Thrown off the bus in a North Dakota oil patch town

Back when I was a softball coach I acquired a fairly high quality 100 foot fiberglass measuring tape.  The deal was that the recreation department sponsoring our softball league established rules specifying distances between bases and pitching distance.  But then they just issued rubber bases to all of the coaches and sent to each game an umpire whose only qualification was an apparent willingness to accept payment for showing up at a specific time and place.  The umpires had no clue, no measuring devices and absolutely no interest.  The actual practice that developed was that one or another of the two team coaches would walk out onto the infield and throw down the bases more or less where he or she thought they were properly located.

How is a person expected to coach people to play a game when the dimensions of the game change every single time they play?

I bought a tape, a tape which according to the label I can still read all of these many years later meets US Bureau of Standards for Accuracy.  The label says suitable for Surveyors, Realtors, Landscapers and Contractors.  Further the tape surpasses US Government specs for durability.

I bought a tape and forever thereafter all of the games which included the team that I was coaching featured bases set accurately at the actual distance specified by the league rules.  I always knew this to be true because I showed up early and measured and placed the bases.  With this extremely high quality 100 foot fiberglass measuring tape.

I caught a ride with a long haul trucker but was only able to get as far as Wyoming.  Fortunately there I was able to cadge a job as a dishwasher in a cowboy bar where I was able to convince the topless waitresses that they should share tips with me.

With my share of the tips I was finally able to save enough to make a move that advanced me a significant step back towards the life that I had previously lived.  Everything has finally worked out OK.  OK especially considering being thrown off the bus.

During the course of all of that or perhaps merely because I didn't have a softball player living in my house anymore, I lost contact with the tape.

A couple of years ago I either had saved enough from the tips to get back here or I had a need for the tape.  I knew I hadn't thrown or given the tape away.  It was a discouraging search with many dead ends but as with most such searches the tape was in the last place I looked.

A long way of getting around to I have a measuring device way more than adequate for driveway dimensions.

Straight down the center crack about 40 feet, a few inches longer at the two edges.  About 16 feet across edge to edge just below the garage.  The driveway flares out at both edges at the bottom for a couple of inches in the last couple of feet of the distance towards the street.  There is also the front steps and there is also a bit of concrete leading over to the front steps.  Mostly the front steps are under the overhang so there isn't much snow over there.

It seems to me that a good rough approximation is 40 feet by 16 feet.

640 square feet.

A fairly uniform 5 inches of snow.

640 times 5 divided by 12 equals a bit under 267 cubic feet.

That's very nearly 10 cubic yards of snow removed from my driveway yesterday by a gentleman well past his best if used by date without use of power tools.

Numbers are fun.

Food freshness labeling update

I am referring to the modern addition to the labels of all things consumable, the best if used by date.

Of late I have begun occasionally answering the question of "how are you" from folks who I have not seen recently with the explanation that I believe I am doing pretty well for a person quite clearly past my best if used by date.

Which is a long way to get around to the actual title of this post.  Yes, you must ignore what appears at the top of the post.  That is really only the introduction to the definitions section.  The real post title is:

Gentleman well past his best if used by date subdues residue of 5 inch snowstorm without use of power tools.

Our earliest requirement for a start today was TOPWLH wanting to leave for an open house by about 4pm.  I started my shoveling about 7 hours after TT.  I know that the municipality where I live plows after every event of 2 inches or more so I spent the morning hunkered down waiting for the plows to plow.  This is the preferred approach here.  If you clear the snow before the plow arrives, that just means you have to go back out after the plow leaves and redo a considerable portion of the task anyway.

So after the plow left I opened the garage door and started as I always do with a shovel to push away that snow nearest to the garage door.  This is a necessary step.  The garage door MUST be closed when using a snowblower.  With the door closed it is necessary on the up driveway bit to turn enough before you actually get to the door to leave room for a human being between the machinery and the door to allow someone to be in control when the down driveway bit begins.  Where the snowblower turn leaves snow covered pavement is a bit that is going to have to be shoveled anyway.  My approach is to do that bit of shoveling first.

I pushed the snow down the driveway, it was light and fluffy (albeit 5 inches of light and fluffy).  That first push went pretty smoothly so I gave one more across the width of the driveway repetition of the down driveway push.  My driveway has four sections of concrete between garage and street and after the third round of push I was very nearly at the end of the first (and longest) of the sections.  I had also discovered that the car tracks from early morning newspaper delivery (two cars pull in, two cars pull out, a four repetition compacting) were reacting to the relatively balmy temperatures by still being available for easy scraping.  The compacted snow came up with it only being necessary to apply about the same amount of force that I was applying just to move the increasingly deep light and fluffy pile.  Most often the driven on stuff is packed down hard and is well on its way to being there until April.  Not today.

Well now, soon enough I had two sections of driveway done and I was starting to think that this might be possible.

And it almost was.  Finally though I had to quit at about this point.  My pulse, breathing and body cooling mechanisms were all beginning to complain.

In short that was about all I could do, I was more or less completely used up, knackered.  I required a bit of a lie down.

That's pretty darn good though.  On the house side of the driveway there I have completed shoveling all four sections of my driveway.  That remaining snow is actually in the street and although I generally do clear that I feel considerably less responsible for that than I do for the bit actually on my concrete.

On the field side of the driveway I am down two sections.  Also at the bottom I have shoveled a foot path through to the street (what I refer to as reestablishing contact with civilization) and I have gone around and rescued the trash container from deep in the deep stuff.  Friday is trash day here, what with the recent Festivus, today was the day when our trash was actually picked up.

I was out there when the trash guy showed up.  It was such a horrible day for travel that our trash company had to put auxiliary trucks into service to try to get pick ups completed.  The guy who showed up at our house was using some sort of antique truck that did not even have a side dumper.  He had to stop the truck, get out, get a firm grip on the trash container and drag it to the back of the truck where it hooked up to a lift.  He then had to move a lever on the side of the truck to get the trash to dump into the back.

Really, really old school truck from back in the day when trash pick up was done by trucks with two man crews.  Today being operated by a single man.

He seemed pretty thankful that I pulled the receptacle out of the snowdrift and moved it out towards the middle of the street for him.

The mail came, I chatted with the mail lady.  But I really had pretty much nothing for additional snow removal.

So I went back inside and took a fairly significant lie down.

I am pleased to report that even a gentleman obviously past his best if used by date can still rally if given an opportunity for a fairly significant lie down.

Lighting conditions probably tell most of the story.  The above picture is sunny mid-afternoon.  The picture below is just before the light went out.

At least a couple of hours had passed.

But my driveway looks great and it was all done by a gentleman well past his best if used by date without use of power tools.

Did I mention we had about 5 inches here?  Because I definitely meant to.

Boxing day

I have been cooking on Christmas Eve for TOPWLH and her parents for many, many years.  Until the last couple of years this was always at our house.  I would cook and chit chat with Bud while the three generations of ladies attended Christmas Eve church service at Saint Anthony Park Lutheran Church.  Barbara calls her parents the Ancients and the simple truth is that they no longer travel very well.  Most recently for Christmas Eve we have traveled to their home and I have cooked there.

Bud loves the old photos and is very protective and territorial about them.  This year we were a little surprised that we were able to convince him to let us borrow one of the old photos with the promise that I would scan the photo and it would be returned the next day.

Opal and her seven brothers in 1971.  The occasion was the funeral of their mother.

Front row: left to right, Floyd, Opal, Earl.
Back row: Kenneth Jerome, Orlin, Darrel, Myron and Roderick.

According to Bud, Opal would have been 47 for this photo.  She would have been the mother of children aged 28, 24 and 17.  None of her grandchildren had yet been born.

She was in attendance yesterday at a Christmas Day celebration also attended by her three children, four of her grandchildren and four of her great grandchildren.  And her husband Bud.

Pagan winter holiday progresses

Shopping?  Check.

Menu planning?  Check.

Chocolate covered cherries?  Check.

Today Wireless came over and constructed this year's version of the nativity scene.  Again, as has previously been mentioned, this is a very definitely small "c" catholic (definition 2) display.  Our only intention is to be all inclusive.

New this year are William Shakespeare and a bread deliveryman, aka on the packaging as livraison du pain (I think Wireless may have acquired this figure in Quebec).  I think this might possibly be the first appearance in this particular context of the pink flamingo.  There is an alien area, there is a men of science area, and there is a sports guy area.  I believe it probably goes without saying that the mice are present and that there is a Snow White and the Seven Dwarves area.  And R2D2.

Late edit:

The tree, final version featuring a nice bunch of gaily wrapped gifts:

Joyous Festivus to all.

Turn your head and fail to watch carefully enough, 44 years pass.

I got my draft notice early on in 1969.  That moment was a time of acceleration of the war effort by our government.  I recognized that entering as a draftee at that time meant I was likely to be trained for military service as an 11B20, aka 11Bravo, Light Arms Infantryman.  I just kept trying to delay the whole mess, hoping against hope that somehow, someway it would all go away.

It didn't.

I enlisted just prior to the deadline and received in exchange for offering an extra year of my life a deferred entry date and the opportunity to be trained as a 76P20, Stock Control and Accounting Specialist.

I would be there for 3 years instead of 2 but I would work in a warehouse instead of in a light infantry squad.  A lot of paperwork instead of an M-16.

I entered the military on 12 September 1969.  Woodstock had already occurred on 15, 16 and 17 August 1969.  The festival created a small sensation and by the time of my military entrance it had already over the Labor Day weekend of 1969 been featured on the cover of the then still culturally significant Life magazine.

I arrived in Cam Ranh Bay, Republic of South Vietnam at the 22nd Replacement Battalion on 1 April 1970.  I was assigned to the US Army Depot, Cam Ranh Bay.  I was being processed by a sergeant in the personnel section of that unit for placement with some unit or another of the large warehouse district located on the south end of the peninsula.  He typed poorly and with only a couple of fingers.  From behind him I announced that I could type a lot better than that.  I had taken typing as a 9th grader at District Junior High School in Bovey.

He turned towards me, looking slightly irritated but also slightly amused.  He turned back to the typewriter.  He rolled the personnel form out of the typewriter, rolled in a fresh sheet of paper, and then moved away again as he offered me his chair and the typewriter and the opportunity to prove that what I had just said was true.

I was an A student in typing in 9th grade.  I had absolutely no trouble convincing the sergeant that I could type.  This was before computers, obviously.  In 1970 if you could actually type the US Army needed you to type.  I was an A student in typing.  After that I typed.

The combat zone assignment came with something called R&R, rest and recreation.  After 6 months in country the military would provide a 7 day free leave and transportation to one of several locations.

The movie "Woodstock" had come out in May 1970.  When R&R came up for me in the fall of 1970 the only thing that I really, really wanted to do was see the movie.  I took R&R in Honolulu.  I went to the movie, it was practically the first thing I did after arriving in Hawaii.

Nothing I saw in that darkened theater that afternoon changed my life.  My life had already been changed.  But I saw performances that stunned and amazed me, performances that to this day continue to stun and amaze me every time I watch again.

I loved the Joe Cocker.

I loved the Who.

I loved Ten Years After.

This one though, by a then completely unknown Santana, is the one that killed the most.

And after all this time, it absolutely continues to kill.

I love the guys at the beginning of the piece doing volunteer percussion on the plywood fence.

Late edit:  there is a musically more complete (including the full drum solo by just turned 20 years old Michael Shrieve) available here.  The video isn't quite as good in this version as the full wide screen is compressed for the available video format.  Musically it is superior and despite the video quality it still definitely does it for me.  At the time of the performance at Woodstock Michael had just turned 20 and Carlos was 22.

Inching towards the light

The really awful November here has had the effect on me of reducing my level of dismay about the completely dark season.  All of that snow and really horrible outdoor conditions just kind of blunted the usual whole it is getting dark hysteria.

Still, it is pretty dark now.  No matter how late one rises all of those hours before noon are still just morning.  Even 9am seems only a little past dawn.  Inching along towards noon.

And no matter how you care to parse it 5pm is night.  It is dark.  But in a couple of days it will start getting better and that feels pretty good this time.  The horrible weather was so horrible that it prevented me from fixating on the loss of light.

And now instead I find that I can celebrate the fact that we are now inching towards the light.

The next step is the solstice.  The solstice brings all of the various celebrations of the returning of the sun.

Here is our offering to this most recent returning of the sun:

Best of season greetings to any and all who might find themselves viewing this page.  We here are doing well and are pleased to share our good times with all of you.

New record

On the Gopher Women's Hockey Facebook page you can find where a loyal fan requests information on how many teddy bears were actually tossed.

GWH responds:  "The bears have been counted, and Gophers donated a record 473 stuffed animals during this year's Teddy Bear Toss. Awesome!"

We done good, I think.

But we could do a lot better, there were 1,672 in attendance at the game, it seems to me that 1,672 should be the minimum number of bears tossed onto the ice.

Teddy bear toss

We were instructed to participate.

Please notice that the team captains (also known as the Rachels or sometimes as the Rachaels, they each spell it the way her mom wanted it spelled doncha know) specify that stuffed animals other than bears are totally acceptable.

That's why our tossees looked like this in their last moments of safety inside our house.

Clearly neither one is a bear.  One appears to be a frog, anyone with any species identification of any kind on that other thing is invited to weigh in.

Gophers win 7-0 tonight, a bit of a let down after winning 12-0 last night.

Current record 16-1-2, good for a #2 in the country rating.  They are really good.

Finale: Publier en deux parties redux

La première partie:  It was not my intention to do a leftovers post but here it is anyway.

I had a turkey carcass, an extra onion, a few baby carrots, and plenty enough celery leftover from making stuffing.  I remember reading to TCWUTH the children's book, "Soup From a Stone".  Well I didn't have a stone but it did look like I had most of the ingredients for soup.

There is a point in the process when most people thicken the soup and add fiber with rice.  This is, I agree, a good route.  Rice is excellent in this capacity.  I also think wild rice would be pretty good for this soup as it would add a bit of depth of color and the always interesting wild rice texture.

But what have become my favorite soups over the past several years are barley soups.

I used barley.

We had some rolls left over as well, brown and serve in this case.

Soup from a stone, fancy that.

 La deuxième partie:  Indeed, the original plan was NewLOOK.

I got this one on eBay at about 40 percent of retail.  It came mostly assembled in a bike box.

Here's what all of that stuff looks like when you first get it out of the box and onto a portable stand.

Yet again, Crown Jewel lurking in the background.

There really isn't much building to do from this point, it is mostly attach the handlebars, insert the seat post and saddle and get the front wheel on in the right configuration.

One again it is 10 speed Chorus.  The only real change I made on this one is that NewLOOK came with a Centaur crankset, I rode that for a year and then eBay hunted a Chorus carbon crank to make it full Chorus.  Unlike my other Chorus bicycles both of which have Mavic brakes, the brakes on this one are Chorus.

How much do I like this bicycle?  Nearly 12,000 miles so far, it is now my principal bicycle.

Final bicycle report:  3,210 miles for the year, exceeding last year's total by about 400.  Any year when you ride more miles than you rode the previous year is a successful campaign.

And that concludes a successful month.

My favorite bicycle

This is my favorite because this is the one I put together myself.

Nearly all build it yourself bicycle stories start with a bare frame.

I wasn't necessarily looking to build one myself although I was pretty sure I COULD do it.  I was at the end of season warehouse clearance sale held by our local bicycle retail chain, Erik's Bike Shop, when I came across the frame.  Eventually I found myself, in the spirit of a clearance sale, making an offer substantially under the number posted on the tag.  The sales manager I was dealing with told me that he did not have authority to accept an offer that much under the tag.  I took it as evidence of the fact that they really wanted to move the frame when instead of just refusing to sell he told me he would go in the back and get someone who did have authority to consider my offer.  Out came Erik.  Which is how I ended up paying approximately dealer cost substantially below retail to purchase this frame directly from Erik the Bike Man.

For what I was told were inventory control reasons I could not take possession of the frame from the warehouse sale itself.  The frame had to be sent out to one of the stores where I made the pick up.  This gave me a week to get started on the other necessary purchases and by about the time the frame made it home packages of bicycle parts became a regular occurrence on our front step.

I also had to buy some tools but here you have wheels, stem, handlebar and I suspect the Campagnolo bit is the chain.

It's 10 speed Chorus, Campagnolo Proton wheelset, Mavic brakes, LOOK carbon stem, a really sweet ride.  Here are the front and rear derailers mounted, you can see one of the wheels of the Crown Jewel there corner upper right.

All of the parts came with detailed installation instructions, construction moved along pretty easily.  The really hard part was when I had to cut the stem down to the size I wanted.  Measure twice, set everything up, measure it again, take a bit to think it over, make sure it is measured properly, attach the fork to the saw guide, saw guide in bench vise, hacksaw ready, cut.

Eventually the LOOK KG 381i was ready for the road.  Still completely clean and grease free, it made a one time without any concerns whatsoever appearance in the living room, GRider serving as hand model.

How much do I like this bicycle?

Well, I have ridden it over 20,000 miles is how much I like this bicycle.

Bicycle content again

Wireless has a flute, actually she has a couple of flutes.  Flutes are silver and need occasional cleaning and silver polishing.  While she was a high schooler Wireless acquired a silver polishing cloth for her flutes and when she later on acquired a newer version of this tool she passed the old one down to me.  This all comes up because we had the silverware out yesterday.  Which means that today we had some back and forth about whether the silverware should be polished before being put away or whether polishing should again this time just wait until we want to use the silverware again.  At which point it will be just like this year and it will be too late to polish the silverware before use.  Anyway, I went down to my bicycle storage area and produced the silver polishing cloth to at least raise the theoretical possibility that between the two of us we might commit to polishing the silverware more or less about now.  Maybe, but maybe not.

Which is a long way to get around to the reason why I have a silver polishing cloth in my bicycle storage area.  The reason why is because I have this:

I own a bicycle with a sterling silver head badge.  A sterling silver head badge requires some special maintenance and I have a silver polishing rag for just exactly that special maintenance.

It is an Independent Fabrication Crown Jewel Special Edition Custom Build.

Everyone reading this already knows that though.  Constructed for Mavic, to be used on the Service Courses (French for race support, Mavic is a French company) cars following the US Pro Tour.

This exact bicycle was one of the bicycles riding on the top of the yellow cars leading professional bicycle races. Custom welded Independent Fabrication steel frame, custom paint job in Mavic Service Courses color scheme, mostly 10 speed Chorus drive train but with a Record crank and Record front derailer.  Mavic Krysium (first generation) aluminum wheelset, Mavic brakes, color coordinated Fizik saddle, Time carbon fork, Chris King headset, one of the few changes I made was to swap out the aluminum stem for a LOOK carbon stem.  Very, very nice bike.

The last person before me who swung a leg over that top tube was a professional rider.  It is a bicycle richly deserving that level of human power.

That's MY Bianchi, not the GRider's identical (except for size of course) Veloce standing behind this most extraordinary of custom bicycles.

There are only two days left and I am pretty sure I have material for at least two more bicycle content posts.

It was hard this year because of the really awful November weather which limited everyone's ability to be outdoors meaning that there was less outdoor activity to be described.  Everyone had to conjure up content just about every day from the very beginning of the month.  Every time at the beginning of the month it seems unbelievably daunting and every time somewhere during the month it seems absolutely impossible.

But, there are two day left in BEDFAMM and I have two days worth of bicycle material ready to roll.

Green grape salad

The heads all say that this was the coldest Thanksgiving Day in 25 years although not particularly in the running for coldest ever.  Apparently it was REALLY cold in 1872.

My position is that anything starting with a minus sign in November is too cold.

Right, right, I noticed that too, Will and Al, Shakespeare and Einstein.

And Kurt.

So the New York Times published a bit a few days ago on iconic Thanksgiving side dishes for every state in the union.  The Minnesota entry was the classic green grape salad.

We haven't had that every year but with the pub from the NYT I decided to get green grape salad back on the holiday table.

You of course start with green grapes.

Mix with sour cream.

After blending those two key ingredients you should find yourself approximately here.

A few more grapes.

And brown sugar to taste.

Some families prefer to cover the whole salad with a layer of canned french fried onion rings.

And that, my friends, is a truly iconic Minnesota Thanksgiving dish.

Here's a look at the sideboard.  I believe that's the stuffing still under the foil.

I know a couple of these people got a picture of the bird and I hope that at least one of them will publish it.  I was busy with the gravy.

The green grape salad received quite good reviews including a very positive review by consumption, they ate all of it.

The gravy ala JB was also highly praised.

It would be extremely difficult to hold a family holiday without the enthusiastic participation of family.  A good time was had by all, as nearly as I could tell.

Prep

The baking crew got the major prep work done this evening.  This team has prepared cranberry bread together so many times that the roles are firmly established and each just gets about doing the assigned tasks.

 Look carefully and you may be able to spot a pie in the background.

I wasted that photo from 2010 that I used yesterday.  Sure enough we got a couple of inches of snow, enough to plow.  I went out and shoveled.

I had the same parka, the same boots, the same choppers.  It was not, however, the same snow.

But we're cleaned up and apparently ready to go for the big show tomorrow.

White Thanksgiving

I've been blogging here beginning in 2007.  For today's exercise I went back to November 25, 2007 and looked at the post to see if there was anything interesting enough to warrant reposting.

I worked my way forward to 2010 before I found something I like.

It turns out that this carping about bad weather is now at a point where we are going to have to let it go.  It has been worse on November 25 as recently as four years ago.  November 25, 2010, was Thanksgiving, here's a photo from that morning and from that 2010 post.

I could almost do all of that again, I still have that gear.  However, I don't have that shovel anymore.  That was an aluminum shovel with a steel wear strip on the business edge.  Even a steel wear strip will not stand up to four more years of scraping against the concrete.

So this year we have some white but not enough to constitute complete cover.  We have those humps of plow leavings around the cul-de-sac but absent those most of the rest of the terrain again has grass poking through.  Out in the field where the turkey bowl will be played on Thursday it is now mostly clear, good footing for touch football.

As long as I had the 2010 photo file open to find this photo, I picked out a couple of other favorites from a really nice last day of October, 2010.

There is a quite noticeable deterioration of conditions from October 31, above and below, to November 25, top.

Today is only Tuesday, it may still be a white Thanksgiving again this year.

Appliance blog

In her recent revelation that she has been receiving blogging tips all along whenever BEDFAMM comes around, TCWUTH opines, "But there is also much to be said for a really good toaster, as Gzmoohoo can attest."  Well, actually, yes I can.

I am a huge supporter of the idea of a toaster as a wedding gift or as a housewarming gift.  There is much to be said for a really good toaster.  Part of my fascination with buying toasters for other people probably relates to a lifetime of never having bought a toaster for myself.

Here's why:

My only toaster.

And a second hand toaster at that.

The story is that this was a corporate Christmas gift from my sister's husband's employer shortly after they got married at least several years ago.  I am a little uncertain of the exact details but I think the employer gave them another one a few years later at about the time I was being released from my period of national service.  With a surplus of toasters my sister passed this one along to me.

And there it still sits, my only toaster.

There is much to be said for a really good toaster.

I wonder what comes next

Fog doesn't usually photograph all that well.  But today it seems pretty impressive in this mid-morning look at the goalposts.

That's not the reason why I was outside with my camera though.  It seems fairly historic that after that early season snow catastrophe I have been able to recapture my driveway.

Almost always after the snow gets packed down it is mid-April before we see bare concrete again.  The real problem is that every time it snows we get two cars pulling into and backing out of the driveway delivering our two daily newspapers before anyone gets a chance to clear the snow.  That's four trips packing down any new snow.  Once that compacting begins it is nearly impossible to reverse the process.

This year proves again to be not like the others.

Not to despair snow lovers, the forecast for tomorrow is for snow and blowing snow.  That bare concrete seems certain to disappear again and this time I bet it will be April.

The BNT looks nice.

Snow's liquid form

Here's kind of an interesting phenomena which is currently occurring out in the cul-de-sac.  Apparently under certain temperature conditions snow exists as a liquid.

As everyone knows there are problems inherent in snow, most notably how it messes up the driveway.  This liquid deal certainly would seem to be more readily cleared from the driveway but I can certainly see where if a large quantity of it gathered other problems could be created.

It is interesting to observe this snow liquid but like all inhabitants of this part of the world we will await anxiously the return of colder temperatures.  The return of the snow to the form we are most familiar and comfortable with will be a welcome occurrence.

Today's football score:  UW-Whitewater 55, Macalester 2.

No one, not even any of the pumpkin heads, is surprised by this result.

Oh Oh Oh Mr. Soul keep on rockin' in the free world.

Oh, oh, oh Mr. Soul, I dropped by to pick up a reason
For the thought that I caught
That my head is the event of the season
Why in crowds just a trace of my face could seem so pleasin'

I was down on a frown when the messenger brought me a letter
I was raised by the praise of a fan who said I upset her
Any girl in the world could have easily known me better

She said, you're strange
But don't change
And I let her.

Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster.
For the race of my head and my face is moving much faster.
Is it strange I should change?
I don't know, why don't you ask her?

Neil Young as part of Buffalo Springfield.

Same guy, about 35 years later but still no one else but Neil Young.

Don't feel like Satan
But I am to them
So I try to forget it any way I can.

Keep on rockin' in the free world.
Keep on rockin' in the free world.

Now she puts the kid away,
and she's gone to get a hit
She hates her life,
and what she's done to it
There's one more kid
that will never go to school
Never get to fall in love,
never get to be cool.

Keep on rockin' in the free world.
Keep on rockin' in the free world.

Bicycle content

Ten days in a row with a high temperature lower than the average low for the day.

Here's a tune that totally works for this post.  Right click and open link in new tab, stay here for photos and text.

Over the years I have copied to my hard drive photos of some famous people riding bicycles.  So here's a review of some photos of famous people on bicycles more or less in what I consider to be most serious bicyclist to just someone riding a bike order.

Conan looks an awful lot like a guy who actually rides.  He's got what looks like an elongated head tube (which means probably custom built) titanium frame Serotta.  He's a tall guy, he needs a tall bicycle.  Looks like Ksyrium wheelset, carbon fork, can't tell for sure but looks like Shimano, with the rest of the set up it must be DuraAce.  Nice bike.

Former member of Congress from Minnesota's 8th district James Oberstar.  Oberstar was a long time chairman of the House Transportation Committee.  That committee has oversight of transportation spending including spending on non-highway transportation.  Because he was a bicyclist Oberstar made certain that his district and his state received funding for bicycle transportation.  Next time you are on a bicycle trail anywhere in Minnesota, but particularly in the 8th district, thank Jim Oberstar.

That's an older Lemond he's riding here, looks to me like the steel frame version.  The later Lemonds were mostly aluminum frames.  That's a Shimano set up he's got on this bicycle.  Looks like he is palping SPD pedals with a mountain bike shoe, what is euphemistically referred to as "walkable" shoes.  Interestingly enough he apparently had a separate bicycle for every place he might spend time. Nice bicycle in Washington, another nice bicycle in Chisholm.  Note for contrast that the white bar tape looks fairly clean but not quite pristine.  Oberstar, a bicyclist.

Bush is widely reported to be fairly serious about his mountain biking.  Here he is palping American with the flag but also with the Trek bike.  Trek of course manufactures mountain bikes but Trek has never been one of the really trendy, really hip frames for MBers.  I like the toe clips, front suspension, that looks like a triple front chain ring (partly I base this assumption on the really long rear derailer pulley arm, suitable for a triple).  I don't downgrade him for that, a triple is a good choice for serious off road riding.  Even in slight profile those calves look like he might be a guy who rides.  I would say though, that if he ever falls off that thing he is going to wish he had been wearing gloves.

And then this guy.  I respect that there is at least a slight amount of muscle definition in the thighs but what serious bicyclist who is not a politician wears a t-shirt on a road bike? Someone who has lived there might want to weigh in, but I think for this picture he is riding in Boston.  Nice Serotta, but old, definitely old.  Steel frame, steel fork, Shimano components, Sidi road shoes, probably palping Looks, nice clean yellow bar tape.  He looks like a guy who has always been able to afford a nice bicycle and bought one once a long time ago.  He has never upgraded.

Lou Reed on a Jamis.  Nice urban bicycle, including a rack.  Take a ride on the wild side.

Out for a ride with his dork helmet and mom jeans.  Bush does it better.  This one too, is a Trek, a nice American brand.  The main thing the current POTUS has going for him in this photo is that fly away towing bar extending off the seat post.  He is pulling a trailer which if it is not a secret service agent must most probably be one of his daughters.  This makes this an old photo as by now both of the girls are obviously able to ride their own bicycles, thank you, but also thanks Dad for taking the girls out for a ride.

The Shadow knows.

Even the picture of the shadow clearly provides enough visual evidence to indicate Campagnolo.

The Shadow KNOWS.

Going for time warp here

Nine days in a row with a high temperature lower than the average low for the date.

I think these are from 72 or 73.

Looking at them it strikes me as a bit odd that when I scanned the photos I also scanned the white border around the print.

Possibly the last images taken of these buildings before they were bulldozed.

That one would be I am pretty sure one of the sheds along the row to the right side of the main farm site, over by the apple tree.

Who doesn't love black and white?

Birthday, huh?

January strengthens.  I was gonna go with "continues unabated" but that has already been used.  According to a bar graph published in the local newspaper, today was the eighth day in a row with a high temperature for the day lower than the recorded average low.

*sigh*

So it goes.

I checked around and I have this one labeled 2001:

Super tumor reading couch for scale and cheez-its for verification of authenticity.

Scraping

I haven't done an exhaustive survey but I noticed that I do have a folder in my pictures labeled "Cat".  Inside the folder are five photos, only two of which include a cat.

Here is TOPWLH with a cat.

This January situation has worn out its novelty status and is by now just plain awful.