Monday, November 30, 2015

Sunset

November draws to a close, the end of another BEDFAMM, blog every day for a month month.  As always it has been eventful.

Today's weather event is we have had plowable snow.  The snow has stopped for now but forecasters say there is more coming.

I moved some stuff around in the garage, moving the lawnmower out of the way and getting the snow blower clear.  The big machine fired up on first asking (electric start).  I declare bicycle season over.

This year we all went to the archives pretty early and probably because of that it wasn't quite as hard this time as it has been in years past.  I mean, I, for example, obviously have several years of archives.  It is part of my entitlement for having passed through the number of Novembers I have passed through.

I am going to mark the end of this month with the end of a day on the shores of Lake Michigan.
I am a little uncertain about the details of that one but I know I like the photo.

And I dunno, but this Dilbert strikes a chord especially considering yesterday's "old days at the plant" post.
Something occurred to me while having a Thanksgiving dinner or two, another way, a small way, but another way I am going to miss my brother.  I mashed potatoes twice over the weekend. Always in the past Jim mashed the potatoes.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Is anyone at the plant still monitoring this site?

I know some of you still look in at least once in a while, I have had a comment from the Guitar Guy this month.

Thanks, Marz, nice to hear from you.  I will see you, I hope, at the Festivus gathering.

There was this moment several years ago after management alerted us that they were going to be coming around to take photos for a "staff photo directory".

I was a little surprised.  There are quite obvious privacy implications, they really, really cannot do that.

There are also obvious implications for me as a taxpayer in this state.  They really, really cannot do that and if the state gets sued over some bit or piece of it the state will lose.  We all know that when the state has to pay the taxpayers are the people who actually pony up the cash.  If the state has to pay I as a taxpayer will participate in the actual paying.

But my options directly on the issue of the photo were really none, other than scheduling a time for the staff photographer to come by.

So I staged my photo.  I brought a costume to work that day and when the photographer showed up I requested privacy for a few moments while I changed.
No, really, that's what I actually looked like most days at work.  You can tell it is true because behind my right hand (notable for the bicycle glove tan line) you can see the edges of my work ID.  Also you can see that on my left wrist I have my gold watch, a watch I only wore to work.  And which I now wear only for "formal" occasions.  For daily time keeping I much prefer the plastic Casio analog.

That's my FC Nantes futbol jersey.

Today in Nantes FC Nantes played a nil-nil draw with SC Bastia.  After week 15 Nantes stands 10th in the table.  Paris Saint-Germain is running away with the league title this season, leading second place Caen by 13 points at this juncture.  PSG also has a +29 goal differential.

Allez Nantes.  Vive la France.

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Leftovers

We have done this several times before.  We love Thanksgiving dinner.  We love it so much partly because of the wonderful leftovers.  We were not at home for Thanksgiving dinner this year which meant we were a bit short on wonderful leftovers.

Today we fixed THAT problem.

Leftover turkey:
And leftover dressing.

A very early stage of leftover gravy.
With leftover potatoes boiling on the back burner.

The crew assembled enjoying leftovers.
There was also leftover corn and leftover green beans and some leftover old family recipe cranberry sauce.

And leftover lefse and leftover cranberry bread.

Tomorrow I am going to make leftover turkey carcass soup.

Around here this is what we are referring to when we say "Thanksgiving dinner leftovers".

Friday, November 27, 2015

Thanksgiving Day past

I even offered this one to min søster but she declined to use it so I am going to.  Photos from Thanksgiving Day posts past.

My first year of blogging, 2007:

Thanksgiving Day morning, 8am, 22 degrees F, minus 6 C.Meanwhile, 3pm Paris time, predicted high of 55 and partly cloudy.

This one is 2008

The meal is over, the table is cleared.  Most everyone has had a little walk.  There have even been a couple of field goals kicked.  Pie is past tense.  Now, now at last, let the games begin.
We had a nice full house for the feast (and for the game).  Jim, Adam, Kelsey in the corner, Kim, Jim, Anne, Jane, Emily, and B.D.

2009:

The Turkey Bowl has been played in the field next to our house on at least every Thanksgiving Day that we have been here to witness it, including at least a few when the game was conducted in fairly deep snow.

The weather today was nice enough that more players showed up to play than could be accommodated in a single game.  Therefore, for the first time that I know of since we have lived here and as pictured below, two simultaneous iterations of the Turkey Bowl, one visible on each side of the tree.They were gone by noon and we left shortly thereafter for a family turkey feast.  I made pumpkin pie before we went and the gravy after we got there.  The cranberry bread was provided by others within my little family unit and the rest of the feast was prepared by others from my larger family unit.

2010:

Instead today I shoveled.  I am always a little surprised at how hard shoveling is the first few times I do it each season.  Fortunately yesterday's accumulation was minor and even though harder than I expected today's shoveling was well within acceptable levels.I am nearly finished there so I was back inside shortly thereafter.  My turkey duties this year for the first time had been handed over to TCWUTH.  I wasn't completely cut out of kitchen chores as I still peeled potatoes, prepared vegetables and carved the turkey.  But Wireless tackled the preparation and roasting of the turkey and performed admirably.  Check out her report for details of the big event of the day.

2011:

Was just another nice day with a picture of the turkey bowl.

2012:

We hosted this year.  TOPWLH makes her signature cranberry bread the day before and then prepares the stuffing but the rest of the cooking, including all of the things that end up being ready at the same time just before you eat, is up to me.  Therefore I was pretty busy but I did get one picture.
Not to worry, though.  There were at least three other cameras active including cameras wielded by two people who have to blog every day this month.

2013:

Sorry, no particular Thanksgiving content.

2014:

Sorry, the only photo was a reprint of the 2010 white Thanksgiving photo.

Thanksgiving Day past.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Thanksgiving Day

It didn't snow over night but snow began shortly after first light.  It snowed from then until well into the afternoon.  It has now stopped but about an inch has accumulated and even an inch at this time of year almost certainly means that it is here to stay.

Here is our back yard at 10am.
Thanksgiving dinner was at Jim's house.
It was the first ever Thanksgiving for Ying's mother and her companion.

They both really liked the lefse.

Kelsey starred by having a sweater in pretty much the same color as her hair (pink).

The natural progression of things is present in our lives as is made abundantly clear by these four girls, two prospective mothers and by spring two new baby girl members of the family.
It was another Thanksgiving when we have much to give thanks for.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

You can't count the miles until you ride them.

That's one of my two favorite bicycle related quotes for this season.

The other is "Only posers have clean bar tape".

But beginning at about the time I fell off my bike in Michigan and drastically curtailed my riding schedule there which resulted in far fewer miles in Michigan that I ordinarily have gotten on vacation, it seemed pretty obvious that I was going to fall short of all of my mileage goals for this season.

I got home and got back on my bike, and eureka, we had a nice September and I got respectable mileage.  On September 25 I switched back to the bicycle I built myself and went through a spurt of high motivation.  October came and unlike last year I was able to keep riding.  After a while it seemed like it was just barely possible but maybe, just maybe the goals were still reachable.  But you can't count the miles until you ride them.

November started well but then came the rain and cold.  I became pretty surely I wasn't going to make it.

The final development was the tiny window that opened yesterday and appears to have closed today.  I got out on my bicycle for two final rides.  I am pretty sure these are final rides as the forecast for tomorrow is 90 percent chance of snow.

Yesterday I reached 80 percent of what used to be my annual goal.  80 percent is a B, I am calling that good enough, still a B rider.  To reach this point I got the mileage on FirstLOOK up to 800, meaning that one fourth of all of the miles I rode this year I rode on that bike.  Here is my odometer as I prepare to roll the bicycle into the garage yesterday.
I reached 20,000 miles on the bicycle on November 10, 2010.  I then pronounced that bicycle retired.  I already had a new one that I had ridden nearly 2,000 miles that season and I just said 20,000 was enough for one bicycle.

This year I started riding it again, it is once again by far my favorite bicycle and it now has 21,000 miles.  I have posted a new crooked number.

There still was one thing though.  You can't count the miles until you ride them.

As I approached the 80 percent mark I knew that the ride that would get me there would leave me a few miles short of the number of miles I rode last year.  It didn't seem like I was going to get close anyway so I just let it go, figuring that if I actually did get close I could just ride a few more miles at the end of that last ride and I would achieve the other goal.

Well, if you check yesterday's post you can see that by the time I got home from yesterday's ride it was almost dark, not a prospective time for a few more miles.

Today was 50.  It was overcast and dark.  But it was 50 and rain wasn't forecast until late afternoon.

Today it was 1:30 when I crossed Larpenteur.  All of the cars already had their headlights on.  It was dark.

I rode a Fairgrounds loop.  At first I thought this display was in mourning for the passing of the non-snow season.
Probably there is something more serious than that.

I took a lake loop, the last lake of the year.
I could never really tell for sure without getting off my bike whether that line visible in the lake is the beginning of formation of ice here at the near edge of the lake so I don't know.

The sky was starting to spit now and again so I wasn't going to stop for a close examination.  I was too far from home.

I headed for home and made it without any serious precipitation.

I am now able to say that I rode more miles this year than last year and that means that this was a pretty good bicycle year.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Late in the season

Bicycle fitness fades really rapidly, I have read that you lose 50 percent of your fitness with one week off.

An  examination of my bike log reveals that I had 8 days off since my last ride and in fact I had one ride in the last two weeks.

Well, the end of the season does seem near.

It probably arrived today.  But for whatever reason the ride I took today did not feel quite as much like the last ride as the last time I rode on the 15th.  My bicycling fitness was somewhere near but a bit less than 50 percent of what I had a month ago.  It was hard.

I go on and on about gear but the complete truth is that about 50F has been my cutoff for at least a few years.  When I last rode the temperature was more than 50, the continuation of a warmer than average November.  But since then the weather here has been awful.  Today conditions crept back to at least normal.  The sun came out, the wind was light, almost calm.  I have the gear.

And there is something exhilarating about being out there when your senses tell you unmistakably that it is COLD.  Today was COLD but I layered up and I was never uncomfortable.  I was never warm, but I was never uncomfortably cold.

Perfect.  Latest in the year ride since November 30, 2011.

But it is very clearly almost over here.  Winter is nigh.

I have in years past featured Sheldon Street, the street with only oak trees on the boulevard.  It makes a nice photo when very late in the year Sheldon Street still has leaves when all other streets have only bare trees.  Well, just a tiny bit from completely bare but even Sheldon Street admits that it won't be long now.
My idea was to wait to start today until after the day had had a chance to get closer to the high temperature for the day to try and be riding with maximum warmth.

This photo is taken after about 5 miles at the Cattle Barn.
2:26 in the afternoon and only 41F?

Well, if that was it at 2:30 pretty clearly it wasn't ever going to be warm.

But with a light southern breeze my goal was to get a photo of the Falls with ice.  I know it has been cold enough and I know there is still plenty of water going over the Falls, plenty enough to produce ice.  We have seen some nice photos of the Falls with ice but never one taken by me while I was sitting on my bicycle.  Conditions had conspired to make this photograph possible:  Minnehaha Falls as taken from the seat of my bicycle.
So I got the photo I wanted, I had a pretty nice ride, what could go wrong.

Well, on November 24 if you start late and if you are determined, despite lagging fitness levels, to ride the full "standard" mileage, you may discover that you will have to face "issues" as you try to get home.

When I crossed Snelling on the way home all of the cars had their headlights on.

Oh, oh.

But it isn't far from there and I got home with adequate light.  This doesn't qualify as a sunset photo because it was taken prior to the actual sunset.

The camera date stamp says this photo was taken at 4:23pm.  The location is the cul de sac in front of our house.
Riding this late in the year allowed me to get some interesting numbers but . . .

I need something to post tomorrow, and

That's about enough for today anyway.

Statistics will wait 24 more hours.

For some reason this one felt less like the end of the season than that last ride.  Partly this is because the forecast for tomorrow is for similar temperatures and wind direction and velocity as today albeit also calling for an absence of sun.  Right now another outing seems at least possible, if not probable.  I am willing to predict that NEXT Tuesday (December 1) will be a day which everyone, including me, declares as a day which came after the conclusion of the outdoor bicycling season.

But today?  A plenty nice enough day for a bicycle ride is what I conclude.  Although the two other people I saw out there riding while I was out may be the only two other people in the entire city who agree with me.

Monday, November 23, 2015

A reasonable response would be to keep on rocking in the free world.

I was watching the CNN travel/food show Parts Unknown the other night.  On this episode Anthony Bourdain was returning to Borneo, apparently he had been there before for some other travel show on some other network.  Anyway at one point he says "down by the river, I shot my baby" and then asks what do you think Neil meant by that?

Well, I don't know Anthony, what do you think Neil meant by that?

I think an equally legitimate question is what did he mean by "she could drag me over the rainbow, send me away"?

But that's just me, a guy who has actually spent a couple of hundred hours of my life listening to Neil Young.  I am glad Anthony has also familiarized himself with the music but I think, and I think the guitar guy Marz Volpatz would back me up on this, he is the one who originally shared this particular insight with me, lots of college sophomores have spent lots of time listening to Neil Young.  So there is nothing terribly unique about that.  But if it comes to why you listen to Neil, I am not really a lyrics guy.  Which is not to say I don't hear the lyrics, but I mostly like guitar based rock because I am mostly enjoying listening to the guitar.  Which is almost always better than the lyrics.

Anyway, that got me thinking yet again about Neil.

The other day when I was thinking about curling and eventually posted the video for "always throwing hack weight".

When I played that video the sidebar offered a variety of other available videos including one of Pearl Jam performing one of Neil's more recent tunes than "Down By the River" in concert in Toronto in 2011 with Neil coming on stage to help Eddie and the boys keep it "Rockin' in the Free World".
Not to get too deep here but considering Paris Friday the 13th keep on rockin' in the free world seems like what we should do.

One more time some of our favorite all time photos from Paris.

2004 Montmarte.
2006, roof of Galeries Lafayette.
2010 Place des Mousquetaires outside Court 1.
2012, out the window of our lodgings.
Vive la France.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

1996 World Championships

One of our forays into youth sports led us to the 1996 ISI World Recreational Team Championships in Seattle.
Funny, I was pretty sure it was 1995.  I think I got that impression from reading the front of the world champion's souvenir t-shirt.
That's her gold medal for world championship and her silver medal for world championship runners-up.

Obviously there is more to the story than that but I think that's enough of it for this time.  Perhaps the world champion will want to tell the story at some point and there just isn't any reason whatsoever why the version that she tells should not be the official version.

Anyway, yesterday I was searching for the cap I wear to hockey (it says Minnesota Hockey) when I stumbled across a cap which belongs to my wife.  It bore a patch indicating that it was a souvenir of the ISI World Championships in Seattle in 1996.  I looked at this photo again and I guess that I only thought that last digit was a 5.  1996 works just as well for my purposes here.

It's good to have secondary sources.

We had some down time between events and we visited some of the major tourist attractions.  I took some photos.

One day we took the ferry across Puget Sound and drove all the way out to the Pacific Ocean.  I know that I usually think of Seattle as coastal but that body of water is the Sound and the Ocean is actually quite a bit farther away than I expected.  But we got an early start and had enough time to see a few things and make it back in time to catch the last ferry of the day back into Seattle.

This one was taken at Rose Beach in the Olympic National Park.
The day was a pretty big success actually.  On the way back we stopped at a supermarket in some tiny town out there on the Olympic Peninsula.  There was a restaurant attached to the store and we had dinner there.  A dinner that both TOPWLH and I remember as absolutely some of the freshest fish ever and one of our favorite of all time sea food dinners.

In a restaurant attached to a grocery store in a tiny town apparently in the middle of nowhere.

We also visited Mount Rainier.

TOPWLH had recently had some sort of injury while playing tennis in the cheapest possible shoes that she could find.  No support, she rolled her ankle is what I remember.  She was using a cane and couldn't walk a long distance in hilly terrain.

That meant that Wireless and I ascended a half mile or so up the trail behind the Mount Ranier visitor center to this mountain meadow without her.
I am going to say that we were right at or just slightly above the tree line.  Pretty high up for a flatlander like me.

And this one is of the actual summit of Mount Rainier.
You can't really make it out in the photo but as I recall there was a climbing party on the mountain while we were there and we could make out the tiny dots of the individual climbers in that snow field  just frame right of the summit.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Ice

This month has been mostly blogging about the past with the use of photos from the archives.

Today I actually went outside and took a photograph and was amused that I seemed to have forgotten which slot on my computer the SD card goes into to allow transfer from camera to computer.

But it isn't that hard and I figured it out.

As predicted the big winter storm stayed south of us so bicycling remains at least an option.  I heard a report that Worthington got 8 inches of snow.

We had none but bicycling was not on my list of probable activities after getting a look at the street.
We had three days of rain before the cold snap and apparently the snap snapped before all of the rainwater could find its way into the street drains.

It isn't snow, and it isn't the first picture of ice I have seen but it is what we have here:  green grass and ice.

Friday, November 20, 2015

TRAM 2003, Day 5, and yes indeed, Day 6

Well, we were on The Ride Across Minnesota.

I have some photos from Day 5, here are the GRider and I departing from the campus of Gustavus Adolphus on our way to the official starting line downtown.
There are probably some technicalities involved here.  We may not have reached the official finish line on the previous day and I think we didn't actually ride through the official starting point on day 5.  Mostly we knew we had to ride across the route 99 bridge over the Minnesota River and we headed out in that direction.  Also of importance is that we were TRAM veterans and we knew that Day 5 was a shortish ride, we knew we had plenty of time.  What that boils down to is that we were NOT early starters.  We just dropped down off the hill at a comfortable time, rode towards where we needed to be and somewhere along the line we were on the route.

Good enough.

All of us thought the climb up out of the valley on State Highway 99 would be daunting.

Well . . .

It was a piece of cake.  It was long to be sure, but not very steep.  We, like most of the other TRAM riders, approached the climb gingerly, seeking to conserve energy for the hard climb.  For us, when we were about a third of the way up we began to be treated to the vision of young and strong riders who had done the climb the same way we were doing it but who having reached the top were so disgusted by how easy it was that they were descending back to the bottom to try it again, intending to try it the second time in an attack mode.

The deal was that there is something about percentage grade allowed for state aid highways, something we had not been subject to on some other climbs on what were county highways.  On this state highway the climb was long, but it wasn't very steep.

It was NOT very hard, much to our surprise.

My recollection is that the only bit of unpleasantness is that upon reaching what seemed like it should be the top of the hill, we were directed to turn right and confronted with a bit more climbing.

Still not very hard.

And then out into some extremely scenic and pleasant parts of Minnesota.

I think this is Lake Washington, a few miles east from Saint Peter.
I am pretty confident that was rest stop 1.

This one could be as late as rest stop 3.  At this point we were riding along one of the state trails.
Santini at the finish.
This might seem duplicative of a photo previously posted by staff, and although somewhat duplicative it is, it is not the same photograph.
There were two cameras there and I invite you to compare the images to discover the very slight differences.

And so on Friday THE RIDE ACROSS MINNESOTA was over.

Early on Saturday morning two of the riders set off to complete a ride across Minnesota.

Day 6.

Here are Andy and I departing from the overnight motel in Faribault to complete the ritual begun when on Monday we dipped the rear tires of our bicycles into the waters of Big Stone Lake in Ortonville.
And here we are, front tires dipping into the waters of the Mississippi River in Red Wing.
What this means is that it is not possible to travel from the southern boundary of Minnesota to the northern boundary without crossing somewhere along your route a piece of pavement where Andy and I rode our bicycles during the summer of 2003.

And, I speak not for Andy at this point, but I am pretty much pleased with this whole accomplishment.  This is exactly what I was thinking about when I suggested to family members the concept of a ride across Minnesota.

Me at Bay Point Park in Red Wing.
I like to refer to that photograph as my return to civilian status.  No bike shoes, no helmet, and if I recall correctly, a Diet Mountain Dew.

TRAM 2003.

And just for good measure and to complete the TRAM set I also have a couple of my official as taken by the sponsor TRAM photos.

TRAM 2002:
I ordinarily don't ride much in the drops but looking up the road I could see the photographer.  I posed for the photo in the drops.

TRAM 2005:
It was cold in northern Minnesota in August in 2005.  That year we got up in Hibbing for Day 2 to have the Weather Channel report an all time record low overnight.  Then early on Day 3 we rode through Embarrass where I observed a bank time temperature display indicating 32F which remarkably apparently was NOT a record low for Embarrass on that date.  If I recall correctly the official photo was taken on Day 4.  It was still arm warmer and leg warmer cold.  I've got one of my Ralph Steadman designed jerseys on there and sunglasses constructed from the material Unobtanium and featuring Ram Air Surge Ports.  I am riding FirstLOOK, the same bicycle I was riding November 15, the last time I rode here.

It is cold here today, but it is November, cold is not unexpected.  The good news is that the big winter storm with measurable snow falls that is underway even as I type looks like it will pass to our south.  The radar shows blue for snow for extreme southern Minnesota and northern Iowa but the direction of the storm is resolutely to the east, towards Milwaukee and whatever outposts of civilization exist on the shores of Lake Michigan opposite Milwaukee.  So the bicycle season may not be quite over here just yet.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Armistice Day follow up

My old friend Trixie posted this on Facebook.  I remember it all very well but had not seen the photo for quite some time.  Thank you Miss D.
I served in the United State Army for 855 days (but who was counting?) from 12 Sep 69 to 14 Jan 72.  From 3 April 1970 to 28 Oct 71 I was stationed at the US Army Depot-Cam Ranh Bay.  This was a huge supply depot located at one of the world's best natural harbors on the coast of what was then known as the Democratic Republic of South Vietnam.  Where I worked was a supply depot, an area much removed from the areas of major hostilities.  I worked in an office.  We had electric typewriters.  The office where I worked was in that quonset hut right behind the jeep.  There was a door there on the end but we mostly used the side entrance.  I don't remember why.

We all lived at something called the "Cantonment Area", a clustering of barracks located maybe a click or so from where we worked.  Vets will know how far a click is.

We were REMFs, real echelon lucky dogs.  REMF areas are heavily laden with senior NCOs (non-commissioned officers, senior sergeants if you will), also known as "lifers".  These were, and almost certainly still are, people making a career out of the military.  Senior NCOs were middle aged in a force overwhelmingly peopled by the young.  But they were middle aged and they had clout and they didn't want to walk half a mile to and from work every day.

So there were lots of jeeps.  I suppose all of these jeeps had a defined military purpose but the truth is the real reason they were there is that they were lifer commuter vehicles.  Each company would have two or three jeeps assigned to the company but mostly signed out to one of the senior NCOs but also sometimes signed out to one of the very junior commissioned officers (second lieutenants, aka second looey, aka LT2, aka butterbars, the very lowest level of commissioned officers, in Vietnam often ROTC graduates).  Every jeep would be parked somewhere in the cantonment area overnight.  In the morning people with the proper connections to the person who was signed out for the jeep would meet and ride to work.  A jeep like the one in the photo is a four seater and there where ALWAYS four people in the vehicle every morning as it traveled from the cantonment area to the work area in the army depot.

I should note that there were also a few three quarter ton trucks and an occasional deuce and a half parked overnight in the cantonment area.  A few newfers might have to walk for the first few days after they arrived in country.  But soon enough most people had made some sort of arrangement and everyone drove to work.

The senior NCOs who were signed for the jeeps were used to having some latitude in their working environment.  Senior NCOs are the connective tissues that enable the organism that is the US Army to function.  They show up for work, the job gets done, and in recognition of their contributions tiny, small considerations are granted to them.  One of the considerations they were granted at the US Army Depot-Cam Ranh Bay was that they were allowed to alter the official as required by Army Regulation markings of their vehicles by including a name on the below the windshield panel of their assigned jeeps.  I do not know positively, but I know that almost always the name below the windshields on those jeeps was the name of some senior NCO's wife.

I worked for a junior lieutenant.  He was about my age, he was an ROTC graduate of if I recall correctly, Drexel University in Philadelphia.  ROTC (reserve officer training corps) meant that part of the cost of his education had been paid by the US government in exchange for he agreeing to enter the military as a commissioned officer after graduation.  He was in the Army, he had an engineering degree, he was a junior lieutenant assigned to an engineer company at a rear echelon supply depot.  For him it was a plum assignment and he knew it.  He could have drawn much worse but with the assignment he had he knew he was going to be able to wait 365 days and then go home to his wife.

He wasn't very hard core.

So anyway he wasn't a guy thinking in terms of perks and his jeep didn't have any name in the "name" spot on the jeep.

I suggested to him that we could paint the name of my most faithful non-family correspondent in that spot.  He knew enough about me to know that I did actually have just such a faithful correspondent.  When I suggested that we paint "Trixie"  on the jeep it appealed to him immediately.

"Trixie" was just vaguely subversive, an aggressively sort of brassy sounding sobriquet entering into an ocean otherwise full of Mary and Ellen and Jane.  My LT wasn't an army lifer either and the vaguely counter-culture note suggested by the outside the mainstream name appealed to him.  He gave the go ahead.  I got a stencil kit and a can of spray paint from the supply sergeant, I stenciled up that spot below the windshield and applied the paint.  And sure enough, almost immediately upon completion of the painting of the name the expected reaction came.  The husbands of Mary and Ellen and Jane were all indignant.

LT2 Jeff  had to explain to them and I actually had to verify that I had a friend who wrote to me on an regular basis whose given name was not but who was known to me as Trixie.

Even all these years later I am amused thinking about it.

Here are two other pictures of me in my green clothes.

The first one is Private Miller, while I was still at Basic Training at Fort Benning, Georgia.  I think probably Larry, but maybe Bob, took that one.  With my camera.
Larry was from a small town in Wisconsin, he slept on the top bunk, I slept on the bottom.  That close proximity meant that he and I had to endure together a lot of the random indignities inflicted on trainees.  There actually was a guy named Bob, he was from Virginia the town in Minnesota, he slept right around on the other side of those lockers and he was the guy who convinced me to buy that camera.

It was a Pentax, the first nice camera I ever had.

This one is Specialist Miller sitting on my bunk in the barracks at Cam Ranh.
You can see a tiny bit of Vietnamese on the No Parking sign below that light on the left.  That was meant to be humor.  That's Harmon Killebrew in the middle pane of a collage I made that I called "Twins".  You can also see that completing the painting of the walls was never deemed to be really important.

I was on a floor with NoDak (a guy from North Dakota), Dutch (John Denver's brother), Sgt. Sandeen, Peets and a bunch of guys mostly from the south who were heavy equipment mechanics and operators for the depot unit I was nominally assigned to.  I was assigned to that unit but I could type and the Army always needs guys who can type so I worked at Depot Headquarters.

Which work I got to every day for a few weeks at least there in the middle of my time in country by riding there in the Trixie jeep.  

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Christmas 2005

This month the blogging has led all of us to a lot of looking through the old photo files.

Here are two from Christmas 2005.
We were all about 11 years younger then.

My brother must have taken that one.

Here he and I are displaying the gifts that we received from each other that year.
If you don't like Bob we don't need you hanging around.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

TRAM 2003, Day 3 mostly

Day 3 was Redwood Falls to Hutchinson.  Long downhill and across the river, then two difficult climbs, a flat stretch heading east then turning north for a long mostly straight run to Hutchinson.  I remember on that northern leg riding up behind the two guys who had built their own tandem, welding together frames in a configuration that had one of them facing forward and one facing to the rear.  I rode behind them for a while and had a pleasant chat with the guy facing to the rear.

This is one of the early rest stops, if I recall correctly this was still on the road while we were heading east.
I base my conclusion on the sun angle evident by the shadows and by the fact that Santini is still wearing a vest and the Bianchi Babe still has on long sleeves.  Closed circuit to BB, velcro closure shoes?  I don't remember those.

That was the farm where I had a chat with the farmer and he said that to have sufficient volume to survive in the then current farm economy he needed to farm about 16 quarters.  Four sections, more than 2,500 acres.  That is a daunting task without a LOT of really large machinery.  That's his machinery "shed" visible in the background of the photo.  He had a lot of really large machinery.

Here's Andy standing in line at the mobile repair stop.  I think he had a flat tire and had ridden the last couple of miles to the rest stop with it flat.  That's hard riding.
Here the riders are gathered at the half banana/quarter peanut butter sandwich distribution point.  Andy has resolved whatever his maintenance issues were and BB and Santini are pointing to Lynne's name on the list of riders of TRAM 2002 who raised at least $1,000.
Still the same rest stop but it must be getting warm, BB has taken off her long sleeved top layer.

By the way, I am pretty sure Bob took that photo and in fact, I think Bob may be visible in the straw hat in picture 1.

This one was taken at the finish at the city park in Hutchinson.
Mark didn't ride his bicycle that year but he did get on his motorcycle to come out to visit the Day 3 finish.  I forget, doesn't he ride a Harley?  Just kidding, I know better.

And a little earlier in the day, the last rest stop if I recall correctly, the GRider and an old shed. 
I think we talked to Allison on the road just before we got to that spot.

That's what I have from Day 3.  Day 4 was, of course, the day of inhumane wind and the bitches who stole someone's men on the downhill to Saint Peter and our lodgings at Gustavus.  Staff was waiting for us in the shadow provided by that high rise dormitory on the north end of the campus.  If I recall correctly we did not even go to the official end of the route that day, we just went ahead and rode to the place where we would be staying on campus.

The wind was horrible, you can see it in the posture both of myself and the guy trying to and not succeeding in keeping up with us.  This photo was taken on the eastward leg to the next to last rest stop, dead into the wind. 
We joined forces at that rest stop and rode the rest of the way gruppo compacto, Andy and I sharing the lead cutting into the wind with BB and Santini following and a small flock of women we did not know bringing up the rear.  They asked if they could ride in our wind shadow and we agreed but somewhere towards the end something unexpected happened.

Someone else tell that story.  I was on the front at the time, I didn't see or hear a thing, I only know the story from those who were affected and are therefore qualified to provide the details.

A side note about the last photo is I obviously didn't take that picture.  I downloaded it from the official TRAM website sometime after the ride that year.  TRAM had an official photographer on the road to provide interesting shots and I guess this time we were it.  But the tag on the photo indicates that it was taken from the TRAM Day 3 gallery.  I know from the date stamps on the other photos posted today that they were taken on Day 3.  If you look at what I am wearing in this photo and what I am wearing on photos known to have been taken on Day 3 it should be obvious that this photo is Day 4.