An old adventure in Chicago

It happened a decade ago, maybe two decades (I'm getting older; time flies.). I was in town on business, and alone, which is fine with me; I happen to enjoy my own company. I had a book in hand, ready for some supper, and was walking around looking for a place with some local color when I happened on Lowry's restaurant. You might remember seeing Lowry's seasoned salt on the spice shelf in the grocery store. The restaurant is where the salt came from. The idea of a whole restaurant named after some salt intrigued me, so I moseyed in. I was taken to a table in an ornate (fancy dark woodwork) dining room by one of several charming hostesses, and I settled in with my book. I noticed several large stainless meat carriers with  medallioned white-clad men in chef's hats looking alert and bored at the same time. This guy is posing, so he doesn't look bored, but you get the idea.

A waitress in an extremely low-cut dirndl brought me my menu. Their menu featured one entree, prime rib. Simple enough. And three prices: Expensive, outrageous, and if-you-have-to-ask-you-can't-afford-it. Even simpler I suppose: I settled for Expensive, a baked potato, and the house salad. The young lady had a huge grin on her face the whole evening; I never did figure out why, unless perhaps because I was dating a book instead of some female.

Pretty soon the waitress came by with salad in a large bowl resting in a bed of ice cubes. She gave the bowl a spin, and made a big production out of pouring the house dressing over the lettuce, dumping the salad into a smaller bowl, and then holding out to me a small dish with a napkin on it. I already had a napkin, but hey, maybe I looked like a slob or a professor or something, and I started to reach for it. She beat me to it, unfolding the napkin to reveal (ta-da) my refrigerated salad fork! Which I accepted, and dug in. The dressing was unremarkable (the salad dressing) but the presentation was not to be forgotten.

Later she arrived with a large baked potato, on its own gurney, with an assortment of condiments for me to choose among. She spooned each of my choices into the open potato, covered it with her napkin-protected hand, and stirred everything together inside the skin with a fork. Then she stuck a small sign onto the potato and placed it before me. The sign said that the potato had been thoroughly washed on the outside, and the skin was safe to eat. (Place like this, it didn't occur to me that it would be otherwise. Maybe they were trying to get rid of potato skins.)

If you live on the Atlantic seaboard, order seafood. But if you dine in the Midwest, order beef. They know how to do it right, and the Lowry's in Chicago treated me to a slab of the tenderest, tastiest prime rib I had ever eaten.

A bargain.

I keep nine females captive in my shed

(I started this post about two weeks ago. Sorry things have been so busy)

Yes, [name withheld], eat your heart out—nine of 'em, and truly captive, though I let them run around in the back yard sometimes. They all think I'm their master, and beg for favors, even sexual ones, no lie, but all I ever do is feed them garbage and eat their children.

And to think that this is usually a G-rated blog. Scandal, scandal, scandal.

To top it off, all nine of them are Democrats! When I go out to check on them in the morning, they all start chanting "Barak! Barak!" Actually, it's more like "bar-rak, bar-rak."

No doubt you realize I'm talking about our nine pet laying hens, all very tame. Pets that pay their way, I might add, unlike most pets. I learned last weekend that they love to eat those Asian Shield Beetles (stink bugs) that are invading Delaware this fall.

For my two readers with a perverse turn of mind, here are a couple pictures of a hen, in the first one she is assuming the posture, begging for sexual favors from any rooster that chances by. It's a little hard to tell, but she's leaning forward, has her tail up, and she's fidgeting from one leg to the other in anticipation.


A swift kick on the behind meets her needs just fine, and she ruffles her feathers in an obvious expression of chicken-level thrill. This is also hard to see, but she is trembling all over and has ruffled out her feathers. It doesn't last long, so it's hard to photograph.

Since humans don't generally show up without treats, the ladies have decided that any human is a rooster, and they'll be happy to ask for attention from anyone. (I'll resist the temptation to add "Even you, [name]," but you know who you are.) Anyway, stop by some time, and I'll be glad to let you see. If we have any spare eggs, we'll give you a free dozen for your trouble. The ladies produce superior eggs; large, and several double-yolk beauties a week. We cracked one of our hen's and a store-bought egg into the same pan, and the difference is conspicuous: Much darker yolk and much firmer white on the home-grown one. Perfect for Eggs Benedict, and Val makes a mean hollandaise sauce. Life is good.

Mentioning the unlikelihood of spare eggs brings me to the next topic—the number of people in our household. Val's grandparents have moved in, at least a fair amount of the time (when they're not gallivanting around up at the lake or visiting any of their doctors' offices). And we are hosting a foreign exchange student, a nice young lady from Mexico, who attends Joshua's school, whose first host family wasn't working out. She has a nice little sleeping area in the loft above the girls' bedroom. I just finished remodeling their closet, so now she has room to hang her clothes, too. Anyway, that makes eight, and one breakfast can pretty well demolish a day-and-a-half's egg production.

A Scam I Am

Recently I put two ads on Craigslist DE. I'm offering some furniture for sale. So far the only responses I've gotten are scam artists. One fellow, "Alvin Brown," sent identical messages regarding my two ads:

Still available ? Lovely picture...
If it still available for sale please i will like you to get back to me and i will also like to know your last asking price,i will like you to get back to me as soon as possible because i will not be coming over to see it at your home am a very busy kind of person and i intend making the payment and arrange for the pick up as am okay with the pics you send to me......hope to read from you soon...

To which I replied:

where are you? I don't want to sell these sight unseen. I'm suspicious because I'm a photographer and I know the pictures are not good ones.

I'm pretty sure he has an automated system set up that responds to anyone who replies to the first inquiry. Here's what he had to say:

I am okay with the price , and i am comfortable with the picture i saw on dispaly. I will be making the payment via check, so i will need your full name that will be on the check and your full address with your phone # where you can easily receive the package via couier and i will arrange for the pickup myself. NOTE ....And also the payment i will be sending will be in excess this you will give to the cargo company when they contact you for the pickup.All you need to do is to get the payment verified in your bank and faithfully deduct your own money as soon as you have the cash and send the remaining to the cargo company for them to come for thepickup.please get back to me if you are okay with this and i will implore you to remove the ads off craigslist because i really want to purchase this asap.
Thanks
You are blessed.Alvin

I should have strung him along—would have made for a more interesting blog post. My reply:

You are operating a scam. If you send me anything I will take it to the police to be fingerprinted. Get lost.

Another fellow, "michael green," asked if it was still for sale, and when I replied, here's what he sent:

Thanks for the prompt response.Furthermore,i will pay via Certified check which will be an overnight payment and i do not mind adding an extra $50 for you to take the advert down from criagslist and my mover will be coming for the pickup when the payment clears and i will implore you to get back to me with the below information to facilitate the mailing of the check.
1.Your full name
2.Your mailing address be it residential or postal address
3.Your phone Number
Thanks in Anticipation.

Should I string this guy along? What bogus name, address, and phone should I give him? Here's what I replied:

Send all inquiries to
Paul M. Tiernan
220 Elkton Road. Newark, DE 19711
302-366-7100
Best wishes. May you be richly rewarded for your trust and honesty

Some of you might recognize the name of Newark's Chief of Police, and the station address and phone number.

In case you don't know, the scammers use counterfeit checks, which take a month or so to get found out. Meanwhile, you innocently pay them the extra they sent, and maybe they even make off with your goods.

Now. Anybody want to really buy a nice hutch and sofa-loveseat combo?
The hutch: http://delaware.craigslist.org/fuo/1349818867.html
The sofa-loveseat: http://delaware.craigslist.org/fuo/1349805470.html

Update: "Andrew Johnson" (novena002@googlemail.com) just made me a similar offer, only he says I get $100 for my running around. I sent him to the police department, too. All three of these guys have googlemail addresses. That's Google's UK name. Hmm...

Of clothes dryer and hornets

You might not expect much of a connection between a clothes dryer and a hornet, but bear with me.

We are installing a washer and dryer in the upstairs bathroom. This is supposed to save two trips on the stairs for each load of laundry, and with three kids, that's a lot of trips. Couple problems, though. Dryers need vents. The only place to put a vent was through the roof. Martin, the best neighbor in the world, is pretty handy at these things, and between him and me we measured where the hole should be (got it exactly right) and installed a pipe that went down the inside of the bathroom wall and came out where it would hook up to the dryer. We have another neighbor (second best in the world) who's a plumber, and he ran a propane line and re-plumbed the bathroom for the washing machine. Then, I have a friend who's a contractor (and I'm not referring to Mario Mareno of Inferior oops Superior (hah) Building Services who took my money and abandoned our addition, but that's another story), who could get the appliances into the bathroom. You see, the washer and dryer are 27 inches wide and the door is 24 inches wide. He widened, then repaired the opening  nicely, but in the process, his table saw blew a circuit breaker.

We're getting closer to the hornets. He was plugged into a circuit in the remodeled garage, which has a sub-panel safely enclosed in a kind of doghouse at the site of the abandoned addition. (Have you figured out the hornets yet?)

Good old helpful me, I opened the door to access the panel, and noticed several flying insects. My steel trap of a mind figured out what was going on even more quickly than the construction guys, and we three made a hasty exit. They had a spray can of stuff for such emergencies and I was appointed the one to poison my own house. I flipped the door open and gave the paper wasp nest a good dose of liquid death and backed away. We killed a little time to let the critters expire in peace, then I gingerly re-approached the panel.

(Maybe you're wondering why I have been writing "hornet" all this time if I'm erudite enough to recognize a paper wasp when I see one?) Everything looked still, so I pulled out the insulation that had been stacked in there against winter cold (yes, the addition  project has been abandoned that long). What to my wondering eyes should appear but a large cloud of angry yellowjackets! Seems they had a large four-level apartment buried in the fiberglass, and I had just ripped it open!
I made my previous exit look lackadaisical by comparison, and the big brave constructions guys, who had a large head start on me anyway, ran even farther than I did. I think they got a better view of the cloud because they weren't inside it! I managed to sustain only about eight stings.
They still itch. I eventually got them sprayed, too, but we hooked the saw to another circuit. When I took these photos today, I learned that the larvae can survive being sprayed, and several had hatched out, but seemed to be suffering the effects of walking on poisoned comb. I gave the nest another dose anyway, in case any of them figured out that they needed to fly directly out of their cells.

For all that, the dryer isn't running yet. It needs to be converted to propane, and Martin rightly chewed me out for not following his advice—I had bought an obscure brand of appliance. Now I have to wait two weeks for an expensive part. I take small comfort that the salesmen lied to me about it at the store. I can't return the dryer—the doorway is too small.

The East end of Town

I've lived in Newark for longer than a decade. I like the town; Main street is collegey, reminding me of Dinkytown near the U of MN. I've walked from one end to the other several times over the years, and visited practically every store. But I never quite got to the East End Cafe. It's just a little bit past where everything is, and it looked a little bit run down, so I never checked it out. Recently Val and I joined the Newark Arts Alliance, where she plans to display some of her art, and I plan to give a series of talks on how to communicate in writing. The Alliance office happens to be right next to the East End Cafe, and that led us to pay a visit to check the place out.

Yes, the place seems a bit run down at first glance, and rather dark inside. Bar in front of you, pool table with college kids on the right on the way to a large covered patio; separate dining room through a door on the left. Oops—the dining room has a bar, too. After we got used to the lighting, the place looked pretty clean, actually. Fresh paint, no stickiness on the counter. A family with children came in for supper, and I saw not a hint of rowdiness. Seems the place is one of the oldest businesses on the street, and its age is part of the, um, charm.The kid behind the bar seemed to like his job, and it turned out they had a full menu.

The weather was nice enough that they didn't have the air conditioning on, but we decided to eat on the patio, the better to watch passersby. Good thing, too. We saw a good friend (a foreign student we're hosting) and had a nice conversation.

So. Full menu. With rules on the back, including one that said they'd charge more if you acted like a jerk. The rest were in a similar good-natured–agressive vein. The place has personality if nothing else. Turned out their waitress was off for the night and the guy behind the bar had to walk the entire length of the building to be our waiter. He didn't seem to mind. Ever hear of Irish nachos? Me neither, so that's what I ordered. Alas, they had sold out of the item at lunch, so we ordered burgers, which seem to be a specialty. They're half pounders, and come in several versions.

The burgers were cooked correctly—Val's medium, mine rare, and with the best mushrooms I've ever had with beef, I kid you not. Val said hers was the best hamburger she had had in recent memory. She said to say that in 20 minutes she had hot meat in her mouth, and she finished before I did. That's a true statement, but it sounds funny, somehow. She laughed a lot when she told me to say that.

So the place isn't much to look at, but the food and service were excellent. We'll have to go back. For one thing, I want to try the Irish nachos.

My hobby turns creepy

Sigh. Back to normal life. No more long-distance bike rides. Unless I land a job in some exotic location such as Chicago. (Phone interview tomorrow.) Besides, I'm about to do a carb rebuild. All those miles of gasohol seem to have made the carbs rather tired.

By now all three of you readers know that I like to photograph mushrooms. In fact I have a couple in the camera that I haven't posted yet. But this is creepy.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fungus-makes-zombie-ants

It's about a fungus that causes infected ants to search out a certain environment, lock themselves in place, then die. I understand that many biologists are saying that fungi are a third kingdom, not mere plants as I was taught in high school. That makes the article even creepier.

Remind me never to get fungus spores on my antennae.

Gratitude and Fortitude

Back north to the Canaveral area, water dripping from my snorkel. And at this point I must share with you some things about the motorcycling community. Many motorcycle clubs maintain a list of members who express interest in helping fellow travelers. Before I left, I looked in a couple motorcycle club lists for a member in the area I wanted to travel to who might be willing to put me up. 
I have a theory that shared experiences unite people, and the more intense the experience, the stronger the union. I treat this a bit in my games articles (go to ezinearticles.com and search for my name, Rogers George). And long-distance motorcycling is certainly an intense experience. So intense that you don't even have to do it together to create the tribal unity I'm talking about. My time in central Florida certainly bears this out. I found Randy Stallings.

Randy is a big fellow (think a tall Jack Riepe without the arthritis), single, and has a nice place in the center of a tangletown development. (I was thankful for my GPS to help me negotiate all the turns) That's the garage on the left; house is behind the trees. Sight unseen he opened his house to me, letting me have the run of the place for about four times longer than I had planned on, letting me take him out to eat occasionally as a meager thank-you. I got to meet another MTF member, and Randy's folks, a very sharp couple. He didn't feel that he needed to entertain me, which I appreciated (in fact he paid me what I consider to be high praise—he said I was unobtrusive) but we went to the beach one day when I didn't need to go to the space center, and he had gotten home about when I  finished my daily job-hunting session. We visited the world's largest surf shop and ate someplace full of local color.  Sorry, guys, I didn't bring my camera to the beach. Just a bunch of young kids in their teens and 20's anyway.

Which brings me to the space center, the original rationale for this trip in the first place. Because I didn't have a job to return to, I was able to hang around the area for several days, waiting for a mission not to be scrubbed, and I got to know the space center pretty well. Some of the staff even got to know me, and I took hundreds of pictures. They're on picasa, arranged more or less logically, and with lots of comments. I invite you to take a look. http://picasaweb.google.com/rogers.george. Unfortunately my long lens broke (leaning over a railing taking a shot of a turtle—the end fell into the water. Unrecoverable. So I had to take the launch shots with the wide-angle lens, but at least I was there!

The repeated delays had at least two effects: the size of the crowd diminished, and (apparently) the PR people started to feel bad. The day the launch finally took place they opened up the VIP/family area to the public—for the first time ever. This location is only three miles from the launch site, across water, so the view and sound are as good as you can get. The only humans closer to a launch are in emergency vehicles. I set the camera to auto and got a pretty good series of the ascending shuttle.

A relaxed hour after launch I was on I-95 headed north. Traffic wasn't bad, and I got to GA before I felt the need to take a nap. My style on long rides at night is to nap twice. I awoke about 4AM from the parking lot where I had spent the night, and took my second nap just before sunrise at a rest stop. This fellow looked like he took his nap in the middle of a repair job—I saw wrenches lying about. It's amazing how comfortable concrete can be, and he apparently felt the same way I did about it, though I picked a less conspicuous spot for my nap.
After that it was pretty much a straight shot north through the Carolinas, Richmond, DC (terrible traffic, even not at rush hour), Baltimore, and home. I pulled into the driveway at the crack of 5PM.

Distance: more than 3200 miles, cost: several hundred bucks (including tire and helmet), no brushes with traffic cops, no accidents or near misses. One goat alongside the interstate that I didn't have time to photograph.  All the energy bars Val packed were a good thing. Next time: bring better bug spray, maybe a helmet camera. Stay with Randy Stallings if I can.

Last days on the keys

Youth hostels are international places. The clerk was from Bulgaria. First fellow I met inside was from Australia. When I came back from my walking tour, two Germans were waiting for the fellow from Bulgaria to come back so they could register and get a pair of beds. We had a pleasant time, me practicing German while they fixed themselves some spaghetti and telling their backgrounds: After graduating from the German equivalent of high school, they had worked the past year in the US doing child care (au pair) for some rich folks in Baltimore. They were on a two-week vacation before returning to Germany.  They said they were impressed with my German, and I learned that most computer terms are the same in German and English. That's a picture of them above.

5:00 AM rolls around pretty early after a long day of riding and walking, but I was motivated—in a couple hours I would be snorkeling on the only reef in the US. Traffic is light this time of day, and I made it to Key Largo before the marina opened. I tried to catch a few winks, without success—too many mosquitoes. When they finally opened, I learned I was the only person who had signed up for the tour, and they couldn't justify sending a boat out for only one person. I was out of luck. The fellow offered to call around, and he found a place that would accept another adventurer—if I was willing to wait until 11:00. I had no reason to hang around this marina, so I looked for my new guides, a couple miles west. Turned out they had a boat going out at 8:30 (meaning I could get back to the Cape Canaveral area by around suppertime), and I was just in time to get aboard. And they were $10 cheaper. Met a nice German couple on the boat, too.

It turns out that nobody dives in the actual John Pennecamp State Park. All the boats go a little farther out to the national site where the water is clearer and the coral mounds are nicer. The first marina wasn't explicit about this, and they even allowed me to believe they were part of the park system. So I was glad to have switched rides. I spent most of the trip out and back chatting with the pilot, learning things, about the stupidity of some divers, who purify the gene pool by drowning themselves, and the invasion of iguanas in the keys. A few pets got released, and now they are everywhere. 

After the pleasant snorkeling expedition, I ate at a local highly recommended eatery, Mrs. Mac's. It's one of the few remaining original places on the keys, they said, and the walls certainly had the license plates to prove it. The waitress insisted she take a picture of me, so here is the second of two photos from the whole trip that has me in it. (The other one is me on the bike at mile zero a post or two below.) They have a wonderful key lime milkshake that I highly recommend. My waitress, an auntie type, talked me into trying their local style steak (julienne over a bed of lettuce with their house dressing). Like every other place I've eaten at on the east coast, they overcooked it, but it wasn't too bad, and I bought a jar of the dressing as a souvenir for Valerie.

Now it was time to head north. Cape Canaveral or bust!

I arrived in time to take my host out to dinner. Next post: Randy Stallings and the Kennedy Space Center.

The Keys, if you please

One of the advantages of a motorcycle is that you don't require much road to pass someone. I made pretty good time along the road from Homestead to the first key, Key Largo.  One of the items on my agenda was to do some snorkeling, and about the first thing I saw was a place to sign up for a dive. Thinking it was the place I had used twenty years ago, I did. I had to be there at 8:00 the next morning, which would mean leaving Key West about 5 AM, but I figured I'd finish my errands there in time. Turned out I should have picked a place in Key West to do business with, but that's a story for later.

So I had a pleasant morning ride to Key West. It's pretty hard to get lost on the way, and I passed two state parks, loads of dive shops and marinas, eateries, tourist traps, and a couple airports offering plane rides to the adventurous, not to mention hundreds of places to live, from condos to resorts, to single-family dwellings large and small. I was told that the keys were relatively unaffected by the economy—if you weren't in the tourist trade in some way you were rich and retired. The houses with for sale signs had high prices and the owners were willing to sit on them until someone came along willing to pay the price. I engaged in a little wishful thinking, but didn't check out any of the places. There's not much call for a technical writer in the keys.

Here is a photo the first person I saw when I arrived at Key West. I saw her as I walked across the bridge to get a photo of the highway sign that said "Key West," which you can find here. I figure you motorcycle riders would prefer I post the picture of the young lady rather than another highway sign. As I returned from the photo of the sign, I saw that she had several companions on similar conveyances, sorry, no photos. Click the picture to enlarge it if you need a better look.

I tracked down the youth hostel, piled my gear on a bunk in the men's dorm, and set out on my errands. One was to get my picture taken at the pillar on the southernmost corner. I already posted that on Facebook , and you can see it at the same link as the highway sign. I finally took off my gear—speeds on the island are very slow, and it was blazingly hot. No wind to cool you off. I decided heat stroke was a greater risk than pavement rash. Spent most of my time walking anyway, with the bike parked safely at the hostel.

After using the services of a friendly local to snap my Mile Zero photo, I parked the bike and set out on foot. Someplace along or near Duval street was, I hoped, a banyan tree that I had photographed two decades ago. I wanted to find it. I stopped at the first place that might give me some directions, and waited patiently while the clerk dealt with the customer ahead of me. (See photo on the right.) She was the first tourist I had a conversation with on the island, and she turned out to be pleased to pose for a picture. I didn't quite catch her name, but it was something Russian. I happened to mention that I had ridden a motorcycle here from Delaware. Her eyes immediately narrowed, and she asked me if I belonged to any motorcycle clubs up there, and did I know anyone named Jack. I hastily denied belonging to any group except Mensa, and the only Jacks I knew were associated with beanstalks, and a Chicago mobster (real person: Jack Friel) from my youth in the Midwest. She relaxed, but looked at me a little skeptically as she left. I saw no more outfits anything like hers. I guess the beach was the direction to head if you're a voyeur.

I didn't find the tree. It has probably been cut down, because I didn't find a parking lot anything like the one I found the tree in. Oh well, I still enjoyed walking around Key West.

I had to get up really early the next morning, so I returned to the hostel to check my email and hit the sack. And that's when I had my next conversation with an interesting tourist or two, but that'll have to wait until my next post.

Encounters of three kinds

Day three. Since I had come all the way from Delaware, Key West was only a hop, skip, and jump farther (what's another five hours on a motorcycle?), so I arranged with my host to return in a couple days after visiting the keys.

Now the day before, my helmet had rolled off the pile of gear strapped to the bike and broken its hinge. It was getting time to replace it anyway, so I tracked down a motorcycle dealer and picked up a new helmet. Its color matches the bike even—my dear sweet wife will be pleased. The mechanic noticed my back tire and warned me not to continue without replacing it. I ride an old bike, and that tire size has gone out of style, so it took several phone calls, web searching, and visits to dealers, repair shops, and junk yards (just kidding) to find someone with one in stock. The folks at 441 Cycle Shop had one. I scooted down to Plantation, arriving ten minutes after their deadline, but they graciously took care of me anyway, and sold me some needed rear brake pads while they were at it. Small, well-stocked, friendly, and competent; a pleasant encounter—I recommend them.

By the time my bike was shipshape, continuing my ride south would put me into Miami rush-hour traffic, so I killed some time by returning to my haunts of 20 years ago when I had done some writing for IBM. I found the church I had attended, and the pastor happened to be in. He hadn't changed a bit—must be he lives right. We stood around and talked for maybe an hour, and I got to meet two of his now grown kids, one of whom even remembered me. Another pleasant encounter.

By now it was getting late, but I decided to try for at least part way to the keys. I made it to Homestead before tiredness set in. Cheapskate that I am, I did a little hunting for the cheapest place I could find. Homestead is no longer the sleepy little bedroom community it was two decades ago, and I had a lot of choices. The dishwasher at Denny's told me about a place across the tracks, adding there were several cheap motels in the area to check out. I certainly crossed the tracks looking for it, and found a Motel 6 and stopped in to ask the price. It was considerably higher than I wanted, so I mentioned the place I was looking for. A young lady standing nearby, skinny little blonde, poorly dressed, whom I assumed was one of the cleaning staff, chipped in and gave me better directions to where that place was. As I prepared to head out, she asked if I wanted any companionship, and I replied no, I needed to get some sleep. We parted company, and about five seconds later I realized I had just had my first conversation with a, um, highway hostess! (When I told Val about this, she said it was the first one that I knew about.) I might be old, but I'm a babe in the woods, I guess. I have to admit the encounter wasn't unpleasant. Sorry, guys, no photo. (Picture me me circling back, hopping off the bike, and gushing, "Hey—you're a prostitute! Can I take your picture?" I tell you truly, the thought crossed my mind. Anything for the Mac Pac.)

The motel was run by a nice Indian fellow whose credit card machine was broken and who offered to let me check the cleanliness of the room. It was fine, and I spent the night there for $35. The motel looked okay on the outside. (I took the picture the next morning, and noticed that the room numbers went from 12 to 14. No 13. I haven't seen that in a while.)

Here's the view from inside. If the room had bugs, they kept to themselves. At least they didn't wake me up.

Tomorrow: The Keys!

Day two

The day was pretty uneventful, actually. Up early, straight shot south on 95, the police attracted to the guys in speedy sports cars. I suppose it helped that I was going pretty much the same speed as most of the others on the road, but I'm paranoid enough that I always think about getting  singled out.

Riding the slab is a good way to eat miles, but you miss a lot. At one point I stopped to put on my rain suit, and here's what I saw. It's a lot prettier than the photo. Anyway, the rain wasn't too bad until I entered Florida. That photo stop had put in my mind to take a back road or two, and I turned off 95 to enjoy the scenery a bit. Some miles down the road I encountered the worst rain I had ridden in for years. Blowing, poor visibility, big cold drops that stung if the face shield wasn't down. I pulled up under the first overpass I came to. About 30 seconds later the rain stopped. Clear, hot, humid, sunshiny. Then I remembered. This is what weather in Florida is like.

I eventually arrived at my host's house, rather later than I expected. He had said he'd have the light on, but the light was off, and there were two buildings. I didn't want to waken the wrong people. (Ahem. I already had. I had misread the GPS a bit and awakened another neighbor, who was actually rather gracious about it.) So I spent the night next to the bike. It didn't rain again, unless you count mosquitoes falling on you like cats and dogs. Hunting dogs.

Quite a different meet-up the next day, but you'll have to wait for the next post.

The adventure begins!

In principle, this trip should be easy. Get onto 95 and head south until I come to it—the Kennedy Space Center. I had a week (launch is scheduled for Saturday the 11th). So the plan was to do a side trip to Key West and some job hunting while I waited for Saturday to roll around.

I got the oil changed, ordered and installed a new air filter, and had a knowledgeable friend go over the bike with me. Then I spent about half a day getting things organized and packing it all onto the bike. At 2:30 Sunday I was ready. Turned out I had no reason to hang around, so I left. You can see a couple pictures on my dear sweet wife's Facebook page. I think you can find them here. Val and her buddy, who happened to turn uup about then (and took the photos) headed for a nearby fancy restaurant within minutes of my departure. That's on her Facebook page, too. Mourning my absence, I guess.

Sunday night found me at a rest stop somewhere in North Carolina. Most of the ride had been about as pleasant as riding the slab gets, except for miles of stop-and-go traffic between DC and Richmond. (Why is that stretch always bad?) When I pulled into the rest stop, I saw a storage shed several yards down a sand/gravel driveway, so I turned in there and parked next to two huge dumpsters. The crickets were so loud you had to raise your voice to be heard, and the mosquitoes were as thick as in the north woods. Remind me to tell you my mosquito joke sometime. Here I realized the consequences of poor planning. I'm okay sleeping on a hard surface, and I was looking forward to the interior of my helmet as a pillow, and the ballistic padding in the back of my jacket as a mattress, but I discovered that the mosquitoes had no trouble sucking my blood through my jacket. No bug spray, you see. The ground cloth didn't help, and I ended up choosing the excessive warmth of the rain suit over donating blood to the denizens of North Carolina's woods. Good thing, too, because it rained for a while during the wee hours. Speaking of wee hours, I was awakened at 5:30 by the garbage truck backing down to empty the two dumpsters. Good thing I parked the bike to the side instead of in front of them.

I freshened up and hit the road. More later, with pictures.

Three doofuses and an adventurer

The other day I was in the car (had to haul some things that were too big to carry on the bike), stopped at a light, when a couple helmetless, shirtless (=clueless) guys on crotch rockets pulled up behind me. They started pointing at the back of the car and gave me a big thumbs up, accompanied by brotherly-type grins. Then I remembered that I have a "Biker Friendly" sticker on the back of the car. I gave them a thumbs up back. Then the light changed, they zoomed around me, and were gone.

The other doofus is me. If you haven't read the preceding post, don't bother. Niceness doesn't mean competence, and I have been thoroughly chastized by everyone I know who know anything about motorcycles. These include Jack Riepe, who was surprisingly gentle with me, and Tom Cutter of the Rubber Chicken Racing Garage, who was extremely helpful. I'll never buy a cheap oil filter again, I promise! As penance, I won't even return the filters—I'll take their cost as tuition in a lesson that I almost paid more than ten times as much for. Apparently the folks selling the cheap filters didn't know that having an oil cooler (which my bike has) makes a difference in the choice of filter. I'll blame their Fram database. I'm sure if they had known, they wouldn't have sold me the filters. They're nice guys.

The picture on the right shows the right kit on the left, and the wrong kit on the right. (That sentence is a really good example of bad technical writing. If you want to see some good examples, go to my résumé site.)

Maybe I'll find some kids on crotch rockets to give the wrong filters to. Then their bikes might break down before they coat some road with their skin.

I'm also the adventurer, but I'll talk about that in more detail in another post. Two words: shuttle launch!