and-back when I only had an hour or so to spend riding, and I hadn't ridden some of them in years. As we approached MacArthur boulevard, I knew immediately we would be turning left to ride the short-but-sweet, winding stretch of road from Old Angler's Inn-an ascending stretch of sinuous curves that allow you to gently accelerate all the way from bottom to top, and coast all the way on the return.

At the very moment we stopped to turn around, just short of the entrance to Great Falls, a peloton of cyclists launched themselves onto our return path; BroT and I fell in behind them obediently, to the amusement of some of the riders-"Hey, we get a motorcycle escort!" But they rode well, kept their speed up, and I coasted behind them without gaining or falling behind until we reached the bottom of the hill.

We parted ways with the peloton when they swooped onto Clara Barton and we continued on MacArthur, where shortly after, we paused in the warm midday sun for a styrofoam cup of coffee from the local quikee mart. We talked about our bikes (R1150r's, matched for all intents and purposes) and about riding, and watched the traffic pass-bicyclists and pedestrians, joggers with strollers, agitated car-drivers on their cellphones.

The dregs of the coffee watered the shrubs, and we were on the road again. MacArthur, Clara Barton, Chain Bridge, Kirby, Glebe, Williamsburg-all the old familiar traces, made new again. Through an odd set of circumstances, lunch became barbecue in the old neighborhood, signifying this was indeed a bona fide ride, because after all, what is a ride without barbecue?

We returned to BroT's, parked the bikes, and endulged in the obligatory post-ride tire-kicking and self-congratulations. Much discussion of this-and-what, hows-and-whys, what's good and what isn't, then all of a sudden, the sun is heading west-and so must I.

Such a small and quiet moment; yet it's hard to find words to express its immense import. Looking forward to many more such miles, well spent.

Cider Time

2010-09-29T19:01:00.001-04:00

Looks like cider time is upon us again. We pressed our first batch from mixed summer apples the 10th of September, and subsequently have pressed twice more, for a total of approximately twenty-six gallons under airlock, representing five different variations:

'Primitive'—not treated in any way, but simply allowed to ferment away with whatever yeasts (et cetera) it brung with it. I think I'll call this one 'Rabid Raccoon.'
Raspberry—sulfited, pitched with Pasteur champagne yeast, and with a pound of raspberry puree (thank you, Prince...) added. A beautiful rose color at the moment, which seems to change subtly day-by-day.
Standard—Sulfited, pitched with Pasteur champagne yeast.
Modified standard—Sulfited, pitched with Nottingham ale yeast
Cider-Perry blend—Approximately 60% mixed summer apples, 40% Asian-type pears from our tree. Sulfited, pitched with champagne yeast. Splitting the difference between the apple s.g. of 1.050 and the pear s.g. of 1.040. Six gallons.

We hope to keep this pace up for the rest of the fall, entering 2011 with a full cider locker. We've had good results this season by making each pressing into three 'cheeses,' filling each bag partially and using all three at once—instead of maxing out the press-basket with one single bag. More juice flows in less time with less effort, making the whole process that much faster. Apparently peasants the world over have known this for millennia, and it only took me twenty years of pressing cider to figure it out.

Stay tuned. We'll see what happens...

Hearty Congratulations

2010-09-21T20:21:00.001-04:00

Hearty congratulations are in order for BroT, who last weekend passed the Rider Course with flying colors, and was granted a motorcycle endorsement on his license for the first time EVAR, despite having a long and somewhat checkered riding career—albeit, most of that back in his misspent youth.

BroT began his riding career on a Honda 50 step-through scooter, upon which I vaguely recall beginning my career as a pillion. Eventually he moved on to a BSA, and probably a Honda 360 (because who didn't own a Honda 360 back in the day?) and I believe he even rode in such far-away and romantic locales as Guam. In that particular instance, it was a steam-powered motorcycle, fueled with chunks of coconut meat, a la Gilligan's Island.

Later, BroT graduated to a Yamaha XS650, which in its day was quite the performance machine. There is still a fairly large and active enthusiasts group for this particular ride, though for the most part the XS650 that are still running today aren't burdened with a first-generation Vetter Windjammer fairing weighing about as much as a newly-born manatee and only slightly less aerodynamic.

Fast-forward to the immediate present, and in short order, BroT will take delivery of a sweetly-set up 2002 BMW R1150r, in a hideous yellow-ish configuration. Whatever...it's not what's on the outside that matters. What matters is that BroT will now have the opportunity to go out and attempt to answer the unending question.

Welcome aboard, Bro.

And Slowly They Appeared, One By One...

2010-09-19T17:58:00.009-04:00

We heard the hawk’s cry from far above us at the chicken yard—keening, lonely, intense, insistent. The hard blue September sky was brilliantly clear, and that lone hawk circled far above us, riding the thermal that rose from the stream valley like the more common buzzards.
It was not a menacing presence, to us or to our flock of chickens. They squawked in minor concern, but went about their business without the great consternation they would have displayed had they been truly menaced by a hawk or owl in the immediate neighborhood. A brief time later, we saw the hawk again, circling farther overhead. Then another. And another.
Suddenly, we realized we were seeing the migration of a kettle of Broad-Winged Hawks, members of the Buteo family which migrates from North America, as far north as Alberta, to the tropics. At one point, we could see at least two-dozen individual hawks, briefly pausing just to our south; they appeared to be calling to other hawks in the area before reforming into a long, broad column flying south again.
The sky was too brilliant, and the hawks too distant, for us to discern any detail in individual birds. They were thick, muscular birds, riding the air with grace and power, and they were most deliberate in their travels. Shortly they will be over the Smoky Mountains, as they follow the deflective air currents along the Appalachians towards their winter homes far to our south. Their migrations are an annual event for many bird watchers, and nearby, Shenandoah National Park is a prime migration viewing point—for those not fortunate enough to be able so see them from their back yards.
Interestingly, Monarch butterflies are often seen migrating at the same time. They share the same flyways for the same reasons—seeking the favorable air currents to take them to their wintering grounds in Mexico. We did not see monarchs this time, but have seen them migrating years ago, in Arlington.
They clustered around our butterfly bushes, and slowly ascended the column of air. As we watched them rise, we realized we could see an unbroken line of butterflies as far up into the sky as they could possibly be seen, and they trailed off to both the north and south. They find their way to a place they have never been before, the valley where they were conceived and where their ancestors were conceived for generations out of mind.

Sorta Counter-Intuitive, Innit?

2010-09-17T16:03:00.001-04:00

…Bicycle, scooter, motorcycle…couriers are sought. As always, only couriers with direct DC courier company experience will be considered. Those highly experienced and capable couriers must also be hard working, dependable, polite, clean, and intelligent. You are not yet qualified…just because you enjoy bike riding and working outdoors, are a good rider or fast learner, or because you've done courier work in another city, delivered pizza, flowers, furniture, or hardware, drove a taxi, built an aqueduct in Africa, or really think you can do the job if given a chance. One must begin one's 'career' elsewhere, and perhaps try back after at least six months to learn the business. It's not necessarily that you are not capable of learning, it's just that we are not interested in teaching, or in taking the extra time and effort required to help you learn…

I pulled this nifty little quote off the internet this morning. It's from the website of a D.C.-area messenger service, from the 'employment' heading (Not that I was looking). Despite the lapse into the passive voice, I find the tone charmingly engaging, and can almost hear the speaker. I give them props for specifying “…hard working, dependable, polite, clean, and intelligent,” characteristics that, if I recall correctly, were frequently left by the wayside by many of those responsible for hiring couriers.

But I must take serious exception to the fundamental philosophy on display. There’s a slightly delusional whiff of hubris about it, a haughty arrogance that I think is undeserved. Come on guys—being a bike messenger ain't rocket surgery, is it?

Back in the day, I took the diametrically opposite approach.

My ads called for “Enthusiastic Bicyclists—Experienced couriers need not apply.” Despite the occasional offended phone call from irate couriers, who would attempt to convince me of the error of my ways, it was a pretty fool-proof approach. The ad attracted a caliber of bicyclist who might not have considered working as a courier, but loved the idea of making money by bicycling. These riders were definitely cut from a different cloth than your typical bike messenger, and that was a real plus in what is first and foremost a people-oriented service business.

My logic was two-fold: First, I attracted good, interesting staff for whom, frankly, the pay was a secondary consideration (the mantra was “I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this…”). Second, I didn’t have to break the bad habits that someone picked up at a poorly-run competitor, also known as the ‘beaten-dog syndrome.’

Rookies were paired with a trainer of my choosing for two days. Day one, the rookie followed and observed, shadowing their trainer's every move; day two, the rookie did all the work and the trainer observed. Day three, the rookie was up and running solo as a productive member of the team—assuming the trainer gave their blessing. If somehow an unqualified person slipped through my net, the trainer had the authority to recommend they be dismissed. A small investment of time and money yielded a smart, capable, reliable fleet of enthusiastic bicyclists.

Now, this is not to say that I didn’t engage in some “poaching” from time to time, if I came across someone riding for a competitor whose work ethic, people skills and intelligence I admired. But I didn’t have the patience for running a ‘cattle call’ for disgruntled, dissatisfied, underperforming hooligans who I had no intention of ever unleashing on our customers. (They would do us so much more good working for the competition…)

I know for a fact some of my best riders—people who became my close friends, and who have gone on to happy, successful, satisfying lives as real people in the real world—were rejected by the company quoted above. It’s a perfectly valid business model. I just don't think it's a very smart one, and it's not a policy I would ever agree with.

Allman Brothers Band, Live At Fillmore East (1971)

2010-09-15T18:43:00.000-04:00

Wow: Listening to it again for the first time—Four sides of incredible vinyl awesomeness. A couple of full-vinyl record side jams (...carried over onto "Eat A Peach" with the amazing two-vinyl record side 'Mountain Jam.') What shows those must have been in March 1971.

Obligatory motorcycle content: Duane Allman and Berry Oakley both died in senseless motorcycle accidents within about a year of each other—the classic vehicle turning left in front of them. Better rider training et cetera might have let them age into senescence and irrelevance, ala Chicago. We'll never know.

But damn, what an album...

Testosterone Poisoning, Squared

2010-09-12T10:32:00.001-04:00

The other day I read a little blurb beneath the fold in a local paper. Seems a local LEO received minor injuries (treated & released) when he lost control of his vehicle while pursuing a motorcyclist who was "driving recklessly" and "speeding."

Does anyone sense any irony here?

Apparently the LEO began pursuit without notifying dispatch, a requirement I believe is standard in most police departments. Some jurisdictions—like those who have lost multi-million dollar lawsuits resulting from police pursuits gone awry—require a supervisory officer to approve pursuits, put restrictions on the circumstances which justify pursuits, and allow supervisors to call off pursuits when appropriate.

Nevertheless, this LEO began pursuit of the offending motorcyclist, and while the motorists sharing the highway were able to move aside and make a clear path, somehow the rear end of the police car left the roadway and the LEO overcompensated, crossing over the road and going off the other side. (The article was not clear on the exact path of the police car).

Shortly downstream, the motorcyclist collided with a signpost, abandoned his bike, and fled the scene on foot. He was arrested a short time later at a nearby residence. Not surprisingly, he was found to lack a motorcycle endorsement on his license, as well as insurance, registration and inspection on his bike. My guess is he was also in possession of a mullet, facial hair, multiple tattoos and a wife-beater as well, but there's no accounting for taste.

Neither of these guys comes off looking too great here. I have absolutely zero sympathy for the motorcyclist; he should go to jail and never hold a license again (not like that would keep him from driving, in any case). But "reckless driving" and "speeding" are somewhat subjective terms. I can imagine a lot of normal, reasonable, safe behaviors on a motorcycle that could be construed unsympathetically as 'reckless.' Speeding is another matter—but I'd like to see the evidence before assuming this 'fact' is factual.

But for a LEO to engage in a motor vehicle pursuit is second only to deciding to unholster his weapon and draw down on a person in terms of awesome responsibilities. It represents an irrevocable life-and-death decision involving not just the LEO and the person he is pursuing, but that person's innocent passengers and the driving public at large.

In an age of instant communication, it makes no sense to willfully engage in deadly and unnecessary actions, contravened by well-known safety concerns and broadly understood best-practices. A simple radio call can alert authorities downstream of a potential malefactor without endangering the public. An officer patiently waiting in a suspect's neighborhood for his return home offers a similar potential for a successful apprehension, minus the risk to all.

Yes, I am second-guessing the LEO and Monday-Morning-Quarterbacking as well. I can't imagine the harm that motorcyclist presented to the public which was so egregious as to demand a vehicular pursuit. If there are policies in place concerning such pursuits, and the LEO in question ignored or contravened them, then perhaps he should be restricted to driving a desk for the same period of time the motorcyclist is consigned to being a pedestrian.

In recent months, there have been a rash of high-speed pursuits of motorcyclists by various local LEAs—mostly for speeding—resulting in crashes and serious injuries to the motorcyclists involved. Unless the motorcycle is a getaway vehicle for a serious felony, speeding—by itself—should not be justification for an officer initiating a pursuit with potentially fatal consequences for more than just the suspect. (Note: Please don't start with the "...flight implies guilt" nonsense. Being stupid—last time I checked—is not a capital offense in this country. Good thing, too.)

All I take away from this incident is two men operating high-performance vehicles. One has been granted the power of life and death by the state; the other is cursed with a serious case of the stupids. Each seems to suffer from a bad case of testosterone poisoning. Maybe next time something like this comes up, the more grown-up of the parties involved can ratchet it down just a notch before someone really gets hurt.

A Dry Season

2010-09-12T09:48:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I walked down the bed of our little stream, from the culverts at the road all the way down to the deep pool. Dry stones clinked and clattered beneath my feet; the coarse sand banks crunched and gave way freely as I trod them. Save the shallow pools and puddles every few yards, the stream bed was bone dry.

The stones and sand served as a canvas for countless animal tracks—the deep gouges made by the abundant deer who bounded across the stream in their travels from woods to fields; the delicate, busy marks of the tiny-handed raccoons, the direction-less skitterings of anonymous birds.

The rapidly diminishing pools and puddles were crammed full of frantic minnows, dashing from one side to the other, desperately seeking room to move. They shared their tiny oasises with a handful of frogs and crayfish, the former shown only by their sudden leaping from the shore to the water at my approach, the latter identifiable by the distinctive tracks they left in the muddy bottom.

This now represents the third summer of the five we have lived on this hilltop in the woods to face drought. The abundant snows of last winter—more than two feet worth that slowly melted, lingering into March—seem to have done little to ameliorate the long, hot, dry summer's impact. Learning year-by-year, we have gradually added a dozen rain barrels to help buffer the rain across the dry spells. But when there is no rain, the rain barrels can offer little help; they were tapped dry several times over.

Last night, we received our first real rain in over a month—maybe an inch. Today holds the promise of more rain to come, but I am not holding my breath. An inch of rain, coming on the heels of such a drought, does little but dampen the top layer of soil and temper the wildfire danger for a few days. The mindless voices on the radio are already chirping about the beautiful days that will start the workweek—more warm, dry, sunny days, which we need right now like a hole in the head. I would be happy for a nice, collapsing tropical storm that drizzled steadily on us for a couple of days straight.

Keeping fingers crossed.

City Girl in The Dirt

2010-09-09T20:38:00.002-04:00

Campaigner was an ‘83 R80st, BMW’s short-lived, streetified variant of the dual sport R80GS. She spent most of her life getting flogged around on the streets of D.C., (a true city girl at heart) but once in a while, she got the chance to feel the grass beneath her wheels and get off-road for a bit.

The ST’s rear wheel came on and off easily (like a car’s wheel, by way of three nuts) and I had a spare rim fitted with a knobby tire for just such opportunities. From time to time we mounted the knobby and took her to Windy Hill, the eight acres of rolling, hilly open land in the Shenandoah Valley where my mother lived.

In the grassy fields, the kids would ride in front of me, holding onto the tank bag, or behind me, depending on where they fit better at the time. We would rip madly from one corner of the field to the other, dashing wildly up and down the slopes without worries of traffic or other distractions, only bothered by the clouds of grasshoppers we disturbed en route. Solo, I would practice J-turns and power slides, occasionally going arse-over-teakettle into the weeds, but never getting so much as a bruise.

Across the way from Windy Hill, prominent to the northeast, was a big hill—or maybe a small mountain. It rose about five or six hundred feet from its base in the valley at Ida to a wooded summit. A wide swath of this hillside was pastureland, and broad strip of open space ran up the hillside most of the way to the top.

I couldn’t look at that hillside without wondering what it was like to sit at the wood’s edge, along the top of that long alpine-looking pasture, and see the view back to where I stood. So one summer afternoon, I took Campaigner and we went to the weathered farmhouse at the base of the hill to introduce ourselves.

I told the old man who stood in the farmyard I was the son of the woman who lived across the road. Whether he knew her or not, I can’t recall. But I explained my interest in exploring his hillside, and he didn’t seem to mind—at the moment, most of his cattle were occupied elsewhere. As long as I didn’t make any trouble and closed the gates on my way through, I was free to go up the hill.

I thanked him and promised to respect his property. I think, truth is, he was kinda tickled to see us there. He sure seemed to take a shine to Campaigner in a crooked-grinning-John-Deere-Cap-removing-head-scratching sorta way. I suspect he may have been recalling a long-lost motorcycle adventure from the shadow of the past as I rode off.

Now, putting a knobby tire on an 800cc BMW doesn’t qualify it as a ‘dirt bike,’ any more than putting a Viking hat on a puppy lets it sing Wagner. For one thing, it’s a big bike, and the suspension lacks the travel serious off-roading demands. But it has loads of torque at low speeds, and it’s fairly nimble overall; it still had the original wide bars, so controlling it was easy. With this in mind, I slowly made my way through the dusty farmyard, getting the feel of the place, and paused to open the metal gate leading to the pasture—and to the hillside I had admired from afar so many times.

Closing the gate behind me, I paused to take in the view and envision my line to the top. The flat field let to a series of gentle rises, undulating and building towards the last stretch—a long, uninterrupted run up the hillside to the treeline.

The grass was cropped short by the grazing cattle; this made the contours of the land conspicuous, and it was mostly a matter of picking my way between various natural and man-made obstacles: roots, rocks and tree stumps, abandoned equipment and fenceposts. As I gained speed, I stood up on the footpegs in true off-road fashion, letting my legs absorb the rise and fall of the terrain. Campaigner eagerly ate up the rolling ground, and shortly we were riding a dirt rollercoaster with abandon, gradually working our way back and forth across the broad slope.

The perfect line to the top began presenting itself. The pasture opened up in a straight shot all the way to where the grass petered out and the trees began—some five hundred feet in elevation from where we started. One more small rise to cross, then we’re home free.

I kept my eyes on the long line towards the summit as we crossed that small rise.

Only it wasn’t a small rise.

It was a ravine. A deep ravine, hidden by the lay of the land.

I watched in slow motion, waiting for—for the earth to come back, I guess. Instead, it kept falling away without revealing a bottom. Or so it seemed for the eternity I was poised there. I noted with detachment the collection of old appliance dumped there: several refrigerators and freezers, washers and dryers, lying haphazardly where they were dumped countless years before. Their colors: white, pastel pink, pastel green, rusty brown; each representing the epitome of fashion for the era from which it was expelled.

Just before Campaigner’s rear tire cleared the ground, I grabbed a great big honking fistful of throttle, and gassed her into space; she pitched up and flung herself across. We hit the far side with the front tire on flat ground, the rear tire frantically clawing earth. I came down on the gas tank hard enough for it to knock the wind out of me, and held on for dear life until I knew we were on solid ground.

Heart pounding and metallic taste in the back of my mouth, I paused safely past the edge, still standing on the pegs. I never did actually see the bottom of the ravine—cluttered with debris as it was—but at that moment I knew if I had started falling, I never would have stopped.

I was still only halfway up the hillside, with most of the intriguing open strip still above me. I caught my breath, stood on the pegs again and began to pick my way up the hill.

Hillsides are wildly fractal affairs. The smooth, delicate surface they present from a distance reveals itself, on closer examination, to be as rugged and tortured as their parent mountains, just on a different scale. The ravine was an example; the broad open space I saw from afar was in fact, rough, eroded terrain, littered with rocks, stumps and lumpy hillocks of tuft grasses.

We made our way slowly—never getting out of second gear—making little more than a walking pace for the rest of the climb. Where the pasture turned to forest, the ground was scattered with random chunks of logs, remnants from some-long ago clearing effort. My line dwindled to little more than a vague footpath before ending where the logs encroached for good.

At this point, there was no mistaking an R80st for a real dirt bike. Campaigner could go no further. Stopping, I dismounted, propped one hot cylinder head against a log and shut off the engine. I sat on the ground and stretched out my legs as the bike cooled, snapping a few pictures from this exalted vantage point. The hillock where Windy Hill sat just a stone's throw away looked very small and very flat from here. Trees hid the house from view, but parts of the drive, the garden and the fields were plain to see. I swept the crystalline vista that spread before me—Ida…Windy Hill…Stanley…Massanutten…New Market Gap…Little North Mountain and the Alleghenies, stretching far off to the hazy southwest.

I had accomplished what I set out to do—to explore the beckoning hillside and once there, to see what I could see. On the way up, I learned a little bit about off-road riding, and some other ‘life lessons’ that I squirreled away—like something about ‘looking before leaping’ and ‘making assumptions’ and ‘keeping your eye on the ball’ and so forth.

The return trip, following a decent interval, was calm and uneventful; mostly low-gear riding that let the engine to do the braking. I cut a wide swath around the hidden ravine, and saw a different slice of the hillside on the reverse trip. Sore and tired, I paused once again at the gate, then rode the short distance back up to Windy Hill, to continue the important business of showing the kids what motorcycles are all about.

The Ten Best-Looking BMWs you’re likely to actually see:

2010-09-09T09:11:00.000-04:00

Because you can never have enough top-ten lists:

1.   R100RS (1976-1984)
2.   R65LS (1981-1985)
3.   K75S (1985-1995)
4.   K100RS (1983-1992)
5.   R1100S (1998-2005)
6.   R90S (1973-1976)
7.   R75/5 LWB “Toaster” (1969-1973)
8.   R69S (1960-1969)
9.   R100S (1976-1980)
10. R80ST (1982-1984)

A Motorcyclist's Bestiary

2010-09-08T12:48:00.001-04:00

Viewing the world from the saddle of a motorcycle offers you a unique—and generally confrontational—perspective on wildlife.

The animals you encounter while riding will tend to fall into one of five categories. Note that this listing is not comprehensive, and generally addresses Eastern North America. Obviously, there will be some overlap among the categories, but you’ll get the general idea:

1. Big Enough To Seriously Eff Your Ess Up:

Moose & Elk
The Maritime Provinces of Canada indicate “Moose hazard” by a triangular yellow sign showing the silhouette of a standing moose and a crumpled car. There’s a reason for that. Colliding with a moose will not necessarily damage your motorcycle—odds are, your bike will continue happily down the road for some considerable distance before it realizes it left you plastered on the moose’s ribcage as it blithely passed beneath it.
Cows, Calves & Horses; also Black Bears
Livestock are very clever and persistent about finding the weak spots in their enclosures—see “other side of fence, grass is always greener on.” A slow moving, irritable and unpredictable wall of meat is the last thing you want to see chewing its cud on your line.
And that big “black plastic trash bag” slowly blowing down the shoulder of the road? It may actually weigh two or three hundred pounds, and have sharp pointy things at several of its extremities.
A close encounter of the worst kind will be really bad for both of you. All three of you, if you count the bike.
Whitetail Deer
See also “Did Not Evolve In The Presence Of Motor Vehicles.” Deer have a defensive strategy of a) freezing completely motionless when they sense a threat; b) if the threat continues approaching, waiting until the threat is nearly upon it, then bolting in an unpredictable direction. This makes sense: If the deer fled sooner, it would give the predator a greater opportunity to identify its escape vector. Waiting until the last instant preserves its options.
But when the perceived threat is an inanimate object with absolutely no interest in prey of any kind, this response is less useful. As the “pursuit curve” does not actually concern the deer, responding as “prey” is inappropriate.
Deer-Motorcycle conflicts generally end very badly for the deer, and with mixed results for the motorcyclist and motorcycle. With good gear, good training, experience and a good bike, a rider can frequently remount with little more than bumps and bruises and a gut full of adrenaline. More commonly, the outcome is a few broken bones (collar, rib, wrist…), a few hundred dollars in repairs to the bike, and a ditch full of venison.
Winged Threats
Accipiters (those big meat-eating birds including hawks, eagles, owls and vultures) thrive along the edges of forests and roadways, where they have easy access to a steady supply of fresh road kill as well as good access to small animals living in the fringes.
Unfortunately, those who hunt from these locations do not check peripherally before launching an attack; they swoop down low and fast, focusing on their distant prey, and often fly directly across the path of oncoming traffic.
Likewise, carrion eaters with full bellies tend to take off low and slow before gradually gaining altitude. A highway-speed encounter between a low-flying vulture and a motorcyclist will be unpleasant, to say the least, as several biker have found out the hard way.

2. Crazy Enough To Make You Eff Your Ess Up All By Yourself:

Dogs, Cats, Squirrels and Foxes (et cetera)
All wildly unpredictable creatures. Furthermore, we have strong personal and cultural aversions to injuring animals which we have anthropomorphized since childhood. This combination creates a situation where our response to the presence of the animal is more of a threat to our safety and well-being than the animal itself is.
Hitting the animal would be regrettable and unfortunate, and would certainly make most riders feel a not insignificant remorse. However, most riders would concur that swerving into oncoming traffic or riding into an immovable roadside object to spare a dog/cat/squirrel would be a much worse choice.
For the past few years, I have been consciously training myself to ignore small, fast, twitchy animals within a certain radius of Beast. In effect, I created a rolling blind spot. I will not endanger myself for the sake of a creature whose actions I cannot control.

3. Clearly Did Not Evolve In The Presence Of Motor Vehicles

Opossums, Porcupines and Skunks
All evolved fascinating defense strategies against predators. Unfortunately, they are useless against motor vehicles.

4. “I’ll Take Arthropods for $200, Alex—"

There are countless ways bugs mess you up. My personal favorite was catching a flying cicada in the middle of my tee-shirted sternum at about 50 MPH—35 of it mine, 15 of it his. It felt like I had been shot, and I expected to see blood pouring down my chest. Also: stinging insects flying into your helmet, butterflies landing across your face, bug splatters obscuring your vision and otherwise distracting you from the task at hand.

5. Obligatory Assists

Anytime I encounter a live reptile or amphibian in the road—turtle, snake, frog or toad—I’ll make an effort to move it along in the direction it is headed. Sometimes all it takes is a gentle nudge with the toe of my boot. Other times, it means parking the bike, walking back, picking it up and gently tossing it across a ditch or fence*. I think we’ve stacked the deck too heavily against these little beasts; it’s appropriate to lend a hand from time to time.

*Hey, it didn’t look like a rattlesnake from a distance.

One more snide remark at H-D's expense, in passing...

2010-09-08T09:19:00.000-04:00

"H.O.G.," the "Harley Owners Group," is—to my knowledge—the only factory-sponsored motorcycle affinity group.

Among the handful of Beemer aficionado groups I can think of, not a one receives any sponsorship from BMWNA; hell, BMWNA generally won't give them the time of day.

But the factory backing its own enthusiast club? Isn't that like, oh, I don't know—paying someone to take your sister on a date?

A Fitting Denouement

2010-09-06T19:05:00.001-04:00

The sorghum ale has found it's target demographic at last.

I've taken to giving the chickens a bottle or two of it in the afternoon, 'round bout the time humans would be knocking off for a brewski or two. They don't care much for the head, and the carbonation seems to perplex them something awful, but once it settles down a bit, they're on it like white on rice.

Carbohydrates, B vitamins, yeasty sediment? What's not to like? And a chicken with a gizzard-load of homebrew is just a happier chicken, you know?

Rebels and Romantics

2010-09-06T09:25:00.003-04:00

Winding my way across Bethel Mountain Road, I mulled over a conversation my friend and I had the night before regarding the phenomenon of the venerable V-twin motorcycle.

He recently had the opportunity to take a big twin out for a spin on the interstate, and while apparently enjoying the hell out of the noise and the ape-hangers and the visceral thrill of it, he did confirm that it—and here I quote verbatim: “…rode like a paint shaker.”

We pondered the popularity—nay the dominance—of such an inherently discomfort-inducing engine design (two large-bore cylinders, 45-degrees apart, sharing a single crankpin), in the end unable to come to any particular conclusion other than “there’s no accounting for taste.”

However, as I darted in and out of the cool shade on the serpentine road, I vaguely recalled something that shed light on the inexplicably ubiquitous V-twin, and helped me make sense of something that had baffled me for decades.

I recalled that in some indigenous cultures around the world, there is a custom I would describe as “conspicuous impracticality.” Owning something impractical as a status symbol. It indicates someone well-enough off to afford something not utilitarian, someone who is not devoted strictly to the business of surviving day-to-day, someone who has enough excess to afford something frivolous.

I have long made the argument (disingenuously, no doubt) that the choice of motorcycle is practical, reasonable, rational and pragmatic in the extreme. Yet buried within that sober message is an unacknowledged betrayal, a bit of casual dissembling that denies the irrational passion at the heart of motorcycling. I can make a convincing case for the rationality of motorcycles and motorcycling—but cannot disguise that motorcycling is, in fact, an irrational undertaking of the highest order.

A corollary to my disingenuous argument is the passion with which V-twin partisans look askance at sleekly faired, vaguely insect-like sportbikes. They sneer at ‘rice burners’ and ‘crotch rockets’ as soulless, bland, antiseptic machines wholly without personalities or redeeming qualities, stamped out by robots for robots. Sentiments like “I’d rather push ‘X’ than ride ‘Y’”—that sort of thing.

I must admit I agree with them to a certain extent.

There is an icy heartlessness in the Teutonic Bauhaus functionality of my third-generation boxer twin sportbike. It is a digital bike, far removed from its analog airhead ancestors, and it roars like an angry sewing machine when provoked. Those who design the public face of sportbikes must temper their aesthetic aspirations against the unrelenting logic of the wind tunnel and the dynamometer. Convergent evolution, forcing the same demands on all manufacturers, pushes all sportbikes into a narrower and narrower pathway, stripping away any real distinctiveness—they all appear somewhat related. I admit to generally having a difficult time distinguishing one marque from another at any distance.

Not so for the brash art deco exuberance of the endlessly customized V-twins, for which the sky is the limit—vis the extreme customization (unto utter unridability) of the “butt jewelry” cranked out by the fertile minds inhabiting the world of the chopper.

The stereotypical posture of “motorcyclists v. society” is one of rejecting staid societal mores, of adolescent rebellion writ large. First codified by Marlon Brando’s “Johnny” and Lee Marvin’s “Chino” in “The Wild One,” (a fictional exploitation of a real, though wildly sensationalized, and insignificant incident in Hollister, California) this rebellious dynamic was updated for a new generation a decade-and-a-half later by Peter Fonda’s “Captain America” and Dennis Hopper’s “Billy.” Different era, different drugs—same rejection of society’s conventions.

Fast forward from the 1969 of “Easy Rider” to 2010: Harley-Davidson holds the largest portion of the domestic motorcycle market; cruisers (H-Ds, plus their endless clones and imitators) dominate the industry.

Having birthed and fledged the “Buell” thought experiment—supplying H-D engines for modern, high-tech, high-performance sport bikes designed and built by motorcycle visionary Eric Buell—H-D clawed Buell back into the nest—and smothered it.

In killing the Buell marque, H-D squashed any possibility of internecine market fragmentation and consolidated its grip on the centerpiece of its brand appeal—its iconic legacy engines, a technology largely unchanged since decades before “The Wild One.”

But at the same time H-D has risen to the top of the motorcycle manufacturing world, the prices of its products have likewise risen, likely placing them firmly out of reach of any latter day ‘one-percenters.’ Today, the average H-D owner is a white man pushing fifty and pulling down around seventy-seven thousand dollars a year. Financing is the most popular option, and the most profitable part of H-D’s portfolio. If today’s new H-D buyers were asked, like Johnny in “The Wild One,” “What’re you rebelling against?” do you expect they would reply with “…Whaddya got?”

Sadly, I suspect there is not the least whiff of rebellion against the values of society about these latecomers to the game—“Rubbies,” as they are so dismissively known, for ‘Rich Urban Bikers.’ I suspect beneath the officially logoed leather vests and wallet chains and officially licensed do-rags, they are more likely to be the enforcers of a status quo than its upenders.

No, the statement they make is not one of rejection and rebellion against “…whaddaya got?” but instead one of status, of being well-established enough, ensconced in the management class to afford not rebellion but conspicuous impracticality.

Certainly, the rise of the Rubbie has coincided with the rise of corporatist cubicle culture, that fiercely reductionist engine grinding away all that is not practical, pragmatic, purposeful, leaving behind a skeletal right-sized world of beige boxes occupying modular grey spaces. We are all shaped—like those sportbikes in their windtunnels—by the unrelenting demands of a uncaring corporate machine seeking to maximize throughput and minimize overhead.

Meanwhile, the guise (dare I say costume?) of ‘biker’ has been drained of any menace by this dress-up Rubbie charade. Biker garb (like its sibling signifier, the tattoo) may garner a passing notice, but it has long since lost any frisson of danger—of denoting someone you’d best not cross.

While I would never go as far as to actually ride a H-D, (…pause to adjust monocle…) I can certainly appreciate the sentiment. It is the same sentiment that drove the Luddites, that drove the original Dutch saboteurs, that still drives the Amish and the Old Order Mennonites. It is the sense that new technology should not be embraced for its own sake, but that technologies should be critically evaluated and judged for the quality of life they yield.

Will the change make things better? Will we put the time saved to good use? Will we become enslaved by the technologies we embrace? What do we stand to lose? The burden should be squarely on any new technology to demonstrate its improving the quality of our lives—not on us conform and make ourselves fit a new technology.

It is not the black leather trappings of Brando’s “Johnny,” rejecting Eisenhower’s America. It is a more universal statement of rebellion: a rebellion against the juggernaut of mindless technological progress, a throwing down of a fingerless, studded black-leather gauntlet, saying in no uncertain terms “The tide of change stops here!”

Well, damn straight, brothers. I’m with you. Let’s ride.
******************************************************

I realize that in the above, I've made a mush of two related ideas. For the sake of my own sanity, vanity and editorial pride, let me see if I can restate things so I might even understand what I'm trying to say:

The appeal of the V-Twin—which is lost on me—is that it represents resistance to change for the sake of change.
Motorcycling per se is no longer rebellion against the status quo, but has become an expression of status.
This expression of status, while most frequently expressed via the V-Twin, is not directly related to the V-Twin in and of itself; therefore, I am dancing dangerously close to post hoc ergo propter hoc territory.
Enough bullshit. Let's ride.

Notes to a Newbie

2010-09-04T21:32:00.001-04:00

So you think you want to start riding. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Sign up for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's Beginning Rider's Course. NOW. Wait lists can be long, and classes aren't always offered year-round. A Friday evening, a Saturday and a Sunday, then Wa-fricking-la, you've got your license.

If you're already riding, then sign up for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's Beginning Rider's Course. Once you've passed that (should be simple, right?) then take the MSF's Experienced Rider Course.

2. Don't kid yourself about the size bike you're going to start out on. A 250 may not be 'big enough to get you into trouble,' but it sure as hell isn't big enough to get you out of trouble—and that's a much more likely scenario. Think 650cc minimum to start.

3. Allocate a grand ($1,000.00) beyond the purchase price of your bike for gear: helmet, boots, gloves, riding suit, rain gear and incidentals. If you're lucky and smart, you'll come in under that amount. Check online sources like www.newenough.com. You can certainly get by with boots, gloves and jackets you already own, but sooner or later you will want motorcycle-specific gear to address the unique challenges riding presents.

4. The first 6 months/600 miles on a new bike are the most dangerous. This learning-curve counter resets with each new bike.

5. Three simple rules: (A) You are invisible (B) Everyone is out to kill you (C) The worst thing will happen in the worst place at the worst time—be ready for it. Always operate with these rules in mind and you'll have a fighting chance.

6. You're the one who decided to undertake the risky activity—don't expect anyone else to look out for you and don't whine when they don't.

7. Riding is like any other kind of outdoor activity, except more so. You are subject to sunburn, windburn, dehydration, fatigue, hyperthermia and hypothermia—sometimes all in the same ride (BTDT). Dress appropriately and plan for the weather to change. Odds are any given ride will be colder than you expected, and cold (especially the early stages of hypothermia) affects your judgement insidiously. Carry thin, light extra layers you can take off and put on easily. In an emergency, plastic trash bags and newspapers make great raingear and insulation.

8. ATGATT: "All The Gear, All The Time." No excuses. Lots of riders have died from stupid, simple 'just-going-to-the-corner-to-get-milk' incidents while wearing flip-flops, tank tops and sunglasses. At a bare minimum, the MSF course requirements: Long sleeves, long pants, helmet, full-fingered gloves, sturdy shoes.

9. Know your limits. Have that conversation with yourself everytime you get on the bike. If you're not 100%, find some other way to get there. Always ride 'your own ride,' as they say. Don't ride a pace you aren't comfortable with, regardless of your riding company.

10. Don't be an ass—Just being on a bike doesn't give you any special rights or privileges.

Cool Air (2009)

2010-09-04T20:40:00.000-04:00

August departed promptly, and took summer’s thick cloak of haze and humidity with it; September dawned cool, brilliantly clear, blue and bejeweled with dew. We have reached mid-September with the weather remaining modestly in character. I have lived in this area long enough to expect that eventual sucker-punch of debilitating, energy-sapping Indian summer, but keeping our fingers crossed, this weather is all we could hope for.

Riding weather, at last.

On cool clear nights such as these, the still air stratifies. This layering is not apparent to the eye, but it is obvious to an exposed rider. The gently rolling hills have their heads in a stratum of mild warm air but their feet in a pool of heavy frigid air—a difference of fifteen degrees from crest to trough. The visual cue I had not noted before was the highly local fog—“patchy fog” the weather people call it. Looking out across the piedmont from a high vantage point, the landscape is dotted with dozens of small smoking smudges. Each reveals the presence of a body of water—usually a man-made pond or lake, otherwise invisible, concealed by vegetation or terrain or sightlines.

Once I made the connection, I began to recognize the long low horizontal (and clearly artificial) line of a dam; set back from and above the road, the water was unseen. But these pools hold heat in their water, and when the air temperature suddenly drops, they work to reach their own equilibrium by driving water vapor into the air above them. This appears as fog, and in some places, it pours like a viscous fluid down a grade—following the flow of the cooler, heavier air—and out across the landscape. I rode through such a flow the other day, an eerie experience: like a spill of some inscrutable spongy mass, it rolled from a field down an embankment and across both lanes of the road. My head was above it, my body immersed in it; my passage roiled it into dissolution.

This morning I rode among tendrils of fog here and there, and the rising sun shone—from one moment to the next—first from below the plane of the fog, defining it as a ceiling; then from above the fog, making it the floor. Similar to flying through layers of clouds in an airplane, but on a more human scale.

The air has a taste and feel of its own, filled with liquid exhalations of the thousand flowers blooming in late summer exuberance, the goldenrod and ironweed, loosestrife and Joe-Pye weed, the late-passing Queen-Anne’s lace and countless other stems large and small whose riotous color spreads across the fields. Their days are numbered—these cool evenings but a prelude to the chill nights to come—the inevitable frost waiting just a few weeks out ahead of us. We will get all the blooming in that we can before that frost calls an end to our fun.

First Drafts from Folsom Prison

2010-08-27T18:04:00.000-04:00

I shot a man in Reno ~~just to see if the gun still worked.~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for changing lanes without signalling.~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for driving with his turn signal on~~.

I shot a man in Reno ~~for driving fifteen miles below the speed limit~~.

I shot a man in Reno ~~for driving in the passing lane~~.

I shot a man in Reno ~~for tailgating~~.

I shot a healthy man in Reno ~~for parking in the handicapped space~~.

I shot a man in Reno ~~for parking in the fire lane~~.

I shot a man in Reno ~~for improperly using apostrophe’s~~.

I shot a man in Reno ~~all the way from Tahoe.~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for using ‘reactionary’ when he mean ‘reactive.’~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for talking on his cellphone in the movie~~.

I shot a man in Reno ~~for wearing a ‘Guinness’ shirt while drinking a Bud Lite.~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for generically referring to motorcycles as ‘Harleys.’~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for randomly using “quotation” marks.~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for using ‘literally’ to mean ‘figuratively.’~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for misusing the HOV lane.~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for arguing with the cashier over a 25¢ coupon.~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for having 12 items in a 10-item express lane.~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for organizing his entire financial portfolio at the driveup ATM.~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for ordering that drink he ordered at Starbucks.~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for saying “fewer,” when he meant “less.”~~

I shot a man in Reno ~~for using ‘your’ when he meant “you’re.”~~

~~I shot a man in Reno~~

I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. ü

Beast Music

2010-08-19T20:58:00.008-04:00

I. If I had to pick the exact moment the day began to go off the rails, I have to say it was when I chose to stay in rather than head across the vast parking lot for some fast food. Instead, sometime later that afternoon, stomach grumbling, I opted for a stopgap plastic-wrapped “fish sandwich” ransomed from the vending machine and resuscitated with ninety seconds in the microwave.

That may have been the single most uninspiring lunch of my life.

Besides leaving me neither hungry nor sated, it set a dispiriting, dehumanizing tone that lingered with me like a stale fart until the next morning.

When the workday finally ground to an end, I suited up without any real sense of exhilaration at the prospect of five and a half days of free time to do nothing but ride. I suited up and shuffled out of my cubicle, only to arrive bikeside minus a glove. Sweat was already breaking out under the steamy sun as I carefully retraced my steps back across the parking lot, along the sidewalk, back through security into the building, all the way back to my desk.

Nada. Re-retracing my steps, I spied the errant glove hiding in the shadows within a pace of where I had been standing by the bike. Now completely drenched in sweat, I buttoned up and rolled into rush hour, lurching foot-by-foot the entire mile of the dusty strip to the nearest gas station for a quick top-off before hitting the road.

Forty-five minutes after I first started starting, I actually hit the interstate and found my little niche, tucked in amidst the screaming tractor trailers, in time to get ten minutes of riding before the storm hit. Like flipping a switch, the rain began and within seconds, water stood on the road and the blasting trucks filled the air with filthy spray. I got off the highway and watched the madness from the safety and comfort of a gas station awning while the storm sorted itself out and gradually moved on east.

Welcome to West Virginia. Elapsed time: One hour. Miles travelled: Sixteen. And I could still taste that fish sandwich.

For the next four hours, the storms played cat-and-mouse with me. As I rode northward, the sky would clear, the road would dry, it would be beautiful, and in just a few miles the clouds would regroup and the rain would resume. Twice it got bad enough for me to exit the highway and sit it out; I was not the least bit interested in proving anything on this ride.

Eventually, we reached a compromise—it would rain steadily, but not heavily. And so it did, for the last two hours of the first day of my long anticipated vacation. Which, it so happens, corresponded with the beginning of the real riding part—extricating myself from the superslab and entering the highway hugging the west shore of the Susquehanna.

Admittedly, the rain was gentle and erratic enough that I was able to enjoy the riding and the beautiful mix of mountains and river. But as the road wound on, it slowly began outrunning my riding stamina. I was worn from the workday and the hassles of getting this far; the light was fading, I was chilled from the earlier sweat mixed with the spots where the insistent rain had found its way in my suit, I was hungry, Beast was running low on gas, and I had no idea how far it was to my destination.

Did I mention I planned to camp tonight—tent, sleeping bag, the whole nine yards?

Maybe that goes farther to explain the “going off the rails” than a single fish sandwich from a vending machine. Because in pretty much every instance, ‘camping’ is synonymous with ‘outrunning my stamina,’ ‘chilled,’ ‘hungry,’ ‘low on gas,’ ‘tired,’ ‘getting dark,’ and ‘damp.’ That’s exactly what camping means, at least in our household.

Getting annoyed with myself, I started looking for a motel appropriate to my circumstances, meaning ‘cheap’ and ‘willing to shelter a bedraggled motorcyclist as long as he doesn’t do an oil change in the room and ruin our linens.’ Strangely, the little college town I was passing through seemed to have lots of places catering to parents well-enough off to send their kids to a fancy private college in the foothills of the Poconos and overlooking the confluence of the two branches of the Susquehanna, (read: pricey and fancy) but oddly, fairly few targeting my specific demographic. Hmm. Go figure.

No matter. I would bravely soldier on, trusting fate there would be something appropriate down the road somewhere.

But by now, the rain had abrogated our earlier agreement; it was raining both steadily and heavily. It was full-on dark, and both my visor and glasses were spattered with rain and fogged; oncoming headlights made it almost impossible for me to see the road ahead. I rode awkwardly and hesitantly into the darkness, fumbling my way down the highway until I finally recognized a road of the right aspect heading in the right direction. I followed it.

In short order, it took me to the route number I was looking for. Making a calculated guess between left and right, I turned onto the road and began looking eagerly for my destination—the campground.

Prior to this, I had been riding in daylight or in built-up areas; I was now in the country, and it was very, very dark. Except for the headlights of the onrushing cars, which were very, very bright. I really wasn’t liking this part very much at all. The low-gas warning light had been on for a really long time, and there wasn’t a gas station to be found. There wasn’t much of anything to be found, it seemed.

Then suddenly (…really suddenly, like I had to grab a fistful of brake because all of a sudden there it was, and thank FSM for ABS…) I was there. Oddly enough, at almost the exact instant, two Ducatistis arrived, making us the only folks there on eurobikes—everything else, without fail, was a V-Twin, American or otherwise.

A huge fire burned in a ginormous metal bowl near the entrance. I parked Beast, and slowly, creakily, made my way towards the light and warmth. Squishing my way along, I noted the campground was on the fertile flood plain of the Susquehanna (evidenced by the rich cornfields just beyond the road), which also meant the land was very, very flat, and all that rain that had been falling since I left Virginia four hours ago was sitting right where it fell, all two inches or so of it. Right where my tent was going.

Yeah, I was starting to think that perhaps camping was the weak link in my plan.

But angels can come in all shapes and sizes, and in this case my personal angel was a big, beefy, hirsute, tattooed dude riding a triked Suzuki through the gloom. He introduced himself and invited me to come hang out by the fire. Even more betterer, he actually had a tent available for my use; a great big tent. A great big dry tent. With a queen-sized airbed already set up in it.

Perhaps camping, per se, would not be the downfall of my trip after all.

I retrieved Beast, got her secured near the tent, and offloaded what I needed for the night. Once ensconced in my snug, relatively dry castle, I set out in search of dinner at the roadhouse that sat cheek-by-jowl with the campground, a roadhouse with a line of H-Ds filling the parking lot out front. What a beautiful place to find at the end of the road.

Dinner was a 12-ounce Budweiser longneck, downed in two swallows while standing at the bar. I slogged back through the fog and darkness to my beautiful, beautiful tent, stripped off my clammy riding gear (which had absolutely no chance in hell of doing any drying under the circumstances), climbed into my sleeping bag and fell immediately asleep. I dreamed spectacular dreams of broad rivers rushing, of trucks passing on the road, of trains rumbling by, of big V-Twins firing up and thundering into the night.

Then in the early grey light, I loaded up my gear, paid my respects to my angel as we stood by the smoldering remains of the night’s fire, and rode into the dawn of a new day—firmly on the rails, where I would remain for the duration of the trip.

II. A Sunday Morning in August, 8:00, a Diner with An Undetermined Number of Calendars on the Kitchen Wall:

“God-damned motorcycles.”

The shoulder belonging to that sentiment wrapped around the door at about the level of my forehead. Oddly, its hidden owner had apparently not noticed me pull up.

Nevertheless, I responded with a hearty “Alleluia, Brother!” as I unzipped my riding jacket and sidled into a convenient booth. “Coffee, please.” The waitress hands me a menu, smiling brightly as the enormous speaker exits, muttering an unintelligible addendum as the door jangles shut behind him.

“Don’t mind him, hon. He wunt talkin’ a you.” A compact woman addresses me across a jumbled plate of home fries and toast crusts, coffee in one hand and cigarette in the other.

I smile back at her. “I probably agree with him, anyhow.”

“Naah. My nephew was just killed last week, riding his motorcycle.”

Suddenly this conversation seemed way too personal to be having so casually on a summer Sunday morning, and the diner seemed to shrink all around us.

“He was twenty-seven. Just back from his third tour in Afghanistan. Got out of the Army. Was getting ready to go back over there as a civilian—you know, as one a those contractors. Gonna make some real money for his trouble.”

The coffee comes. A tall, cobalt blue ceramic mug; two creamers. Too hot to drink right now.

“He left a wife behind. They had a service for him down in Charlottesville—that’s where he was living—and a bunch of his buddies gave him a ‘ride off.’”

“Charlottesville? That’s down near where I’m from.” I pause. “I might have seem him on the road…”

“Yeah.” She offers a brief description of him and of his ride. “Some of his buddies are bringing his ashes up here, his riding buddies.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss.” I find nothing else to say, and I cannot begin to unpack the onion of sorrow she has conveyed in such a brief conversation—not here, not now. Who was this man—what kind of man was he, that he survived a war in a distant land, made it back safely to his wife and family, just to die alone on the dark streets of his hometown? I think about it for a few moments, then, I can think no further.

“God-damned motorcycles,” I say quietly to myself as my eggs arrive.*

III. Sometimes when you are riding, it seems like everyone you talk to has, had or wants a motorcycle. Without fail. And they want to share that with you.

Which is really nice.

IV. Quaint Old Vermont Sayings: “Heavier Than A Dead Minister.” Discuss.**

V. Route 17 is one of those roads, like Trinity Road in northern California, or U.S. 129 in North Carolina, that are notable less for what they connect than for what they are. The road is the destination; its endpoints are incidental.

I rode Rt. 17 on Campaigner when it was a relatively new bike and I was half my age. I am pretty sure it was the only place I ever ground a valve cover on that R80st while riding. Phil and I drove it (several times, as I remember) in a 5-speed Toyota a decade ago, when his license was fresh and driving was thrilling. Now me and Beast were warmed up on a beautiful summer morning, ready to attack the road west-to-east, Bristol to Waitsfield.

Rt. 17 is exactly the kind of road Beast was built for. Rising steeply from the valley floor, it winds its way up and over the Green Mountains at Appalachian Gap, then descends sharply into the valley to the east, gradually leveling out before reaching Waitsfield. The road itself is a motorcyclist’s dream, two sinuous lanes of frost-heaved asphalt looping, rising and falling from the deciduous forests of the lowlands to the sweetly scented firs and balsams of the summits. Curves build madly upon curves, piling up so rapidly you ride like a rotary phone being dialed.

I had been waiting for this moment for ages—for years. And when the moment came to finally address Rt. 17, I rode Beast like someone’s elderly grandmother. She might as well have had tennis balls stuck on the ends of her fork legs.

Grind the valve covers? Are you kidding me? I didn’t even remove the vinyl slipcovers from the sofa or rearrange the anti-macassars on the rocking chairs. If I had taken a full week to make some easy practice runs, I might have gotten to know the soul of the road well enough to really do it justice. But I didn’t have a week to learn it—I had one pass at it, and I approached it with great reserve, caution, and deference. I rode the rule I learned at the Dragon’s Tail: Your gear equals how many seconds ahead you can see. In some cases, that wasn’t very far ahead at all; I took an awful lot of turns in first or second gear. Nevertheless, I did have a few opportunities to wring Beast out and get to what I came for.

Beast Has A Happy

When we finally arrived at the gap, I pulled in to admire the view, and to get a picture or two. I caught Beast in profile, silhouetted against the western vista as she ticked away the accumulated heat. If she had been a greyhound, she would have been panting hard, tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth, with a great big goofy smile plastered across her face.

In the end, it turns out I had a second crack at App Gap, returning in the early afternoon and swapping ascending side for descending side by going westbound. The little bit of practice in the morning let me ride the return much better. I took a much more fluid and graceful approach, and except for getting bottled up behind a gaggle of brake-burning flatlanders for much of the descent, I think I did pretty well.

By the time I reached the valley floor at Bristol, the sport bikers were appearing in buzzy packs of two and three, queueing up eagerly to make their pass over the mountain. In the brilliant primary colors of bikes and riders, they seemed childlike and unserious, expensive toys clad in expensive raiment, out for a moment’s romp in a grown-up’s mountain playground.

I watch them go by me, and smile.

VI. "Blue Highways" is a book written by William Least Heat Moon, also known as William Trogdon, describing his journey around the United States in a white van in a time of personal turmoil. He stuck to the "Blue Highways," his term for the lesser highways that Rand-McNally designated in blue in their highway atlases—in contrast to the interstate highway system. Blue Highways take you right up to the edge of people's front yards, with lemonade stands (really), yard sales, gardens & vegetable stands, ramshackle sheds and pristine cottages. You can smell their lunches and their laundry, hear their dogs bark at you, and project your own hopes, fears and wildest imaginations onto the screens of their lives as you flash by.

Interstate Highways, on the other hand—regardless of the scenery they traverse—are a long, slow, soul-sucking passage through the dark twisted colon of corporatist America***.

VII. What is the World Coming to?

A classic Pennsylvania roadhouse, sitting beside a shady two-lane highway nestled deep in the recesses of anthracite country in northeastern Pennsylvania, and above the door, sticking out from the front of the building where passing traffic can’t miss it, is a beer sign. Actually, it is an Ale sign. For Chimay Ale.
I’m not sure what to make of that, actually.

* I'm pretty sure she was referring to Corey Guthrie.

**Bill Bryson actually discusses this at length in "I'm A Stranger Here Myself."

***I know that on close examination, that analogy falls apart. But I still like the sound of it.

A Few Words About Turkeys

2010-08-10T13:54:00.001-04:00

When we started looking into raising turkeys early this year, we kept coming across a few consistent threads of turkey lore—that they are stupid; that poults have to be shown what to eat at first; that turkeys will stampede at the slightest provocation, trampling and suffocating each other; that turkeys will drown in a heavy rain; that turkeys break their eggs because they lay them standing up, and so on.

I beg to differ.

Our experience may be uncharacteristic, because we are raising Narragansetts, a breed closely derived from the Eastern Wild Turkey. These are not the grotesquely deformed 'Butterballs' which have had their natural avian grace replaced with bland tasteless tumors of white meat. Narragansetts are spectacularly beautiful birds, large, stately and graceful, with woodland markings. They recall, from deep within, what it is to be a real bird. And when the Toms display, they are the very strutting epitome of what any first-grader or buckle-hatted Pilgrim would recognize as a Turkey—gobble, wattle, snood and all.

Unlike chickens, turkeys have a social structure, which implies they have some awareness of individuals. They have elegant, stylized, sometimes comical display and courtship behaviors. They communicate with one another and with the rafter—the term for a group of turkeys—as a whole. They are muscular fliers, and frequently leap into the air and wheel about for no apparent reason, often half a dozen bursting into flight nearly simultaneously.

They are curious and inquisitive, and have a broad vocabulary of vocalizations that seem to express a wide range of moods, from quiet contentment to pique, alarm and distress. A certain distinctive cry will make them all look in a particular direction and freeze for several seconds. They listen attentively to the flock of chickens, who are out of sight and some distance away across the ridge, and will echo and amplify calls of distress or alarm they may hear from their galliform brethren.

They are generally tranquil and appear thoughtful, unlike the frantic and seemingly pointless activity of chickens. They will cock their heads sideways and quizzically watch an airplane far overhead. I would go as far as to say they are affectionate, recalling how when they were younger (and mercifully smaller) as many as seven or nine young turkeys would hop onto my shoulders, back, neck and extended arms until I couldn't support any more. Once there, they would pick at my hair and ears, cooing quietly all the while.

As a way of showing our appreciation for these magnificent birds, we have gone all out in revamping their habitat. We began with significantly expanding the footprint of their enclosure into the adjacent forest on several sides. We then replaced the standard tee-stakes and four-foot welded wire fence with ten-foot black iron pipes driven two-and-a-half feet into the ground and five-foot welded wire.

We then replaced the lightweight netting roof with 2" mesh aviary netting, held up with/suspended from a complex rope web. Large ropes run from tree to tree outside the enclosure, and smaller ropes run from the tops of the pipes, connected to the suspensors through the netting with carabiners. A final run of rope traverses the perimeter of the fence, providing an edge for the netting to be pulled over. It is a spectacular flight cage, a clear-sky tent of swooping catenaries and vast volumes for the birds to play in, with rough-cedar roosts for them to sleep on under the stars.

It is a real pleasure to share the place with them. Many an evening we have spent just sitting, quietly watching them go about their gentle routine of strolling about their enclosure nibbling the odd bit of forage, preening, stretching like little feathered ballerinas, convulsively dirt-bathing or softly dozing off...

"Good Night and Good Luck"

2010-08-09T22:25:00.000-04:00

Right now. Go buy, rent, beg, borrow or steal a copy. And watch it.

Requiem for a cockerel

2010-08-08T21:56:00.000-04:00

The other evening we dined on the first of the chickens which we had raised from chicks. The chicks arrived last April, and the newly-matured cockerels went off for butchering last weekend on Saturday and were in our freezer Sunday. It's a little weird to look at it that way—chicks to meal—but I really haven't felt conflicted in the least.

Every single day when I went out to feed the chickens, or check their water, or make sure they were safe, or any of a thousand other chores I performed on their behalf, I would look at them as individual living animals and know exactly how their lives would end. As Joel Salatin puts it, "...a good life, then one bad day."

Virtually every other chicken I have ever eaten in my life—every drumstick, nugget, finger, roast, et cetera, et cetera, has lived a short, wretched life of misery and suffering. Our cockerels ran around like crazy in the sun and the rain, ate bugs and grass and some of our favorite flowers and garden plants, showed off for one another and the hens, and got to act like real birds of planet earth—hell, they got to fly; how many 21st-century chickens can say that?

To show respect for this cockerel and to appreciate exactly what a home-raised chicken tastes like, we did him up plain and simple: a drizzle of olive oil, some salt and pepper, a little butter in the pan to baste him. We baked him for a little over an hour, and accompanied him with roasted potatoes ( also simple, with salt and pepper only) and some sauteed summer squash fresh from the garden.

His meat was flavorful and toothsome; his bones solid and well-calcified. He was small, a little smaller than a regulation NFL-football, except with drumsticks. Three of us dined on him, with a decent portion left over for another meal. His bones will make another meal by way of stock. He was a real treat, unlike the bland, tasteless, textureless meat that is foisted off on us as "chicken" by the Purdues and Tysons of the world.

We have another dozen or so of his cohort in the freezer. I am looking forward to seeing what they're like.

"….been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time"

2010-08-06T11:30:00.004-04:00

HOT DAMN!

Beast is finally back in action, and she's in fine form. Every last vestige of injector bronchitis is gone, she’s wearing deep rubber front and rear (...just scuffed enough to be broken in) has two working mirrors all the way to six o’clock, and she’s freshly tuned to boot. She’s got a few scars here and there, but overall, she hasn’t felt like this in years. I’d pretty much forgotten what crisp throttle response was like, and had been riding hesitantly because of the sketchiness of the tires.

This morning, once I reloaded the drivers and remembered how to ride again, I was actually able to relax and focus on the ride instead of fretting over the machine. As a result, without even thinking about it, I opted for the more circuitous, rolling, winding “motorcycle friendly” route instead of the expeditious—but dull—superslab I’ve been favoring on four wheels for so long. Outstanding.

On the way home, I noticed something else interesting. My homeward commute on four wheels is a long string of counting down the miles, endlessly flipping through the radio stations, tedium piled upon tedium up to the last mile coming down the lane. But today, time and distance was irrelevant. I was, as the young'uns say, 'in the moment,' and the otherwise incessantly granular trip home was transformed into a delightful, fluid moment.
______________________________

This is my 300th post on RLYMI, which will be five years old in a week or so. That works out to a post every six days or so. I’m no Great Orange Satan or anything, but I’m pretty pleased with that posting schedule, given all that has transpired during those years. Personally, I think most of what I’ve posted stands up pretty well.

But of course, I’m biased.

"They symbolize the classic American values of independence and hard work...a uniquely American phenomenon."

2010-08-05T09:18:00.000-04:00

Harley, Davidson, Davidson & Davidson

Adding extortion to its diverse product line, Harley-Davidson is threatening both the city of Milwaukee (the company's home since it's founding 107 years ago by William Harley and Arthur Davidson) and its labor unions with relocating to another city. Unless the city is willing to offer "incentives" and the unions make wage and scheduling concessions, H-D expects to announce plans to move elsewhere within the next few months.

If I recall correctly, the Milwaukee facility makes the quaint, iconic legacy V-twin engines that define the brands; the motorcycles are assembled at their York, Pennsylvania plant. Milwaukee is also where H-D's corporate headquarters are located, but I don't imagine the suits are feeling any pressure to make concessions and there are no threats to move the white-collar side of things, nor the H-D museum located there as well.

Keep in mind, this is the company that cut 2,000 manufacturing jobs last year, plans to cut 1,400 to 1,600 more jobs by 2012—and reported over $70 million in profits for the second quarter of 2010.

It's a little ironic to me, the cognitive dissonance between the rough, hard-living, hard-riding blue-collar workingman's image H-D has worked so hard to cultivate, and the ruthless, bloodless corporatist approach they are taking to their business model.

But on second thought, I also recall that H-D has, more than any other marque, been responsible for the ascendancy of the RUBs ("Rich Urban Bikers"), those affluent, white-collar, middle-aged, mostly white, mostly males riders who are newly arrived to the game. That demographic has helped keep the motorcycle industry off life support for the last few years (while, ironically, swelling the fatality rate with their poor dilletante riding habits, drunkenness and lack of awareness).

But the average Joe has probably been priced out of the market; motorcycles have slowly become a rich man's indulgence, a second childhood enjoyed on the cusp of senescence. I suppose that in reality, H-D's target demographic is perfectly okay with the current ruthlessness the company displays. Hell, it's probably the same cold logic they pride themselves on displaying Monday through Friday when they aren't out playing badass biker gang member in pseudo colors and tassel loafers.

For what it's worth, if BMW Motorrad showed the same sneering disconnect between the carefully-crafted public image and the way it actually treated the people who build and buy its products, I would feel the same way. As long as the Quandt family remains at the helm, I don't see that happening.

Eff them all. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if within five or ten years (max) H-D had completely abandoned manufacturing altogether and became a finance and "lifestyle" conglomerate, leaving the Chinese and Koreans the dirty work of actually manufacturing bikes.

Take your trademarked "Potato potato potato potato" and shove it right up your p&l statement; this company can't die soon enough. Wake up, HOGs.

Yet more about SOTW, tangentially:

2010-08-04T09:23:00.001-04:00

" Recent studies by Professor Nina Kraus, a neuroscientists [sic] at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have shown that the electrical activity inside the brain while listening to music closely matches the physical properties of sound waves.

Using brain scanning equipment Professor Kraus, who presented her findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego on Saturday, said the brainwaves recorded from volunteers listening to music could be converted back to sound.

In one example where volunteers listened to Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water," when the brainwaves were played back the song was clearly recognisable.

She said: 'When we play the brainwaves back as sound, although they don't sound exactly like the song, it is pretty similar. It shows that the brain matches the physical properties of sound very closely.'"

Slow moving Walter was unavailable for comment.

When A Bicycle Courier Saved The World:

2010-08-04T08:56:00.000-04:00

From The Gallup Management Journal (behind paywall) , by way of thewashcycle.com :

"The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 not only showed how close the United States and Soviet Union could come to a nuclear war, but also the sorry state of the communication channels needed to avert it. During one point in the crisis, the Soviet ambassador to Washington had to rely on a bicycle courier to take his urgent messages for Moscow to the local Western Union office."

The Silence of The Cockerels

2010-08-02T22:03:00.001-04:00

Well, this weekend we graduated the first cadre of the Class of 2010. Fifteen of them, all adolescent rooster types—technically known as Cockerels—were part of the mixed run of chicks we received in early April, after the disaster we experienced with our first batch of mail-order chicks (e.g., 100% mortality on arrival).

Since our long-term objective is primarily egg production, we knew that beyond one or two select roosters, all the others would provide meat. Specifically, the cockerels would become our younger, more tender "fryer" or "roaster" chickens; the retired egg-layers are our soup/stewing chickens.

For their graduation, we took them to a near-by operation that has a little bit of everything: Pick-Your-Own fruits and berries, orchards, free-roaming poultry, a truck garden and roadside stand, and a full line of self-labeled jams, jellies, sauces and preserves. One of their services is fresh rabbit with 24-hours notice, and they are fully equipped to butcher and process small animals.

Our average butchering and processing time so far has been, setup to cleanup, about one hour per bird. I dropped off two cages of birds late on a cool and pleasant Saturday morning, and by the time we got home late Saturday evening, there was a message on the phone that the birds were frozen and ready to be picked up.

They were all small, hardly more than Cornish Game hens, averaging around three pounds dressed weight. They had probably maxed out close to a month ago, and were simply burning through feed for the last few weeks without adding any weight. But the recent spate of mercilessly hot, humid weather kept us postponing processing them ourselves—a hot, messy job under the best of circumstances.

We wrestled with the 'ethics' of paying someone else to do our dirty work, but in the end, it made sense, saved us time we didn't really have in the first place, and gave us, admittedly, a far superior finished product. Plus, we received bonus packs of duck feet, duck wings, and several packs of surplus giblets. All told, quite a fair deal and a respectful farewell to a bunch of pugnacious little yard monsters. (Who knew cockerels can draw blood from people?)

We've both dealt with butchering, and know exactly how hard it is. Odds are, we'll be doing it again in the not so distant future, but when we don't have fifteen birds to process. But in this instance, we paid someone else a very reasonable amount and got something done quickly, mercifully and efficiently that would not have gotten done otherwise.

But yeah, it's a whole lot quieter out there with fifteen fewer roosters...

The Dim Mak

2010-08-02T21:45:00.000-04:00

“It was the Dim Mak.”

“The Dim Mak?”

“The Dim Mak. The Quivering Palm. The Death Touch. It's forbidden in the New Earth Army.”

“What does the Death Touch do?”

“It kills you, Bob—with one touch.”

“Jesus!”

“There's a story that Wong Wifu, the great Chinese martial artist...had a fight with a guy and beat him. Then the guy gave him this light tap. Wong looked at him and the guy just nodded. That was it. He had given him the death touch. Wong died.”

“Then and there?”

“No. About eighteen years later. That's the thing about the Dim Mak. You never know when it's gonna take effect.”

Summer Reading List

2010-07-30T20:14:00.002-04:00

To help understand how we got here. In no particular order:

"Nixonland," Rick Perlstein. The original sin of contemporary American politics.
"The Looming Tower," Lawrence Wright. Al Qaeda without the hyperventilation.
"The Big Con," Jonathan Chait. Explaining modern snake oil economics. (Surprise: Dick Cheney was there at the creation)
"Legacy of Ashes," Tim Weiner. Why our relations with the world at large are so utterly dysfunctional.
"The Shock Doctrine," Naomi Klein. Chicago-school economics forced upon the world at gunpoint under the guise of "freedom."

"Nixonland" is particularly interesting for me because I grew up in a household that recognized Richard Milhous Nixon for the devil he was; the Watergate hearings were a seminal event in shaping my political consciousness. I've had to put "Shock Doctrine" aside several times since starting it over a year ago because what it describes is so...horrible.

Taken together, these books present a tightly woven narrative of how far modern American politics has strayed from our ideals. All these books interrelate to a significant degree. The question is if there is any way left for us to fix what has happened during the post-World War Two nightmare of American Exceptionalism.

Eyewitness News Update:

2010-07-29T19:06:00.001-04:00

Problem solved.

A Long Dry Spell

2010-07-29T16:19:00.000-04:00

I realized recently that this may be the longest time I’ve done the least riding since…well, since I went over to the dark side and started motorcycling over a quarter-century ago. I recall riding into town a couple of times back in the dark grey days of winter, when being a man of leisure still held some appeal. Even then, one trip was on the Rockster because Beast’s battery started weirding out on me, and of course Beast had two broken mirrors.

Then came the snows of 2010, and biking became impossible for most of February and well into March. By that time, Beast’s battery wouldn’t fire her up even when left on the battery tender overnight, and the Rockster had sprung a slow leak in her rear tire.

It wasn’t until late spring when I had the resources to start turning the tide of decrepitude—first, a new battery, then two mirrors. Each one of those items, by the way, cost the same as a meal at The Inn, excluding wine.

Then it was, all told, four new tires: a new rear tire for the Rockster (which somehow mysteriously developed a pencil-sized hole in it even as Phil was riding it home), the judicious replacement of Beast’s perilously worn (read: nearly bald) rear tire, and both sketchy front tires just for good measure.

But bikes got to be ridden.

Because poor Beast sat so long out in the elements (...unfortunately, right under the drip edge of the shed roof...) over the winter, she developed injector bronchitis. Could be simple fuel contamination, could be a side effect of the funky ethanol mixes everyone is flogging these days, could be gum, could be a colony of petroleum-eating amoebae, could be any number of things. What it means is she will fire up all right, but won’t idle worth a damn.

And first thing in the morning, there’s nothing like trying to coax a faltering bike uphill on a gravel road when all the sudden she clears her throat and the power jumps from somewhere around “just about to die” to “LET”S GO BABY!” Yeah, that’s fun.

I tried the round trip to work a couple of times, hoping the problem would take care of itself. The first time, I desperately sought out the first place that was open at that time of the morning for some injector cleaner. I dumped half the bottle into the fuel tank, crossed my fingers, then stumbled and lurched on to the superslab and to work.

Topped off the tank with fresh expensive super-duper premium name-brand designer gasoline on the way home, hoping for some modicum of improvement. No dice. Stopped at another joint, got a different kind of injector cleaner, dumped half of that into my tankful of fresh expensive super-duper premium name-brand designer gasoline and stumbled home through a living hazy hot humid summertime afternoon rush hour road work stop-and-go traffic hell.

Anyway. Beast is now receiving some tender wrenchlove, and though the stumbling problem is resisting the first few efforts to correct it, I expect it will be resolved in short order. I trust that shortly, we will be getting our ride on again, and I look forward to that with great enthusiasm. It’s been a long dry spell.

Fox News Update

2010-07-27T11:35:00.000-04:00

It's not a fox—a raccoon, according to an eyewitness.
So should this be an Eyewitness News Update?

QOTD

2010-07-27T08:20:00.000-04:00

From Nancy Pelosi's Twitter feed:

"By August, more jobs will have been created by Obama and Dem Congress than all jobs created by 8 years of Bush Administration"

How Quintessentially American:

2010-07-26T11:52:00.000-04:00

From the New York Times:

By most measures, Harley-Davidson has been having a rough ride. Motorcycle sales are falling in 2010, as they have for each of the last three years. The company does not expect a turnaround anytime soon. But despite that drought, Harley’s profits are rising — soaring, in fact. Last week, Harley reported a $71 million profit in the second quarter, more than triple what it earned a year ago. This seeming contradiction — falling sales and rising profits — is one reason the mood on Wall Street is so much more buoyant than in households, where pessimism runs deep and joblessness shows few signs of easing.

Many companies are focusing on cost-cutting to keep profits growing, but the benefits are mostly going to shareholders instead of the broader economy, as management conserves cash rather than bolstering hiring and production. Harley, for example, has announced plans to cut 1,400 to 1,600 more jobs by the end of next year. That is on top of 2,000 job cuts last year — more than a fifth of its work force.

“Because of high unemployment, management is using its leverage to get more hours out of workers,” said Robert C. Pozen, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and the former president of Fidelity Investments. “What’s worrisome is that American business has gotten used to being a lot leaner, and it could take a while before they start hiring again.”

And some of those businesses, including Harley-Davidson, are preparing for a future where they can prosper even if sales do not recover. Harley’s goal is to permanently be in a position to generate strong profits on a lower revenue base…the ability to raise profits in the face of declining sales is a triumph of productivity that makes the United States more globally competitive. The problem is that companies are not investing those earnings, instead letting cash pile up to levels not reached in nearly half a century.

“As long as corporations are reinvesting, the economy can grow,” said Ethan Harris, chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “But if they’re taking those profits and saving them, rather than buying new equipment, it hurts overall growth. The longer this goes on, the more you worry about income being diverted to a sector that’s not spending.” “There’s no question that there is an income shift going on in the economy…Companies are squeezing their labor costs to build profits.”

In fact, while wages and salaries have barely budged from recession lows, profits have staged a vigorous recovery, jumping 40 percent between late 2008 and the first quarter of 2010. Harley-Davidson’s profit gain last quarter was helped by a turnaround in its financing unit, as well as more efficient production, but the company is still cutting. Harley has warned union employees…it would move production elsewhere in the United States if they did not agree to more flexible work rules and tens of millions in cost-saving measures.

Even if sales do improve, a surge in hiring is unlikely. “The last thing we’re worried about is when are we going to have to add more capacity, because what we’re really doing is reconfiguring our entire operational system for greater flexibility,” Keith Wandell, the company’s chief executive, said.

This working-man's apocalypse is partly a result of the paradigm shift that has occurred over the last few decades (a guerilla class-war in which the plutocrats smartly defeated and virtually destroyed the middle class before we even knew what was happening) and partly an inevitable outcome of the devil's bargain H-D made the last time it became a publicly-traded company.

I really hate to beat up on H-D and their customers*, but for a 100+ year-old company which made so much from brand loyalty and labelling—and so little from engineering and quality control—it is galling. It is orphan-grade chutzpah to so lavishly reward Wall Street through devastating and empoverishing the union workers who builds their products. This shows such an incredible disconnect between the public face of H-D and its business strategy that it defies comprehension.

Frankly, I hope all the good, hard-working, hard-riding H-D owners will take a good long hard look at what H-D has become—reflected in its utter comtempt for the middle class—before they send another dime in the direction of Milwaukee. There are plenty of alternatives available to what was once an American icon, but is now just another metastatizing tumor, a corporatist cancer sucking the lifeblood from our country.

*Okay, technically, there's nothing I enjoy more...

It Just Makes Me Angry...

2010-07-24T17:28:00.003-04:00

I saw a flier pinned to a bulletin board the other day for a charity event. It was a motorcycle ride, sponsored by a motorcycle dealership, with a modest entry fee and perhaps some additional revenue-generators like a poker run or something.

The beneficiary was a man in is thirties who recently lost control of his motorcycle in a single-vehicle accident, and as a result, suffered a traumatic brain injury. His prognosis is not good.

He is in a coma, is likely to remain in a coma for some time, and will need intensive medical attention, rehabilitation and therapy—should he be fortunate enough to recover to that point. He has a family, who are probably still struggling to come to terms with the upheaval they have undergone, but apparently no health insurance or means to afford the millions of dollars in medical expenses he has incurred and will likely face for the foreseeable future.

Curmudgeonly misanthrope that I am, I immediately hopped on the interwebz, and googled the man's name + "motorcycle accident" + (town). Within about two minutes, I found a local news article quoting the State Police report from the incident, and of course, it completely confirmed my prejudices:

"...lost control of his motorcycle...not wearing a helmet."

As Ian Malcolm said, "Boy, do I hate being right all the time."

Man, I feel like I know this poor dumb son-of-a-bitch, because I've surely talked with his ilk enough times. Let me fill in a few more pieces of the puzzle: Probably riding a used Harley he bought from a friend; self-taught rider or learned a few pointers from the P.O. while the title was being signed over; only owned a shorty helmet for ventures into neighboring states with helmet laws (incident occurred, needless to say, in one of those enlightened bastions of liberty that do not require helmets) and probably adorned said helmet with stickers that asserted his individuality, so to speak.

I can also hear the barroom rant (...jeeze, I can almost smell the cheap beer and Jagermeister shots on his breath) about freedom, liberty, let those who ride decide, yadda yadda yadda. I can almost quote verbatim the weird, fatalistically heroic twisted logic—"...An effin' helmet ain't gonna do me any good if I have an accident—I'll be dead meat!" And of course, the libertarian argument about how it's his business if he wears a helmet, not the government's.

But right now, it's really not his business anymore. It's fallen to a cadre of sympathetic fellow-travelers to right the heinous, grievous error in judgment this poor vegetable made. In all likelihood, it will be the government—the big, bad, librul gummit—and his fellow taxpayers—who will foot the bill for his little self-indulgent exercise in freedom and pig-headed liberty. Except, oops, he probably won't be paying any taxes anytime soon, now will he?

Fascinating thing about accidents. Despite (my assumptions about) the uninformed and speculative nature of this poor saps' understanding of motorcycle accidents and head injury, we actually have some...what's that stuff called? Data, yeah...DATA...on accidents. And you know what?

Any fall from a standing height—six feet or so—can cause traumatic brain injury. Walking, bicycling, horseback riding, motorcycling. It's all the same; horizontal velocity doesn't enter into the equation unless you run into something. That's why people generally don't get much over six feet tall; it's a natural limit.
Motorcycle accidents generally produce a number of non-life-threatening injuries. But add a traumatic brain injury to the mix, and the prognosis gets a whole lot worse. It's the difference between taking pain meds for a week and being on a ventilator.
A single-vehicle accident means he couldn't control his bike, and essentially fell down; there was no other car or truck involved to share the blame. There was no car to be launched airborne over, no truck side to be thrown into. He did something wrong, was thrown through the air some distance, and landed hard on his unprotected head.
A helmet—even a stupid shorty bedpan helmet, but preferably a real, live D.O.T. or Snell approved helmet—might have turned this into a "...treated and released..." or a "...held for observation overnight..." instead of a "...long-term rehabilitation..."

I need to muster up an iota of sympathy for this man. I really do. For his family? My heart goes out to them. He really shafted them by his stupid, selfish actions. But for him?

No way. Sorry.
I won't be able to make the benefit ride.
Be safe.

An odd coincidence, and tragedy

2010-07-24T15:44:00.000-04:00

A while back, I wrote about arriving at a train crossing as one train passed right before me right-to-left, and nearly simultaneously another train appeared on the second track heading left-to-right. What are the odds, I thought to myself at the time.

Well, apparently better than you might think.

This week a local woman was killed at that very crossing. She apparently broke from the line of stopped vehicles, ignored the flashing lights and warning bells, drove around the lowered barricades, and around the train—the train on the first track of two closest to her. The train that wasn't going anywhere.

...And directly into the path of the second train, whose approach was hidden by the stopped train. The fast-moving train had enough time to activate its emergency stopping systems before impacting the passenger side of the car with a force witnesses described as "...a bomb blast."

There's nothing funny, or even ironic about this. It's just sad, and I wonder two things—what was so important to make running the barricade seem like a good idea, and what that last wave of appalling regret must have felt like...

Fox News Update

2010-07-23T15:25:00.000-04:00

We are nearly three years into our ever-expanding poultry experiment. We have seen our flocks grow in number, complexity, and in their demands on our time. We have added varieties, species, and end-purposes (meat now, in addition to egg-laying). We have avoided losing birds to predation, suffering one attack from a hawk early on that was interrupted by our faithful dogs without any lasting harm, an odd death from unknowable causes, plus some egg-theft executed by a crafty snake (...who we executed right back, as described here some time ago).

Until recently.

Several weeks ago (perhaps because we had been lulled into a false sense of security by our perimeter defenses) we discovered a trail of black feathers leading to, and over, the fence near an overhanging tree. I was able to follow the trail of feathers into the woods for some distance, but gave up in the failing light of evening. What I saw in the twilight established to my satisfaction that the predator was small, powerful, and terrestrial; e.g., a fox, who dragged his victim off into the forest.

As a result, we examined our fences and discovered some blatant weaknesses we had ignored or overlooked. We beefed them up, fixed some weak spots, completed what we had left undone. Yet within a week or so, Mary discovered the headless body of another victim, left inside the chickenyard when the fox was unable to work her through the fence. Again, we examined the perimeter and found the achille's heel—the exterior gates provided ample space for a swift, determined predator to waltz under without a second thought or a moment's inconvenience.

More bolstering of defenses, this time with boards, chunks of broken cinder blocks, and bad thoughts directed fox-ward. We attempt some chemical warfare, sprinkling great wooly tufts of Schroeder-hair regularly about with abandon, and marking the trees and fenceposts ringing the chickenyard (from the five-foot mark on down) with a gallon jug of well-aged man-pee.

And yet, again, evidence of another attempt to breach our defenses—a broken board, some disturbance of the undergrowth, miscellaneous signs, but fortunately this time, no victim to be found and an early morning beak-count tallying all present and accounted for.

We now know what we're up against, and I am getting an inkling of how foxes have earned their reputation for craft. At night, our flocks roost securely inside tightly latched coops with no entry points; I like to think that is when they are the safest (please, fox, don't prove me wrong). Therefore, all three of the attacks we know about happened during broad daylight; two happened during the brief periods when Mary was off the property, and one while she was working in her office, at the farthest point in the house from where the attack occurred.

We cut back weeds and undergrowth to deprive the little bugger of cover and to reveal weaknesses in the fenceline. We will nail more boards, and bigger boards, across vulnerable spots. We will leave Schroeder out in the garden when we have to be elsewhere.

We are learning to think like a fox, and meanwhile, we keep our fingers crossed.

J.S. Bach: Unaccompanied Cello Suites—YoYo Ma

2010-07-02T22:50:00.004-04:00

I have taken to indulging myself by buying things that I hear on the radio and like. Granted, this does not represent that big of an indulgence because I am not moved to commerce by the radio with (insert radio pun here) great frequency.

J.S. Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites fall into this category of impulse purchases. Though not as ubiquitous as the Brandenburg Concertos, the Cello suites may still sound familiar to the casual listener—some or all of them are staples of classical radio. But the Unaccompanied Suites are notable for being, well—unaccompanied. Just one man, one instrument, one composer; a lean, stripped-down version of classical music, which we often take to be synonymous with full orchestras or various hands-full of musicians—trios, quartets, quintets, ad nauseum.

In this instance, the music is spare and lean. I am struck by the undeniable presence of three well-defined personalities: Bach, the composer, pulling the music from the ether and capturing it on the page; Ma, the performer; reconstituting the written music; and the cello itself, giving voice to Ma's interpretation of Bach's brilliance. Three voices, singing in one medium.

Ma's cello is deep, dark and woody; it buzzes and burrs under his caress; it contributes its own quality to the music, going beyond what Bach composed. It is a different kind of sound from that of the orchestra, with its many overlapping and interwoven layers and brilliant polish. It is intimate, unadorned, direct, personal, almost conversational. You are in the presence three greats: composer, performer, and instrument.

Listening to this team is like savoring a varietal wine—in this case, a deep, dark, dry complex well-aged Cabernet Sauvignon. As wine from a single variety of grape will yield up its bounty under the guidance of a master vintner, so does the unaccompanied instrument yield up its riches in the hands of a gifted performer. All the richness and complexity, quirks and foibles, strengths and weaknesses are expressed to the pleasure of the patient, lingering listener without disguises, cloaking, masking or artifice. These performances are treasures to be savored at length.

Deepwater Horizon

2010-05-25T21:06:00.005-04:00

I have little of value to add to the discussion of the environmental devastation happening in the Gulf of Mexico right now. But I find myself thinking about one little human aspect of this tragedy I have not heard discussed by anyone among the countless talking heads, hired guns, prognosticators, shills and apologists.

There is a cadre—their number now reduced by eleven—who stood briefly on the threshold of a professional and personal milestone, an achievement that cannot be diminished by what so immediately and horrifically followed. This team of people successfully drilled a hole into the earth over two miles deep, from a drilling platform floating on the ocean's surface a mile above (a total of 18,000 feet from drilling deck to the bottom of the hole) —a drilling platform held in its place only by the constantly adjusted nudges of its computer-controlled thrusters.

They succeeded. Safely. They reached the oil-bearing formation that was their target, and they prepared it for its eventual entry into production, somewhere in the near future. But then, this man...

...decided caution was a luxury BP could no longer afford, time was of the essence, and it was too expensive to delay any further. He decided—over the objections of the professionals who had, for seven long years, run the ~~Nostromo~~ Deepwater Horizon without a lost time accident—to remove the drilling mud that kept the enormous pressures in that oil-bearing formation in check, and replace it with the much less dense seawater.

The chain of command who personally decided it was more cost-effective in the long run to destroy the Gulf of Mexico than it was to run the Deepwater Horizon as the professionals said it should be run would likely fit comfortably in a Ford Aerostar without so much as their thighs grazing. And you can bet not a one of them will face any personal or professional consequences as a result of their benighted cost-benefit analysis. They may face a few uncomfortable moments under the spotlights of a congressional hearing room, but their lavish emoluments will have ensured that whatever bark, it will not be followed by any bite. In a few short years, they will once again find themselves, conscienceless and blameless, atop their professions.

Yet the survivors of the Deepwater apocalypse, those traumatized and brutalized wage-slaves (yes, the same roughnecks, riggers, cooks and clerks who were held incommunicado aboard ship for fifty hours until they signed releases denying injuries or knowledge of the events leading up to the disaster) will always carry with them the legacy of that awful night. Will they be willing or able to work in their profession again? Will they be cursed by their association with this disaster? Are they marked? Will they ever be able to speak with pride of their accomplishment, of their immense achievement, without an uncomfortable silence falling across the room? Will they become demonized for the havoc unleashed by their hubris? Will anyone want to listen to their stories? Will they be believed? Will they tell their children, or their grandchildren, where those scars came from?

We do not know who the "Carter Burke" is in this case. But he surely exists in flesh-and-blood, and his real name is known to some. And yes, he is the one man who made THE one decision that, against the better judgement of his peers, resulted in this catastrophe. In a just world, that man would be found out and made to wear this event around his neck, his albatross, for all the world to see for every waking moment of the rest of his miserable life.

Addendum: The reference to the Nostromo is not quite right; it's a bit of a conflation. The crew of the Nostromo, with the exception of Ripley, were all dead. It was the Sulaco that carried the Colonial Marines and Carter Burke to their doom. But you get the point.

Dad's famous "Paw Paw Shooters"

2010-04-22T16:55:00.002-04:00

Ingredients:

4 - 750 ml. bottles of home made Paw Paw wine*

1 BB pistol & 1 or 2 16g carbon dioxide cartridges

BB Pellets

-----------------------------------

1. Tastefully arrange the bottles of wine (unopened) against a backdrop of canvas or landscape fabric draped over a sawhorse. They should be at room temperature.

2. Draw straws to see who shoots first.

3. Take turns shooting until no bottle is left unshattered. (Or 'NBLU' as we call it.)

4. Deposit remains in recycling bin.

5. Celebrate by drinking something good.

The prep time for the Paw Paw wine is generally what makes this such a special dish to serve, so you won't want to make it very often. But everyone should try it at least once.

* This would also be great made with home made persimmon wine.

Another venture into unknown territory:

2010-03-04T15:55:00.001-05:00

It's early March, and under the hoophouse there are a hardy bunch of turnips that have survived the long, rough winter. I say survived, but actually many of them haven't really survived—they are shriveled and spent, exhausted, some are simply whitish bags of brown mush topped by defeated crowns of ragged leaves. They have enough wherewithal left to send up a flower stalk in a few weeks, bloom, set seed, pass along their genes and die.

But under the warm spring sun, I can gather a few pounds of good, solid sound turnips. About half are the pure white Tokyo Cross variety, and the other half are Purple Tops. So:

Turnips (3-½ pounds cleaned and peeled)
1-½ Tbsp. sea salt
6 Tbsp whey

I shredded the turnips, and mixed them with the salt, squeezing and wringing them until the fine grains of salt dissolved and the weeping juice was thoroughly distributed through the shreds. I added the whey (on a whim, based on our experience with some mind-boggling gingered carrots). This is a lactic acid fermentation, which is a big difference from a yeast-based fermentation. I know lots about the affairs of yeast—pretty much nothing about lactic acid fermentation except what I vaguely remember from my mother making kraut decades ago.

Now the mixture sits in a stoneware crock, protected from the air with a small china plate and weighted down by a quart mason jar full of water. By tomorrow I suspect it will be obviously alive, and in a couple of days I imagine we will smell it before we ever see it. Within a week or two we should have bona fide turnip kraut (actually, I suppose it should be called sauerturnip, but whatever...) and it will increase in tartness and pungency for up to six weeks, at which point we could can what might be left.

Stay tuned.

Nixtamal ! (UPDATED)

2010-02-21T19:46:00.005-05:00

This weekend I undertook something new out of sheer curiosity. What I did is at the intersection of cooking, science, culture and, I don't know...anthropology?

I had read about the ancient process of nixtamalization, where dried corn is cooked and soaked in an alkali solution. In various cultures, this results in Posole, Masa Harina, or Hominy and Hominy grits. The process yields a number of results: the tough outer shell of the corn is removed, as is the germ; the grain swells, becomes soft and starchy, and a number of nutrients are made available that would otherwise be sequestered. Cultures that adopted corn as a staple grain without nixtamalization, such as many groups in the American south, quickly developed deficiency diseases such as pellagra and kwashiorkor. And while this is all new and exciting and exotic to me, it's been common knowledge among countless cultures for thousands of years.

In any case. I took two cups of the whole kernel corn we use for chicken feed. I boiled it for about an hour, until the grains had begun to swell slightly. Then the recipe I had read called for adding ½ cup of wood ashes to the pot to provide the alkali.

Well, our woodstove provides a steady supply of hardwood ash, but I didn't like the idea of having little bits of stuff mixed in with the corn (for example, we dispose of dinner bones in the fire) so first I gathered about a cup of ash, sieved it, added a quart of water, shook it vigorously for a few minutes, then strained the ash solution through filter paper. The sieving and filtering process left altogether about ¼ cup of solids behind.

The effect of adding the opaque gray solution to the simmering corn was spectacular. The color of the liquid turned a clear golden orange, and for the first time, it released the distinctive "tortilla" aroma of hominy, like it had been hiding somewhere.

The nixtamalization process continued for three hours from that point. Somewhere around the two hour mark, the aroma became unmistakably that of fresh sweet corn cooking—a wonderful summertime smell to have in the kitchen in late February. At the three hour mark from adding the ash liquor, the corn grains were plump and swollen, floating in a thick golden gelatinized liquid.

I drained the liquid, rinsed the grains with cold water, drained them again, and covered them with cold water one last time. At this point, I had completed the nixtamal process, and had a big pot of posole/hominy to do something with. (The chickens would devour the leftover liquid for breakfast the next morning). I pondered the issue overnight, consulting a few posole recipes here and there. Come morning, this is what I decided:

Posole Stew:

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 fist-sized chunk of Virginia ham—rind, fat and all (any good seasoning meat would do—a ham hock would probably be awesome)
3 whole dried chile peppers
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp garlic powder
2 cans black beans, with liquid
1 tsp dried oregano
1 batch Posole/Hominy (From 2 C dried corn)
1 bottle ale*

Combine all ingredients in a crockpot and simmer on low, stirring occasionally. After several hours, remove ham and cut into small bits; return to pot and continue simmering. Season to taste—I deliberately omitted salt as the Virginia ham seems to provide enough salt on its own. The posole and black beans together make a complete protein, so the meat could be omitted for a vegetarian dish. However, in that case I would be sure to add some good olive oil to make up for the lost fat.

Conclusion? The posole stew was well-received by the panel of judges (...considering it was made from chicken feed and all...). Personally, I find the whole process absolutely fascinating, and after just one batch don't feel like I really understand what I did exactly. The transformational nature of nixtamalization reminds me most of the magic of mashing beer, where suddenly, with just a little nudging from the cook, something appears that wasn't there just a minute before. In mashing, it's the activity of enzymes...here, it's chemistry and probably some enzymes as well. It's all very cool, regardless.

I suppose I'll try it again sometime...in the meantime, there's leftovers to be put away.

* Please note this was the aforementioned "Sorghum Ale," and as a result, the stew developed an awful flavor upon standing. Please substitute any good stock, broth, bouillion or even plain water. It also solidified, so I would either halve the quantity of posole or double the quantity of liquid. I would stay away from beer--hops does not work well in this recipe**.
** I'm actually surprised how frequently when beer is used as an ingredient, the hop bitterness dominates the contributed flavor--beer bread is a great example. It's rarely the malt, unless the beer is a stout with a strong roast and a low hopping profile. I'm starting to rethink beer as an all-purpose ingredient.

Noted with Sadness

2010-02-17T17:08:00.004-05:00

One of the primary missions of this blog is the treatment of motorcycling as an act worthy of serious consideration. I would be utterly remiss in that mission if I did not note with sadness the recent death of Professor Harry Hurt of USC at the age of 81.

Professor Hurt was the author of Motorcycle Accident Cause Factors and Identification of Countermeasures, which came to be known, with no little irony, as "The Hurt Report." This groundbreaking investigation and study of over nine-hundred motorcycle accident scenes, thirty-six-hundred police reports of motorcycle accident, and interviews with over five-hundred motorcyclists laid the foundation for modern motorcycle safety training and practices, and is still considered the bible of motorcycle safety research. Professor Hurt was still regularly holding interviews with motojournalists until shortly before his death, offering his wisdom on the current state of motorcycling—recently noting with concern the rising motorcycle fatality rate brought on by an influx of older novice riders riding bigger bikes—and drinking.

Among the Hurt Report's most significant findings—(blindingly obvious, in hindsight, and Billy Joel be damned)—was that the vast majority of motorcycle accidents occur in good weather, with good conditions and good visibility. Most were caused by the other vehicle failing to yield the right-of-way to a motorcycle because the driver "...just didn't see them," and most motorcyclists involved in accidents were self-taught or learned to ride from other self-taught riders. (This was the era when accident avoidance began and ended with 'laying it down' and hoping for the best).

To say the Hurt Report transformed motorcycling doesn't begin to describe its impact. Later in his career, Professor Hurt ran USC's Head Protection Research Laboratory, continuing his work improving the design and manufacturing of helmets for all types of activities. Recently, there had been discussion of revisiting the original report and performing another round of data collection to evaluate the progress made since 1981, and to identify new areas of concern.

All of us who ride are in the debt of Professor Hurt, who shaped our endeavor in ways we can hardly imagine. Thank you, sir.

A Bit of Puzzlement

2010-02-13T17:54:00.000-05:00

I am truly puzzled.
Two or three years ago, a huge oak tree fell in the bottomland during a fierce windstorm. The bulk of it has been suspended off the ground for that entire time, resting at one end on its shattered and splintered trunk, and halfway down its length on the nub of a large branch that impaled the earth.

Some time ago I stripped much of the bark off it, and cut up the limbs for firewood. Last summer I sliced off a half a dozen or so lengths for seating around the firepit; this fall I split and stacked those for firewood. More recently, I cut more 16" slices, and split and stacked them to dry briefly in place. I have worked my way down the massive trunk to the point where my chainsaw will not quite sever the trunk when cutting from both sides, so it must be more than 32" in diameter.

What puzzles me is that much of this wood is still completely green (i.e., wet, unseasoned) after so much time; for all intents and purposes, it has not dried at since it fell. How can this be?

I recall hearing that for cut and split wood, you allow one month per inch of diameter; how can so little drying have taken place in a tree without roots, branches or leaves, that is completely surrounded by airflow?

"Groundhog Day"

2010-02-04T20:40:00.000-05:00

"Groundhog Day" (1993): (A) Great movie, or (B) Greatest movie ever?

Wasmund's Single Malt Whiskey

2010-02-04T20:14:00.002-05:00

Wasmund's Single Malt Whiskey is now the official distilled spirit of RLYMI. Deal with it.

Jury Duty

2010-01-30T17:56:00.000-05:00

Do it, if you get the opportunity. Yes, it's the punishment you get for registering to vote, but it's the other great obligation of citizenship, and it can be an awesome and awful (in the truest sense of the word) experience.

So Freaking Ready for Spring...

2010-01-30T17:52:00.000-05:00

Right now I am watching it snow out my office window, piling up to about the four inch mark at twilight after beginning around dawn—light, fluffy, powdery snow that blow away with a breath and periodically cascades down from the trees.

This is our second big snow of the winter, and the first snow of the new year. The previous snow—some fifteen inches accumulated over a Friday night-Saturday-Sunday morning storm before the holidays in December—had not completely melted away from the mounds where the plows had piled it or the hollows where it had hidden away, and now it's got reinforcements.

That magnificent snow was the biggest snowfall we have experienced since moving here from the suburbs, and it was quite an experience. We walked our woodland trail through the new-fallen snow, plowing through snow up to our knees and making the very first sets of tracks. It more or less stranded us for a time (though in an emergency we could have gotten out with the help of Henry) and we had the coziness of the woodstove to keep the chill at bay.

But by cracky, I AM SO READY FOR SPRING...and it's barely the end of January.

I am ready to burn every light in the house to fend off the wintry gloom and bolster the ever-so-slooooooooowly lengthening days. I am ready to burn every stick of firewood and kindling and every gallon of propane to keep the place warm, and today, I even tried to heat the house by filling the crawlspace with hot water.

Hey, the fifteen inches of snow was great; it fulfilled a life-time dream of mine to be here—in a place like this—under those circumstances. But frankly, I consider that itch to be officially scratched; I have crossed it off my bucket list. Enough is enough. Is it too much to ask for a crocus or two, maybe a snowdrop?

Our minds and spirits are already in spring mode, with seed orders done and the vanguard already arriving. Chicks of various flavors have been ordered to arrive in late March, and the groundwork for St. Patrick's Day dinner has been laid. All we need to do is get the @#$%^& snow to stop falling, and we'll be that much closer.

Sigh. A person can wish, right?

Hubris

2010-01-29T15:23:00.000-05:00

9th Interrogatory—In what manner have you estimated for that portion of the work, which will be tunnelled? In what time can said Tunnel be constructed? Must not your estimates for said Tunnel be conjectural? And may not a difference in the formation through which said Tunnel passes, vary the expense many thousands of dollars—that is to say, should the formation be entirely granite rock, will not the expense be much greater than if it should prove to be of clay, limestone, slate or coal?

Answer—With the same care that we have used in forming other parts of our estimates...A difference of the formation would of course, affect the expense: it might increase, or it might diminish the cost, several thousand dollars. I can say that it is not only improbable, but that it is impossible that we shall meet with granite in the constructions of the tunnel, the geological character of the country forbids it.

10th Interrogatory.—Upon what description of formation or strata have you based your estimates for the tunnel, and what certain reasons have you to suppose, that particular formation or strata exists, upon which you have based your estimates?

Answer—Our estimate is based upon a formation of clay, slate and sandstone, in layers, alternating; and occasionally earth, clay, slate, predominating. The Direction of the tunnel and that of the strata form an angle of about 29 degrees. We cannot, I think, be mistaken in the strata that we expect to meet with. The Potomac, for a few miles above, and for several miles below, has its channel back and forth repeatedly across the strata in the direction of the tunnel, these strata we find invariably in the same relative position, parallel to each other, and in the same continuous lines. (Emphasis added)

LOC

2010-01-29T15:12:00.000-05:00

The Library of Congress is so far beyond awesome that you can't even see it with the Hubble Telescope from awesome, because it is moving beyond awesome faster than the speed of awesome rays.

Comic Gold

2010-01-29T15:10:00.000-05:00

When burning brush on a cold, grey, blustery winter day, and you suddenly smell singeing hair, this may or may not be an appropriate and/or effective thought process:

...Where is the dog?
...What fabric is my shirt made from? Is it wool, perhaps? Hmmm; No, it is not.
...
OW! DAMMIT! (Begin slapping head furiously)

The only thing that could make this better would be 5) Larry spraying me in the face with a seltzer bottle or

6) Curly beating me upside the head with a shovel.

Eggnog

2010-01-17T10:54:00.000-05:00

6 eggs separated (for best results, they should be separated by at least 2-3 feet)
3/4 C. Confectioner's Sugar
2 C. Cream
2 C. Milk
2 C. Liquor (1½ C. whiskey / ½ C. dark rum--adjust to personal preferences and availability)
3/4 tsp. Vanilla
Nutmeg for garnish
---------------
Beat egg yolks until creamy. Add sugar and beat until smooth, scraping bowl occasionally. Gradually (in a thin stream) add cream, then milk, then liquor, then vanilla, beating constantly. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours.
---------------
Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Gently fold beaten whites into eggnog mixture. Top with grated nutmeg if desired. Made this with fresh eggs, raw milk, raw cream, dark rum and Wasmund's single malt whiskey. Pretty damn fine beverage, it was.

A Verdict...

2010-01-06T17:44:00.000-05:00

The Sorghum Ale?

Awful.

Thick, acrid, sour, sludgy. Possibly the worst thing I've brewed in memory. It reminds me of that monster from the end of "Dogma." But with less personality.

Devilstower nails it

2010-01-05T20:59:00.016-05:00

"...Here's the thing about the naughts: there was nothing magic about the numbers. It wasn't because of a double-zero in the middle of the dates that we launched an invasion that's cost the lives of thousands of Americans, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and a trillion dollars plus out of the pocketbooks of taxpayers. We launched into that still unresolved idiocy because of bad policy based on the conservative philosophy of smash things first, think never. We went there because of a extreme version of American exceptionalism, one that views America as above the rules of law and exempt from questions of morality. A view that says not only if the president does it, it's not a crime, but that if America does it, it can't be wrong."

"It wasn't the decade that caused the economy to come down in tatters. It was a conservative approach to the marketplace that views government as the enemy, greed as the only acceptable motivation, and the only solution for disasters brought on by a lack of regulation as still less regulation."

"It wasn't the calendar that brought down the banks, or American manufacturing, or American's influence around the world. It wasn't the date that added torture to the list of growth industries while erasing our budget surplus."

"Don't forget the naughts, because this decade, no matter what anyone on the right might say, was conservatism on trial. You want less taxes? You got less taxes. You want less regulation? You got less regulation. Open markets? Wide open. An illusion of security in place of rights? Hey, presto. Think we should privatize war by handing unlimited power given to military contractors so they can kick butt and take names? Kiddo, we passed out boots and pencils by the thousands. Everything,everything, that ever showed up on a drooled-over right wing wish list got implemented -- with a side order of Freedom Fries."

"They will try to disown it, and God knows if I was responsible for this mess I'd be disowning it, too. But the truth is that the conservatives got everything they wanted in the decade just past, everything that they've claimed for forty years would make America "great again". They didn't fart around with any "red dog Republicans." They rolled over their moderates and implemented a conservative dream."

"What did we get for it? We got an economy in ruins, a government in massive debt, unending war, and the repudiation of the world. There's no doubt that Republicans want you to forget the last decade, because if you remember... if you remember when you went down to the water hole and were jumped by every lunacy that ever emerged from the wet dreams of Grover Norquist and Dick Cheney, well, it's not likely that you'd give them a chance to do it again."

"And they will. Given half a chance -- less than half -- they'll do it again, only worse. Because that's the way conservatism works. Remember when the only answer to every economic problem was "cut taxes?" We have a surplus. Good, let's cut taxes. We have a deficit. Hey, cut taxes even more! That little motto was unchanging even when was clear that the tax cuts were increasing the burden on everyone but a wealthy few. That's just a subset of the great conservative battle whine which is now and forever "we didn't go far enough." If deregulation led to a crash, it's because we didn't deregulate enough. If the wars aren't won, it's because we haven't started enough wars. If there are people still clinging to their rights, it's because we haven't done enough to make them afraid."

"Forget the naughts, and you'll forget that conservatives had another chance to prove all their ideas, and that their ideas utterly and completely failed. Again."

"The point of remembering bad events is to stop them from repeating. So remember, and remind others if they start to forget. Because really, this is one trip to the water hole we can't afford to repeat."

Devilstower, at DKos

Driftglass nails it:

2010-01-05T18:29:00.002-05:00

"And if you're one of those people who has spent your adult life supporting these degenerates while sneering at those soft-headed Liberals and their crazy ideas, maybe after 35 unbroken years of being horribly fucking wrong about everything it's time for you turn off Glenn Beck, stop whining about imaginary hippies, go down to the basement, pick out one of the 78 guns you have stashed there to protect you from the Coming Race War Or Something, and do the honorable thing."

Another One Bites the Dust

2009-12-18T13:00:00.002-05:00

Saab 1937—2009.

Only The Good Die Young

2009-12-16T11:29:00.002-05:00

Oral Roberts dead at 91.

Beyond Parody and Description

2009-12-15T19:26:00.000-05:00

While grabbing a cup of coffee at a 7-11 this morning, I noticed, among all the various and sundry flavorings provided for coffee (not the "flavored-non-dairy-petrochemical-based-creamer-analogues," but the "let's-make-a-simple-beverage-fancy-by-changing-it-into-something-else flavorings"—you know, the ones that look like bottles of liquor with italianate names and pump tops on them?) I noticed that 7-11 now offers:

Honey-flavored syrup.

Hey, wasn't there already a 'honey-flavored syrup?' I think it might have been called "Honey?" Or am I misremembering something?

Hey! That's My Congressman You're Talking About!!

2009-12-08T14:49:00.000-05:00

"Eric Cantor as a congressional leader is a classic example of a post turtle -- you know he didn't get up there by himself; he obviously doesn't belong up there; he can't get anything done while he's there; and you just want to help the poor, dumb thing down."

Steve Benen, The Washington Monthly

ROTF, LMAO.

A Long Ago Christmas Party

2009-12-07T21:39:00.000-05:00

The rare men clustered near the glow of the fireplace—solid, beefy, upright masses, ruddy-faced prime rib well-marbled in bespoke suits. To a man, their freshly-shaven necks bulged over starched white collars bound tightly with ties, tradition and decorum defying the warm festivity of the carpeted living room. Thick hairy paws exited their french cuffs; one paw each held a squat cylindrical glass, formless icebergs tinkling within miniature amber seas. The other paw casually held a cigarette—the men murmured and laughed, each cocooned within the self-perpetuating cloud of his own making.

Their women clustered musically at the far side of the room. They were freshly-baked confections, delicate crusts browned in just the right places, frosted and iced and dusted and topped with sprinkles, redolent of cinnamon and citrus and vanilla. They held pale pastel drinks in crystal glasses that served as exclamation points at the end of their tiny delicate hands.

Warm side, cool side. The children look on, mystified.

Snowglobe

2009-12-07T21:31:00.000-05:00

I don’t know if the snow globe still exists or not, nor do I know whether what I remember is a memory of a real time and place or a conflation, a confabulation of remembrance and imagination.

I think it was a gift to me in what—third or fourth grade?—perhaps from a teacher. A cheap trinket from the five-and-dime, but the memory has such greater gravity and significance associated with it than had it come from one of those meaningless children who are so long forgotten to me.

However, what I can say with great surety is when I think of the snow globe, what I am remembering is looking out the window of that ancient red stone school into a cold dark sky that is both woolen grey and deep cobalt blue. It is me, looking out at a snowing and snow-covered place, from within that plastic world.

Now I find myself seeking the snow sky, driving in vain towards it, sniffing it out, searching in a most animal way, traversing hill after hill until I lose track of how far I have come, wondering if it is possible to ever find that twilight blue world out there again. I seek but cannot find—there are ten-thousand intervening steps that distract and deflect, and only serve to misdirect me from that elusive place. I know it is there, but cannot seem to find it.

At next daybreak the snow finds me. And at twilight, for a fleeting instant, I catch a glimpse of that cobalt blue snow globe world behind me, the heavy sky drawing its muffling dome close down over the pines.

Our Thanksgiving Benediction

2009-12-04T09:12:00.000-05:00

In lieu of saying grace or offering a blessing, we shared this quote as we all sat together for our Thanksgiving meal:

"Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend."

— Wendell Berry

A lesson in linguistics

2009-11-23T14:38:00.000-05:00

"Camarones Diabolo" is Mexican for "Shrimp served in a sauce made of pure liquid pain." Now you know.

We Are Fortunate To Have Wendell Berry

2009-11-17T21:38:00.001-05:00

I first read Wendell Berry about thirty years ago, and was profoundly impressed and moved by what he had to say. He is our poet laureate of the soil and a national treasure, and his writings never cease to amaze me for their wisdom and insight whether reading his poetry or essays.

He is still at it, and the December issue of Harper's features an article entitled "The Necessity of Agriculture" taken from a speech he gave in May of this year. The entire piece is a must-read, but I have tried to pull the best lines out below; it was a hopeless task because the whole thing is just amazingly insightful and spot-on. A sampling:

"We seem now to be coming to a time when we will have to recognize the love of farming not as a quaint souvenir of an outdated past but as an economic necessity. And that recognition, when it comes, will bring with it a considerable embarrassment."

“Policy makers…are hoping newly unemployed young people will help revive Japan’s dwindling farm population...‘If they can’t find workers over the next several years, Japan’s agriculture will disappear,’ But this effort is falling significantly short of success because “many young people end up returning to cities, unable to adjust to life in the countryside.” To their surprise, evidently, farming involves hard work, long hours, and getting dirty—not to mention skills that city-bred people don’t have. Not to mention the necessity of loving farmwork if you are going to keep at it."

"And in Japan, as opposed to the United States…They even think agriculture may be a good thing for a nation of eaters to have."

"If agriculture and the necessity of food production ever penetrate the consciousness of our politicians and economists, how successful will they be in job-training our overeducated, ignorant young people to revive our own aging and dwindling farm population?"

"What will it take to get significant numbers of our young people, white of collar and soft of hands, to submit to hard work and long days, not to mention getting dirty?"

"… the necessity of agriculture will not be widely recognized without the sterner necessity of actual hunger."

"…our informal but most effective agricultural policy has been to eat as much, as effortlessly, as thoughtlessly, and as cheaply as we can, to hell with whatever else may be involved."

"But we, who have decided as a nation and by policy not to love farming, have escaped it, for a while at least, by turning it into an 'agri-industry.'”

"But agri-industry…has given us massive soil erosion and degradation, water pollution, maritime hypoxic zones; destroyed rural communities and cultures; reduced our farming population almost to disappearance; yielded toxic food; and instilled an absolute dependence on a despised and exploited force of migrant workers."

"We have ahead of us a lot of hard work that we are not going to be able to do with clean hands. We had better try to love it."

Go read the whole thing. It's all of about two pages long, and it's probably the best thing you'll read this month. The quoting of "Faust" is worth it all by itself.

Denouement

2009-11-17T12:15:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday was a denouement of our grand poultry adventure, as one of the chosen got to spend the day luxuriating in the poultry hot tub in a bath fragrant with pepper, rosemary, thyme, oregano and some other odds-and-ends.

This one fairly small bird yielded up over half a pint of brilliant yellow fat we skimmed and saved for later. We added some finely chopped celery and onion to the ~~pot~~ poultry hot tub, finished it off with a small measure of egg noodles, and finally dined on our very first home-raised chicken.

As would be expected from a hen at the end of a long laying career, she was dense and solid. The meat was rather tough, even after her long sojourn in the ~~crockpot~~ poultry hot tub, and her fully mineralized bones were held together by unyielding ligaments. In my haste to prepare her, I neglected to check her weight, so I have no idea how big she was. But the two of us will have two meals from her, the dogs will have some savory and crunchy treats to brighten their days, and there's still that golden chicken fat to be used...

They say the trick to eating animals you have raised and lived with for an extended time is to fully acknowledge their sacrifice (in both meanings of the term) and to use them completely and with respect. I would say we strived for all of these objectives, and met most of them fully.

No doubt about it—we enjoyed eating this bird.

The Great Beveragepalooza of 2009

2009-11-12T15:19:00.000-05:00

My great expectations for a day-long roofing-fest were cruelly dashed by the carcass of Tropical Storm Ida, who waited until mid-November—MID-NOVEMBER—to come die on us. It started raining Tuesday night and rained and rained and rained straight on through into Thursday morning. So, no roofing for us!

But a cold grey rainy day laid the groundwork for The Great Beveragepalooza of 2009. It was a day-long campaign during which we managed to bottle fifteen gallons of hard cider and create a 2009 vintage apple wine. The process by which we made the apple wine was as convoluted as anything we’ve done—so convoluted it makes my head hurt to even think about it—so let me see if I can even remember the whole thing:

1. We gathered the dregs from four carboys worth of hard cider and set them aside.
2. Set aside one gallon of scrumpy from the six-gallon carboy.
3. Warmed up about 4-1/2 quarts of raw sweet cider (from the fridge) to room temperature, stirring vigorously with a whisk to aereate it thoroughly.
4. Warmed another quart of raw sweet cider enough to dissolve about 2 pounds of local honey in it, along with about ½ teaspoon of yeast nutrient.
5. Poured the dregs in the 2-1/2 gallon carboy; added both batches of sweet cider; topped it off with most of the gallon of scrumpy.

The initial gravity was in the neighborhood of 1.095, and with so many warm fat happy yeasties feasting on such a sugar-rich solution, the carbon dioxide output was almost immediate and phenomenal—one long stream of bubbles out the airlock even though the liquid volume is half that of a regular carboy. It’s about the ugliest stuff you’ve ever seen at this point, but in about a week it should calm a bit and get prettier, and once it’s racked, it can settle down for a nice long slow maturation process. I’m looking forward to it, anticipating a final ABV of about 10% with a dry finish. The question remains: Still or sparkling? Both?

The other benefit of The Great Beveragepalooza of 2009 is we now have four carboys freed up! Even anticipating the cider pressing to come when the gang is here for Thanksgiving, that still leaves us room to finally brew beer again! Woo-Hoo! Many, many good brewing ideas have been held in abeyance whilst the cider did its thing, and now it’s finally time to cry havoc! and let slip the yeasts of beer…

Awesome.

Postcard from Montreux, from slow-moving Walter, the Fire-engine guy

2009-11-11T12:03:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I heard "Smoke on the Water" on the radio for the umpty-umpth millionth time (Okay, actually it was the live version, which I don't think I had ever heard before, but still...). Of course, it features one of rock's most immediately recognizable and distinctive opening riffs, one that has been parodied countless times and is heard daily in every store in the country that sells electric guitars. Ritchie Blackmore insists the actual riff is a lot more technically complex than what gets played by beginners, but it's what beginners are irresistably compelled to play when they are trying on a new guitar. I think it's the law.

It occurred to me that despite my having heard it so many times before, I had never really paid attention to it. I realized SOTW is actually a pretty decent little bit of narrative writing—a concise telling of a true story that would fit on a postcard or in a five-minute radio song.

Deep Purple went to Montreux to record an album in the Montreux Casino complex in December, 1971. During a show by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, a fan fired a flare gun into the ceiling, starting a fire that destroyed the Casino complex. Having reserved the Rolling Stone's mobile recording truck, the band was forced to improvise recording space in the nearby Grand Hotel, using empty rooms and hallways as necessary. What they recorded became the album "Machine Head," one of their biggest successes, and later SOTW was released as a single, reaching #4 on the Billboard singles chart in 1973.

An interesting and unusual story, told simply and concisely. The title comes from their view of the Casino fire from their hotel across Lake Geneva (Deep Purple did not attend the Mothers concert) as the smoke drifted. Everything you need to know about it is right there, in a way you might hear an interesting story from a friend over a beer.

PS: "Slow-motion Walter, the fire-engine guy" is a misheard lyric from the Barenaked Ladies.
PPS: Claude Nobs, Director of the Montreux Jazz Festival, a.k.a. "Funky Claude," actually did pull concertgoers from the burning building.
PPPS: The Guinness world record for the number of guitarists playing the SOTW riff simultaneously stands at 6,346 and was most recently set in Poland in May of this year. There's a joke in there somewhere.

Tear The Roof Off The Sucker/Give Up The Funk

2009-11-09T20:31:00.001-05:00

Those of you who know our little house in the woods know that it's got a lot of roof. It also has a lot of holes punched in that roof, for chimneys and skylights and vents of one kind or another. This is a large part of the appeal of the house, because it makes it very bright and sunny and cheerful and airy, a pleasant change from the rather dim and close house we lived in for so long.

It also leaks like a sieve, mostly in one particular room. It leaks so much in a steady or heavy rain that we simply leave the buckets in place all the time, like some backwoods hayseeds from a depression-era comedy. Following each rain, we would judge the quantity and quality of the "Roof Tea" we had brewed, evaluating the depth and color in each bucket. But enough is enough—there was only one thing to do:

Tear The Roof Off The Sucker. Give Up The Funk.

Starting the afternoon of Halloween, Mary began to—well, tear the roof off the sucker. With a shovel. At the West End. Assisted by Colonel Mustard with a lead pipe, if I recall correctly. And once the roof was torn off the sucker, then we could give up the funk, which has flourished funkily in the dark, damp confines of the rafters and roof decking. Sodden insulation was dragged out to reveal the progress of the decay...eccch.

It was pretty disgusting. Whole sections of the roof superstructure were completely rotted away (the load bearing portion of the roof, protected below, remained intact and sound, mercifully) along with the boards above them. At the west end, the rotten materials were replaced by sound new plywood and 2-bys, and in short order Mary had the new roof in place, with the guidance and assistance of our neighbor, the erstwhile roofer.

Now the living room roof is getting its due. The three of us spent half of Saturday and most of Sunday doing demolition and reframing the roof, giving up the funk—actually, bleaching the living hell out of the funk—then adding fresh R-30 fiberglass, piecing together the new plywood roof decking, and framing in the new skylights. BTW: After years of pooh-pooing them, I can unequivocally say I am a believer in pneumatic nailers.

Who would have imagined it would be possible to break a sweat and get sunburned in mid-November? By late Sunday morning, the air temperature was in the upper sixties, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, the humidity was low, and the sun was dazzlingly intense. By sundown Sunday, all the bad stuff had been excised, the new roof was sound and completely enclosed and the skylights were in place. Sunday after dark, we made a huge bonfire of all the rotten old stuff and sent it off to a better place, where there is no funk and the sun shines perpetually.

Mary spent this afternoon tearing off more old roofing and getting the sound old roof deck ready for the new stuff. With any luck, she can start applying the substrate (ice & water barrier, something like tar paper or rool roofing, but adhesive and better than both) to the exposed surfaces tomorrow and have the new structure protected before a change of weather predicted for sometime Wednesday. Hey, with any luck and three of us working at it, we'll have the new shingles in place before the change of weather.

Hot damn. Can't wait for that first real rain after the new roof is on! No more roof tea for us!

Cutting Some Slack Where Some Slack is Due

2009-11-05T21:36:00.000-05:00

This morning when I left for work, the temperature was about 30º. I saw two other motorcyclists en route to work—one on an R1150RT and the other (gasp!) on a Harley. Go figure.

PS: Heated gloves work like a champ—got a first-degree burn on a knuckle, though.

The Little Book of Shattered Expectations

2009-11-05T21:21:00.004-05:00

I think anyone aspiring to creative writing would do well to get themselves on the mailing list of the Vermont Country Store. Their catalog starts showing up in our mailbox around the same time as the stinkbugs, and continues appearing as frequently and predictably. The VCS catalog is a staple—nay, a ritual—of bathroom reading from early fall to mid-winter, about the point when it slips its staples and finally falls apart.

It is a paragon of tautly-crafted manipulative prose, each product description a compact haiku-length dissertation cleverly crafted to push buttons you didn't know you had.

Each item in the catalog is worthy of a massive piling-on of scientifically selected adjectives and adverbs, each one specifically designed to trigger the release of repressed memories of a common idyllic childhood we never shared. The house was bigger, the windows frostier, the rooms cheerier, the beds both higher and cozier, the breakfasts heartier, the hot chocolate richer, the sledding swifter, our parents wiser, kinder, happier and more beautiful, the Christmas Tree taller, the tinsel brighter, the goose crispier and the presents more wonderful than we could ever have hoped.

I will confess we receive this epistle regularly because we purchased items from this land of make-believe in the past. And the thing is, once the goods arrive on this side of the catalog—reality chasm, they're just...stuff. Stuff like you could buy pretty much anywhere.

Sure, a lot of it is hard to find—but most of the time that's because people stopped buying it years ago and people stopped making it years ago because, hey, in truth back then it was crap, and by golly, it's still crap now.

Nostalgia does not by and of itself validate things; in most cases it's just stuff, like it was back then when we didn't buy it the first go-round. The items are, for the most part, things you have probably walked past in your regular rounds of shopping time and again, with good reason. (Creamed Chipped Beef, anyone?) Yet from their testimonial copy, each item means something special to someone out there, enough for them to resurrect it or recommission it in some cases and to make an effort to stock it at least for a little while. As they say, there's no accounting for taste.

I don't think I have ever gotten something from the VCS that didn't come packaged with its own certain tiny measure of disappointment. It may be that the VCS catalog's greatest value lies in its ability to gently teach children how to gracefully accept disappointment, how to read between the lines of artfully crafted marketing prose, and to understand in a simple way that things aren't always what they seem.

But I gotta say, the catalog itself never disappoints. I love the writing—the unrelenting Rockwellian optimism, the naive cheer, the three or four coats of bright shiny adjectives, the perky and artfully dated design sense, the creation of a whole world within the slick covers. The arrival of the first catalog marks the beginning of the imaginary season they taught us about back in second grade.

Get on their mailing list, if you aren't already. Read the catalog. Throw 'em a bone from time to time, just to prop that imaginary world up a little while longer. There's no harm in playing along.

Addendum: If you're ever in Vermont, you owe it to yourself to check out the brick-and-mortar VCS, which is actually made of wood & stuff. It's the real-life version of the catalog, and as I recall, there are at least two or three of them salted throughout the state. Visited the one in Weston on the grand Vermont tour of 2001, and it was worth the side trip.

TOTD

2009-11-05T15:52:00.000-05:00

Isn't a little bit disturbing that the three leading intellectuals of the modern Republic Party—Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh—are all college dropouts?

Scary.

NASA explores the Antarctic

2009-11-05T09:58:00.000-05:00

NASA is currently flying a DC-8 over Antartica, using the aircraft to take the place of a failing satellite to probe the melting Antarctic ice cap with lasers. One can only hope the scientists involved have learned the lessons of the ill-fated Miskatonic University expedition of 1930-1931.

One shudders to think.

Last of the Season?

2009-11-04T11:06:00.001-05:00

I stopped off in the Big Effer last night on the way home to take care of a couple of errands. In the grocery store I noticed a weathered man, within a few years of my age, pushing a large backpack around in his grocery cart, gathering a few compact necessities. In the cart with the pack was a long and worn hiking staff.

When I was done shopping, he was out front of the store reworking the contents of his pack to accommodate his new provisions, carefully removing extraneous packaging and delicately repacking everything in just the right place. I nodded to the man and we exchanged pleasantries, and I walked across the parking lot to the drugstore. I took a wild guess he was heading back to the AT trail crossing on the ZTH.

As I pulled out of the parking lot, I saw him hiking up the shoulder of the road a short distance away. He would extend his thumb in a desultory manner as each car passed him by, so he appeared genuinely surprised when I pulled over in a driveway behind him.

He quickly confirmed that he was, indeed, heading to the trailhead with a fresh load of groceries, and shucked the bulky pack with a practiced grace. We loaded it into the back seat—trunk full of crap—and he politely asked if I would prefer he rode in back with it.

For some reason, that struck me as very funny, and I walked over and unlocked the passenger side for him. Aside from his obviously being a heavy smoker (yeah, what a surprise...not that uncommon for hikers, from what I've found) he was acceptable company. We drove the short distance to the trailhead tentatively, with a couple of false stops before finding the right place—I can never remember exactly where it is, and neither, apparently, can the hikers.

His story, in brief, was that he had departed Delaware Water Gap on the Pennsylvania-New Jersey border in September, heading southbound. He planned to hike as far south as he could before winter set in, find a place to stay for the winter, and return to Delaware Water Gap to begin hiking northbound in the spring.

We pulled over at the now-familiar looking trailhead. The early November sun had dipped below the Blue Ridge while we were both still back at the store. Twilight was already beginning to fade in the few minutes it took us to reach the road crossing, and the air was cooling rapidly from a mild autumnal chill down towards the mid-twenties it would reach by morning.

Without delay, we got out and unloaded his pack from the back seat. He thanked me profusely for my kindness, shook my hand enthusiastically, and hefted his pack onto his back. He was encouraged by the unexpected head-start I had given him, and though the light was failing, I reminded him the full moon would rise in short order.

He paused to tell me about the beauty and wonder of hiking the last few miles into last night’s shelter by the light of the moon, then smiled, thanked me again, and set off briskly down the trail into the cold dark woods. Part of me envied him his journey. There aren’t that many long-distance hikers left on the AT come November; besides the peace and solitude, the bare trees and crisp cold air would offer scenery unimaginable during the warmer months.

But the bigger part of me couldn’t help but think how cold it was going to get up on the mountain by morning, and how far it is to Springer Mountain.

Something I wrote thirty-five years ago

2009-11-03T20:49:00.001-05:00

This is something I wrote about thirty-five years ago, and it still interests me for a couple of reasons. First is that I think I wrote it when I had just finished reading ZATAOMM, and was blown away by it as the first philosophical book of any kind I had ever read (it shows pretty directly). Second, it shows an early incarnation of my feelings about hiking versus driving, which have translated into motorcycling versus driving. Third, I now find myself living within sight of the mountain in question, and seeing it pretty much every day—it's what I look at as I drive down the lane to home.

I cringe a little bit when I read this, because it is probably my first real attempt at putting my thoughts down on paper. But the persistent threads fascinate me, and the underlying themes are things that still fascinate me.

"Travelling in a car is the least forgiving way to go. Forgiving of the crime of caring, of wanting to know more and see deeper. You see something different, and it excites or interests you. But you can't just stop; the car won't let you. So after this happens many times, you get calloused; it hurts to lose a good thought. So many people just give up seeing things. When you're walking, it's better, but you still have a destination to reach, and that's what you're there for. Not to see clearer, because you can't plan that."

"This idea came to me while I was looking at a mountain. It wasn't the first time, though; many years ago I knew this. This mountain was a backdrop, a shelter for [the town of] Flint Hill, and it seemed such an essental part of the town that Flint Hill couldn't exist in any other context."

"Flint Hill, without knowing it, belonged to that mountain more than anything else..."

This:

2009-11-03T20:28:00.000-05:00

Orders of Magnitude

2009-11-03T09:02:00.021-05:00

A while back, I confessed to dispatching two black snakes who had been harassing our chickens. I threw the limp lifeless body of one snake into the tall grass at the edge of the woods, in order for it to be assimilated by the various and sundry woodland decomposers whose job it is to make such things right.

A few days later, I was walking up the driveway towards the pines when I was startled by a commotion to my left. Out of the deep grasses and scrub a turkey buzzard rose majestically and swooped across the driveway and garden. It grabbed great fistsful of air with its pinions, pulling itself into the sky with unimaginable power and grace, slowly gaining speed and altitude until it disappeared above the pines to the north.

I peered into the grasses from where this pterosaur had launched, and found what looked like a tiny scrap of frayed rope—the few remains of the snake, picked clean of flesh and skin. What the bird with a wingspan greater than my armspan found for sustenance in that tiny morel, and how it discovered it in the first place, astonished me.

The next afternoon, we sat quietly in the front yard, enjoying a leisurely afternoon in the warm sun. All at once, there was a commotion, and a turkey buzzard once again rose from the tall grasses, taking the same trajectory. But something amazing happened: The buzzard flushed a pileated woodpecker from a nearby oak tree, and in its haste, it followed a parallel trajectory with the buzzard. (Normally, a pileated woodpecker is one of the largest birds you will see in the woods, with a two-foot wingspan and a distinctive flight pattern—it is majestic and beautiful with its distinctive brilliant red-white-black plumage). And at the same instance, just before our faces, a few yards away, a ruby-throated hummingbird hovered in mid-flight:

So for one split second, all in the same line of sight, at the same instant—a turkey buzzard, a pileated woodpecker, and a ruby-throated hummingbird.

And they were gone.

The fall garden (200-?)

2009-11-02T21:18:00.001-05:00

Fall is the most compelling time in the garden. In place of the long, gentle unwinding and developing that characterizes the warm season, the open ended nature of growth, there is an end. Fall brings completion, finality, conclusion. Whether it comes in the guise of fruition and harvest, fading falling blossoms, or the abrupt discipline of the first killing frost, fall ends the expansion that drives the garden.

Look to the garden then, to see how fall expresses itself. Look at the haggard tomatoes, so recently bold and dominant lording a green canopy over all else. Now they stand exhausted, yellowing foliage dripping, desperately struggling to bring a last faint blush to their resolutely green fruit.

See the lone pumpkin, no gold yet lighting its cheek, looming dark green and glossy. It sits alone, isolated, abandoned by its vine during a hasty retreat. Yet to be decided is whether it has a use or not; it may be left to rot as it sits.

The ranks of peppers stand, drooping, weighted down by scores of fruit camoflaged in the deep green leaves. They mimic the twisted posture of old men loaded with cares and devoid of hope. Like the nearby tomatoes, they hasten to bring a last few fruit to ripeness before they are struck down. Loaded as they are, their future seems unlikely—the hand of the gardener will take all they bear, unformed and immature as they may be, to ripen or rot inside.

The barren and dessicated cornstalks stand, bolder in their death than their living compatriots. They stand tall and proud over the garden, bleached by the sun.

Look past the towering failures; look low, down and see the plants that prosper even as the frost surely approaches. These are the modest plants that have yet to take their place in the season's bounty, yet they will, long after the others have rotted and been turned under.

Row after row, where the towering titans of summer have departed, stand the small, inconspicuous grey plants.

Bad meat, bad karma

2009-11-02T20:53:00.000-05:00

Today another recall of shitburger—ground beef deliberately and with malice aforethought blended with manure to make a few extra pennies per pound.

And how much was it this time?

500, 000 pounds. 250 TONS. For what it's worth, that translates into about six hundred head of cattle raised, fattened, tortured, slaughtered, butchered, and now to sent directly to the landfill. What an utter disgrace.

Or, to look at it another way, I'd guess it's about three thousand times the weight of the two poor people who have died so far from eating the purposely poisoned meat—if that's any kind of equivalency.

What the eff is wrong with us that this goes on?

The Rules of Hiking:

2009-11-02T19:45:00.000-05:00

Hiking is walking, not running. Don't race.
Keep your hands free. Don't carry anything big in your hands or walk with your hands in your pockets. This means no walking sticks.
Talk quietly so only the people in your group can hear you. Don't disturb other people.
Keep a steady pace. Hum a song quietly to help you.
Drink plenty of water and snack when you feel hungry—but—don't take your first break until you've walked for at least a half and hour. That lets you set a good pace.
Stop and take care of 'hot spots' on your feet before they become blisters, which hurt a lot more.
Don't pick flowers or other pretty things. Leave them for the next person to enjoy. The only exception is wild fruit like blackberries or blueberries. They make a great treat, and give you energy, but only eat what you want while you're hiking. Don't pick them to take home or eat later on.
Take home everything you brought with you—don't leave anything behind. Even little bits of food, like an apple core or an orange peel, can make things less fun for the next people to come through.
Leave things better than you found them. Carry a small trash bag and pick up any trash you might find. The animals will appreciate it, and you set a good example for other people, too.

Four-Mile Run, Falls Church, October 199-?

2009-11-02T19:34:00.000-05:00

The warm haze of an early October afternoon—end of a day of work, full of tension, unremarked, unaddressed.

On the wind, the quiet smell of a place nearby, yet a generation removed—

At hand the stream where I played so often so many years ago—the place that shaped that time, that gave color and flavor to a young boy's life.

In this one place then, the stream remains as it was twenty-five years ago. The same leaves overhang the still waters, the same small insects play across it's quiet surface; the same small little fishes probably hide in its shaded nooks.

Today

2009-11-01T16:13:00.003-05:00

I butchered five of our chickens.

Addendum: Apparently I can't count. I butchered four of our chickens. Spicy remains.

Beast health report

2009-11-01T10:31:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was Beast's annual trip to the motoveterinarian. Nothing major, just a 6K checkup, plus a sniffle here, a drip there, some weird blinky things, et cetera. I spent much of the morning and early afternoon pacing in the waiting room, allaying my nervousness by periodically buying more stuff I don't really need but want none the less.

Shortly after lunch, Beast was back with a clean bill of health and for a whole lot less pain than I was fearing. But the best part of a trip to the motoveterinarian is getting back on the road and taking that first ride when everything is back to 100%, or to zero, depending on how you want to look at it. It's always amazing to crack open the throttle and get a great big handful of WHOOSH in return...

Performance, handling, gestalt, karma—all where they are meant to be. AND (tee hee)...heated glove liners! BRING IT ON, WINTER!!

Piling on the HOG

2009-11-01T09:54:00.002-05:00

Friday I rode to work. Saturday I rode down to the big F and back. En route, I kept noticing cars with "Harley Owners Group" specialty plates (including a Prius), pickup trucks with various H-D emblems on them, a couple of proud H-D box trailers with Canadian plates headed to Florida for Bikesgiving, and one full-blown Special Edition H-D pickup truck. I don't recall which Detroit behemoth manufactured this particular orange-and-black gem, but it's one or the other of those Detroit Behemoths whose emblem Calvin is seen peeing on from the back window of rival vehicles. Sticker is generally located above and in front of the trucknutz. But I digress.

Passing these folks, I get the impression from glancing in the driver's side window that the sub-rosa acronym is actually "Harried Old Guys" or maybe "Heavy Old Guys." In any case. Actual number of bona-fide H-D motorcycles seen in action during that same period—about four hours, morning, midday and afternoon, two-hundred miles of mixed interstate, divided highway, two-lane highway and backroads?

Er, um...one? Maybe?

And then there's this. Seriously—I didn't go looking for this, just happened to stumble upon it, and appreciated the germaneity:

Whoever wrote this obviously has no real-world experience and no idea what he is talking about. They stopped making Zima over a year ago.

I report. You decide.

A Long Time Ago, in a State Far, Far Away...

2009-10-29T21:00:00.004-04:00

In the Fall of 2004 Sparky and I had the opportunity to rent bikes from Dubbelju Motorcycle Rentals in San Francisco for an all-too-brief ride up to Napa-Sonoma, including traversing the spectacular Trinity Road between the two valleys.

We picked up the bikes—an F650 for me and a Sportster for Sparky—as early as we could, and headed out through the obligatory fog across the Bay Bridge.

The fall weather was spectacular, but we barely had time for a quick lunch in St. Helena before we had to return across Trinity Road and south to San Francisco.

We did take the time to stop at the Marin County highlands for the obligatory Golden Gate photo op, then wound our way through evening rush-hour traffic in an unfamiliar city (dead reckoning all the way) in order to drop the bikes back at Dubbelju by closing time, grab the gear we had stashed there, and grab the BART to the airport for the red-eye back to D.C.

We had hoped to snag a pair of big-bore Beemers for the day, but it was first-come, first served, or a Hobson's choice, or something like that. In any case, Sparky was tickled with the Harley, and I was pretty happy with the 650.

I had ridden the 650 (as service loaners) before, but this was a longer ride on a wide mix of roads—unfamiliar urban congestion, interstates, divided highways and narrow, uber-twisty two lanes. I spent many miles standing on the footpegs, simply because the bike inspires that kind of "irrational exuberance" and in hindsight, I think it probably was the perfect choice for the kind of one-up, lightly-loaded riding we were there for.

We were both pretty exhausted by the time we settled in for the flight home, and disappointed our ride had been so truncated. I'm failry certain that if either of us ever get back out to the left coast, we'll try and make a better go of it.

Beast as passenger

2009-10-29T09:48:00.002-04:00

Beast riding the Jubal Early at White's Ferry, with hot chick in the background. (Funny story about that ride, yeah...)

A Bike outstanding in its field...

2009-10-29T09:44:00.001-04:00

Beast again, at the Celtic festival in Leesburg June 2004

Beast's friend

2009-10-29T09:37:00.002-04:00

Beast's best friend, from June 2007

Beast, April 2004

2009-10-29T09:17:00.003-04:00

One of my favorite pictures of Beast, in one of my favorite settings.

Winging it

2009-10-26T20:24:00.003-04:00

I gotta say that freestyling bread has got to be maybe the most impressive thing I have ever seen done in a kitchen—a kind of yeast-and-gluten based jazz, an improvisational art form that I plainly do not have the stones to try. It is an interpretive dance, dusted with flour.

Mary has been doing this of late, and Madeline does it also. Now, I baked my first loaf of bread in, what—third grade or something like that? And since then, I have baked all sorts of breads over the decades, and lots of other goodies as well. I consider myself a reasonably accomplished amateur baker. But, as I learned from my mother, I bake always using a recipe, followed with great deliberateness and devotion. How do these two do it?

It's almost scary for me to watch the bold and fearless way these women bake: intuitive, insightful, free-form, based on solid experience and whatever ingredients are at hand. Everything goes into the big stainless steel bowl in its turn (nothing seems to get measured) where it's mixed, then kneaded, then risen: a single vessel for the whole process. Four round loaves emerge from this crucible to nestle together on a big baking sheet, making a giant clover-leaved loaf, each leaf with two flat sides and a broad dome.

The motivation to bake is often some ingredient that needs to get used up; dairy-based, typically, so the breads are usually rich with cottage cheese or the equivalent. Some mix of herbs usually enlivens the flavor, often finely minced onion as well, a perfect compliment for a 1/4 rye-1/4 whole wheat loaf, like the ones we just enjoyed.

I watch it happen, and stand back and keep out of the way. It's a music I can't play...though I certainly enjoy listening, and am a willing audience.

********************
On the other hand, I am pretty good at free-style cooking.

Sunday morning I announced we were having quiche for dinner, and Mary concurred. When the time came, at the end of a long day of many hard tasks large and small, we went at it.

Mary made the crust, in this instance using the old-reliable recipe—pie crusts are treacherous and notoriously vindictive creations who won't hesitate to turn on you if you show the slightest weakness or fear or relinquish an iota of control for a moment. She prevailed, predictably.

I began making the filling by cutting up a hunk of smoked pork (like bacon but without the cure) and sauteing it; then adding finely minced onion, some finely chopped kale stems and, shortly after those, the kale leaves; then some sliced white mushrooms and salt and pepper. While that was all slowly cooking together, I beat a handful of eggs, some freshly-skimmed cream, and some cottage cheese until it was frothy. As soon as Mary had the two crusts ready, I divided up the kale mixture between the crusts and poured the egg filling over them.

The quiches were done in about a half an hour, along with a pumpkin-like winter squash I threw together. The squash was just cleaned out and baked with some cider, butter, brown sugar and spices. The two quiches and the squash together would make about three full meals for the two of us, with mostly local ingredients and without recipe (...excepting the crust...) with about thirty minutes prep time all told.

The trick is having a wonderful assortment of outstanding ingredients on hand, and a willingness to use them how you see fit. No recipe for the filling, just the miracle of all those foolproof pieces to put together like a puzzle. I suppose I could try and apply that approach to baking, but...

Nah. I'm not even going to pretend like that's going to happen. I will leave it to the two virtuosos. I know when to leave well enough alone.

Supper for a fall evening:

2009-10-24T20:09:00.002-04:00

Home-corned brisket of local-grown beef, simmered in the crockpot with nothing but sweet cider all day, sliced thin and served open-faced on fresh baked onion rye cheesebread with just a smear of mustard.

Mixed green salad, with tomatoes and two kinds of green peppers—still from the garden.

A pint of pumpkin spice ale.

Hardly a scrap left.