One year ago today: July 29, 2016, the Lakeland Amtrak station.
Five years ago today: July 29, 2012, he still owes me $105.
Nine years ago today: July 29, 2008, City Hall at noon.
Random years ago today: July 29, 2014, I love days like that.
The scooter is fine again, you know, that must have 30,000 miles on it by now. To test things, I drove to the lumber yard in Bartow to get more bolts, since I used the last of my backups to fix that muffler. That’s a 98 cent repair that took three hours. You have to tilt the scooter on its side and trust me, it gets grimy. That got me exhausted so I drove over to Agt. R’s and we played guitars for two hours. It’s an interesting reminder watching a complete beginner make all the mistakes I did—but he’s moving ahead a month every time he practices because he’s got something I never had—a coach to show him the right things to practice. He has no idea how fast he’s picking this up.
Then I went shopping for a new battery for the batbike, though in the end I did not buy one. Has anyone tried this “Global Extreme” brand? The official battery of Nascar. I figure that must mean something, along with this label that says 800 cranking amps. You mean it takes more to start a race car than a farm tractor? You’d think those triple-A fuelers or whatever would practically start themselves.
Oh, and again, I could not find anything on line about that can opener. So typical of the Internet, it came back with 276,000 hits with directions on how to use a can opener—but for all the easy openers you see every day. These millennials really know how to make their mark in the world. I figure the pointy thing on the end is to poke a hole in the lid and that I was working it right, it just really takes that long to open a can. As for lab supplies, forget it. Same as Miami, either wait until you find something by accident or order from North Dakota and get your family’s identity on the permanent airport watchdog list.
Hwy 401, Canada.
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Here’s a majestic portrait of the Rebel, now restored to good running condition, except for new clutch plates, and those are coming shortly. Isn’t this a majestic pose? The lines reveal the original was a Harley copy. The new chain and sprocket make it noticeably more responsive to the throttle, plus I will now rev up more because the chain will no longer jump the sprocket. That high speed rattle is gone and it is far easier to gear down, although it still sticks when the motor is super hot.
Get your atlas, I was looking for Walker Road, a path through the old mining pits, but I came to a dead end. There was a trail to my left when patch of navy blue began forming to the southeast—I decided not to risk it. There was a fifteen mile stretch of orange dirt road just east of Ft. Green, so I continued south till I hit pavement again. Ft. Green is where that lady would not hop in my sidecar for a jaunt down to the Limestone Country Club last year because she could not leave her cats. I drove right past her house without waving, what a meanie I can be.
I was heading for a rest stop at the store near the open air pizza joint. I think the later may be closed for the summer, but the store has two small booths to sit by the window and drink your V-8 juice. Gotta have your salt on the road, guys. You know how in the movies these out-of-the-way country stores have gorgeous local babes working the counter? Well, that’s only in the movies, but made you look.
This leg of the trip took over an hour, this is rough motorcycle going. The only packed hard part of the road are where tire prints have baked. If you wonder why the road has cleared ditches and is so straight, this is a strong indication the county is planning on paving it in the near future. It would then be another shortcut to nowhere. I drove over a few sets of abandoned mine railway crossings, they leave them in place when the rest of the railbed is torn away. It’s a nostalgic sight to see, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to go back and photograph one, not with the sky getting darker by the half-minute.
Was I nervous and filled with trepidation? You decide for yourself what this two-bit sprinkle of rain might have meant to me. In the end, I was hit by two drops. I was rarely over 25 mph the whole distance, with sections down at 5 or 7 mph. The group of motorcycle people I’ve met seem to shy away from this adventure, preferring to make repeat rips down paved roads.
While at the country store, the rain clouds passed without incident. I headed back north on 663, where I’ve been before up to a town called “Baird”, maybe? There is actually a town there, sort of. I took the back road and wound up emerging at Pebbledale, where I’ve been lots of times. It is on the route I take the batbike when I’ve got all day to get to Miami. Notice that Hollywood is increasingly out of the picture. My plans into 2018 allow for only four short trips there per year thereafter until I die. I do not miss modern south Florida much at all. The place has really gone downhill.
“This anti-trust thing will blow over..”
~ Bill Gates, 1995.
My music got a boost from a professional. I stopped for coffee in Bartow on the way back and bumped into a guitarist who heard me last weekend. He’s a solo player and I’ve seen him a few times. It’s a solo guitar act and he’s in Bartow tonight, if I’m still in town. Before I forget my point, he had noticed my tactic of playing not only variations on the strum to emulate the “feel” of the music, but how I play that strum through the entire song. I do this to avoid comping, but he never used that term. (He comps a lot.)
That’s the compliment, my friends, the way he said he admired how I went the extra distance. He added he had once tried to do that with his strumming. It was too much work, he continued, and he felt the audience didn’t care anyway. Ah, see where my philosophy takes over? I would not avoid doing my best just because the crowd was apathetic. From my standpoint, the crowd maybe didn’t care because he was not individualizing each song. The best way to remain a background musician is to play every song the same.
Next item was reported on-line, a man was caught burning down his own house for the insurance. The news is that he was caught by his own pacemaker. He reported waking up and smelling smoke, grabbing a few belongings and running out of the house. The memory chip in his pacemaker revealed that he as quite awake in the two hours before the fire began. Conclusion? Arson. However, in my books this should serve as a warning. The guy obviously did not know his pacemaker contained a recording chip. The expectation of privacy was such that the that evidence should not have been permitted.
While I’m glad that a cheat was nabbed, I’m not happy with the precedent. How far are the authorities allowed to invade your privacy to obtain evidence? I say all the way—providing they state in advance exactly what they are looking for and why—and may not touch anything they were not looking for. The Constitution forbids snooping around for its own sake. Even if the perp agreed to the search, was he aware of the recording? Would he have agreed to the search had he known? These are secondary questions. The real concern is privacy and I don’t have the answer. But I do believe every person has the right to live their life without somebody monitoring and recording it.
There is the further concern of using records for purposes other than which they were collected. Where do you draw the line? Should credit collectors be allowed to access motor vehicle registrations? Myself, I would say absolutely not, but others would say yes, if it helps them collect a debt. However, my stance is based on the premise that money-lending is evil where the majority consider it a normal necessity. Again, I don’t know the answer.
If I were a legal scholar, I would ask the question of whether government record-keeping is a form of compelling people to testify against themselves. I know this is a contentious point. Some would say the police should be allowed to grab any evidence they can. Even if one were to invent the perfect police force, there are too many serious flaws with that concept. No, I say, the police should have to obey the same laws as the accused. Furthermore, the lack of rich people in jail shows that there is considerable leeway over whether charges are even filed, so each instance is most indeed a personal matter. That being so, if the person filing charges can look at your records, should you not be able to look at theirs?
Was not a cop just removed from the force out in Tampa this week concerning pulling people over and charging them with bogus traffic offenses? He got away with it for years, including past terminations and rehirings. If getting rid of one dirty cop takes such monumental effort, you’d better think twice about giving them any more power.
ADDENDUM
Time to consider the laptop, the county libraries are on another get everybody on file kick. And they have a new employee who’s as bad as that guy who looks over your ID every time. I’ve learned to avoid his shift, but this new lady is aggressive. She’s unattractive and she knows it, you can fill in the rest. She’s just doing her job, blah-blah, but the other gals often have my coffee cup and pass ready before I’ve crossed the parking lot, so who do you think I prefer to deal with? When I get there bright and early?
Here’s a picture of shampoo, this picture is to prove a point. A lot of gals feel, and rightly so, that beards on men are not hygienic. That’s undoubtedly true, because most men are that way to start with. So, I wanted to point out that my facial hair is as spotless as possible. To that extent, I use this medicated shampoo exclusively for my beard. The other shampoo is for what remains of my once long-flowing blonde locks. This is for the record. It's the only beard I've got and it's lasted longer than any woman I've met in 18 years.
Last Laugh
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