One year ago today: December 16, 2015, “. . . and hopefully both.”
Five years ago today: December 16, 2011, I say it’s shoplifting.
Nine years ago today: December 16, 2007, a half-hour each.
Random years ago today: December 16, 2008, I watched TV. 2 hrs.
MORNING
It’s my day off, but my first day off with the new motorcycle. As soon as it warms up enough, we’ll take a sprint somewhere. I’ve already allocated funds for some minor repairs, such as the leak on the fuel valve. The windscreen is imperative; I’ll call ahead to Miami for that. And I’ve heard of a replacement brake light assembly that incorporates signal lamps. Here's the now-standard kitchen window pic of the bike destined to become Florida's most famous 450.
Respositioning the brake and signal lamps would allow removal of the existing stems, which in turn means I could mount a larger set of rigid saddlebags. These slight modifications make the unit better for long-distance travel. I felt the wind crushing on my chest at 65 mph. That’s fun until you are forty.
Let’s put a number to American corruption. To put a 31 year old motorcycle on the road y’day, I was soaked $147 and had to sign three mysterious documents other than the registration. That amount includes a $77 “title fee” and this process would have been considerably more complicated had Florida law required insurance. Now the DMV is sticking its nose into the insurance industry. They were not happy enough mucking around with child support.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree people should do right. But I disagree with bureaucrats like the DMV getting involved with it. (I’m saying it should not be the DMV’s concern in any way whether anybody even has insurance or support payments.) When they get involved, it is corruption. It does not cost $147 to process a vehicle with a book value of $150. Mr. Trump, shut down the DMV and send all those people home. Don’t go saying that creates unemployment, as nobody has shown that the make-work jobs are the DMV constitute “employment” in the first place.
I took the 450 on a morning run. It is not as much fun to drive as the batbike, but it has the desired qualities of being easier to park, better on pickup (acceleration) and is far nimbler in city traffic. It is a quarter the weight of the batbike, as it retains the 250 frame. Overall, it is so far a good compromise—but it is not as much more powerful than the 250 as I imagined it would be. It does, however, have a good reserve of power when traveling in overdrive. That I like.
Taylor Swift.
I’m a fan because she’s smart first, beautiful second.
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NOON
The 450 is obviously geared for road travel, but it has a light enough touch to wheel around town. I was only on the open road maybe 30 minutes and I’m already glad I opted for the 450 (over the 250). It has that extra pull when you need it. I have a natural cruising speed of 45 mph from driving the batbike. I’ll learn to hit 65 mph and really cover 195 miles in three hours.
And that motor has a sweet spot around 3550 rpm, I rarely crank it more than that. Meaning I switch gears to keep the revs in that range. There is no tachometer on this bike. The lack of the windscreen I temporarily solved by getting my ski-doo helmet out of the shed. That’s the one I bought in 2013 at Gander Mountain. It kept me warm through the Eisenhower and up through Pendleton, where it warmed again. That was a nasty cold spell.
The ski-doo helmet is padded enough to create a bubble of still air around the face and of course has a full face shield. So I blazed down the mining roads through all kinds of grit from the dumptrucks. The helmet is vented with just enough clearance to protect my chin, throat, and upper shoulders. So to hell with what it looks like, that helmet is my headgear for the inaugural run next Tuesday. Weather permitting.
Here, this photo is proof that you can still get real estate in Florida for less than $10,000. I found some structures like this in a mining camp park. It was probably just for some celebration or movie skit. I saw this near a museum which happened to be closed on Fridays. The mines around here produce a fertilizer component. The big signs you see everywhere say Mosaic, though I’ve never checked into the company much. Let’s hope I don’t find them in cahoots with Monsanto.
The back roads are not well-traveled but still in good shape, so I may make the Miami trek next week a bit on an excursion. I’ve called ahead for the windscreen, front brake, and the fuel valve problem. It is leaking and malfunctioning and the seller knew that, but I expected some problems of the like. Things will be in tip-top condition within ten days. Meanwhile, the fuel feed problem does cause idling sputter and the odd misfire at speed. It also leaks gasoline, which gives the bike an aroma.
Dunkirk, the movie. What a hoax that’s going to be. I’ll attend the movie when possible, but the trailers reveal it is being repackaged as some major Brit victory that saved the world from the Nazis. Then again, to Hollywood, every German soldier is a Nazi. But you dare don’t be calling Patton a Democrat. I’m curious to see how far WWII propaganda has reached into this century. The facts are the Brits ran like chickens and the German tanks only stopped because they had run low on gasoline.
I watched a DVD I found disturbing. One was “The Constant Gardener”, that kind of leaves you guessing if the title has any relevance. Mostly no, the gardener is this naïve type professor who doesn’t realize his wife is sleeping around to get otherwise unobtainable documents of how drug companies are doing to Africans what they used to do to animals.
I also parked and went into an estate sale in Ft. Meade. Again. I was made sad. I had got there too late for any of the good stuff--but I could have furnished my entire place in solid oak for $200 by waking up earlier. I was sad because the event made me realize how close I am to the same. It was an older, but a painstakingly fine example of an old house.
An old house that nobody in a small town could possibly afford anymore. Spotless, but all the next generation are doctors, lawyers, movie stars, and stockbrokers. They don’t want to set up practice in Ft. Meade, Florida. The small-town ethic thing isn’t there any more. So what if you paid $200,000 for the place? The most I can give you is $2,000. Whaddya mean borrow money? Are you out of your minds? You think I’m out to cheat you? Buddy, the bank did that, not me.
[Author’s note: there is more to this than rhetoric. America is a heavily wooded country with plenty of open space. I feel if the mortgage banking industry was outlawed, your average new house today would cost a reasonable $30,000. And that would include an acre of land and all the appliances.
This is not conjecture. It is supply and demand. If people had to pay up front, there is no way they could pay $300,000 for a house an hour away from their job. Let’s have a show of hands how many people here live in a beautiful two bedroom home they bought for cash. That’s what I thought. It is borrowed money that makes house prices go up like that.
“At the gas station of love, I got the self-serve pump.”
NIGHT
I returned home happy with the performance of the Rebel, overall. After years on the batbike, I had to relearn some about leaning on corners and remembering to not lean to the right at a stop. To do that, you must take your foot off the rear brake, I won’t get into it. Here’s another picture at the river, I didn’t stay since I was too lazy to pack a thermos in the morning. I dropped into the jam session last evening and didn’t stay. They had a keyboard player who was better than I ever was. His style was like the Doors.
He told me some tunes he likes, which I gave a listen. You can too, try High Cost of Living. Like most tunes chosen by a musician, it is just not suitable for either duo work or dance work. It is slow and meaningful, exactly what the majority of people who go out on weekends do not want. They get their fill of that nonsense at home all week long.
Still, I’ll give it [the song] has a shot because it has another ingredient I just know he did not listen to because he has no experience at this. [It has] a busy double-duty bass line. (Double duty is my slang term for a bass that walks faster than the melody notes of a tune. I just happen to know a bit about choosing what is suitable for duo arrangement and if f I learn that bass line, it will steal his thunder. That song is a studio overdub, with two different bass segments recorded separately.
Nothing I’ve ever found works better than taking away some attention to get the other guy to start listening to what the bass is doing. It beats a lengthy lecture. I have never yet met a guitarist who listened to the bass line to decide if a tune was suitable for stage work. Example, the “Eagles”. Like, what bass line?
The guy is damn articulate, a medical student or something, so you watch, I’ll get him to show me what is attractive to some people about rap music. You probably think all I can do is write, but I can talk on the fly. Ask any pretty woman. Neither of us can sing harmony, but both have an interest in learning. To me, Abba, that’s harmony. This is an opportunity, because this would be the first time I’ve met a Florida musician who can already sing who is willing to try doing harmony.
I mean, just you try to get a Florida guitar player to sing anything but lead. Just you try. And if any of them are reading this, you know who you are. You bunch would rather croak than sing harmony and make that double to sing harmony to a lowly bass player.
I stopped in at the Kensington, which happened to be right along the route I was testing my fuel feed problem. Somehow the gravity feed mechanism either floods the pistons, or gives it too lean a mixture.
ADDENDUM
Time for a head’s up on policy. Long-term readers know that other than criticizing the more obvious, but still-unnamed morons who screw this country around, there was no political element in this blog until Trump came along. Mark this huge distinction made clear from day one—Trump is not being followed as a politician, and indeed I do not consider him one. That’s a huge plus around here, since the founding fathers never intended politics to become anybody’s career.
Let’s hope Trump gets into the phalanxes of the political cronies and begins busting up the formations. I a populist on that count, not saying Trump is right, but that the political class is wrong. However, I am as blasted by media liberalism as the next guy, so I have some comments for the yearbecause of the violence and racism of certain groups lately.
I’m unaware if you know what the SPLC is or does, but it is the self-appointed agency that monitors what it calls “hate groups”. That’s the majority of the so-called statistics you hear about armed militias and secret terror groups. But why do I say “so-called”? Good question. It is because the Southern Poverty Law Center does not count any violence by the radical left or admit they even exist. They count only violence and potential violence by the right, the right being anybody who does not agree with the SPLC socialist agenda.
Here are some points to consider. The SPLC claims there are some 995 “anti-government” groups in the USA, that number including some 266 “armed” militias. Question, now that Trump is in, are they still anti-government? The SPLC is silent on the point. They further assert there are nearly 2,000 “far-right extremist” organizations. The SPLC refuse to actually state where anything actually extreme has ever been done by a single one of these groups, so it smells like there intention is to demonize any white patriot assembly.
Besides, define extremist. Fact: the SPLC is the group that advocates banning any group it labels as radical from using the Internet. Don’t you love these guys already? They further argue that there would be many more acts of violent terror inside the USA if they did not provide “key intelligence” and “authoritative analysis” to law enforcement. In that light, you might find it interesting that the SPLC has announced beginning 2017 it may classify any and all pro-Trump advocacy congregations as “hate groups”.
Myself, I have no stand on the political issue, but as you just read, I have a definite stance against non-elected groups claiming moral high ground. Also, what gives anybody the right to snoop into the affairs of any private group, civilian or otherwise, that have not broken any laws? One outfit the SPLC has particularly targeted is the “Borderkeepers”. I don’t know anything about that organization, but since the radical left condemns them, they are probably worth looking into. Return for results.
[Author’s note: over the previous year, the inclusion of material concerning Trump’s rise to power and reflection of popular disgust over “extreme” liberalism has not resulted in any change in blog readership. I am anti-political and believe that politics in America should have been outlawed after the Civil War. There is no proof that America even needs a leader or any guidance on a national level.
There was nothing wrong with America until we began breeding career politicians. The very idea that this country needs to be led is a medieval concept for little minds. If you disagree, have you really thought the issue through? What harm would come to America if our two million career politicians suddenly disappeared tomorrow?
I would still do whatever I was going to do, because at ground level, politics has no beneficial effect on my life. What? Sorry, that example is administration, not politics. Without politics, I could choose not to have that “service” and there are lots of instances where trained people can do a great job without some bureaucrat on their case.]
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