Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway motorcycle trip (posted from home)

Friday, 26 May-
This morning I made a quick trip to the Farmer’s Market, then Labashi and I spent the afternoon shopping for a replacement ceiling light for our bathroom. While remodeling our kitchen, Labashi had found a light fixture designed to be added to a ceiling fan and turned it into a very nice kitchen light fixture. We’d like to do the same type of thing for the bath but we’ve thus far not been able to find just the right combination of fixture, shades, and bulbs to rescue us from the horrors of late-Seventies bath lighting (ok, yes, I’m being a little facetious here!).
Late in the day we dined on our favorite ribs at the Texas Road House, then came home to watch ‘Reel Paradise’, a very interesting reality-style film about indy-film guru John Pierson and family buying and running a movie theater in Fiji. Good one!

Thursday, 25 May-
I got an early start today, hoping to get ahead of the predicted thunderstorms due in late afternoon for home. I had asked for an 0700 wakeup call but was awake by six so had my shower and breakfast and was on the road by 0715. I had a great early-morning ride in going-to-work traffic up to Interstate 77 and then on to I-81 for the turn towards home. I buzzed up I-81 at a mostly-legal clip, generally riding between 65 and 70. I first hit some rain south of Harrisonburg but it was very light and had no impact on traffic. I pulled off under a bridge at the first few drops of rain and put on my rain gear so of course the rain seemed to end there. But it wasn’t long till I was in a steady, though light sprinkle to Harrisonburg, then a break, then again sprinkling from the Pennsylvania line to home. I was home by 1415, so that was a seven-hour, 400-mile day and a 60-mph average. The great scenery and roads of the Skyline Drive and the Virginia portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway (and, come to think of it, the Shenandoah Valley drive up I-81) made it well worth while.
That evening we watched “The New World”, a Terrence Malick film about the 1607 Jamestown colony but more specifically about the relationship between Capt John Smith and Pocahontas. We liked this movie a lot but be forewarned, it only earned a 51% ‘tomatometer’ rating at rottentomatoes.com and I don’t generally like movies under about a 60% rating. We were very glad to see several of the Native American actors who so impressed us in ‘Black Robe’ and 14-year-old newcomer Q’Orianka Kilcher is amazing. The visuals are impressive and fresh. And it’s easy to imagine what life would have been like in Jamestown, particularly after seeing the extra features. Critics pan the film for getting a little lost in its story line and there is something to that. But it’s still a good film to experience.

Wednesday, 24 May-
I had decided to continue south today and that put me on the Blue Ridge Parkway by 0900 or so. The road was still covered in early-morning shadows and that made for a wonderfully-cool ride through the curves. The Blue Ridge Parkway differs from the Skyline Drive in that the curves open up a bit so the speed limit is now 45. But with the smooth roads it’s motorcycle-touring heaven. My goal this morning was the Peaks of Otter lodge for lunch, a worth goal since it’s about 85 miles of twisty road south.
I loved the feel of the Parkway. Where the Skyline Drive was great, the Parkway feels less like a park. And the views are fantastic, particularly as you start seeing the clusters of steep-sided peaks as you ride across the narrow ridges—what a spectacular place this must have been before roads.
The deer along the Parkway are no longer are so docile as they were yesterday on Skyline Drive. I came upon a young buck at Apple Orchard mountain who was right along the road on my side, facing toward me and acting very skittish. I came to a near-stop to be sure I wouldn’t get a last-minute surprise and was amused as he turned and trotted the road-edge looking for a place to dive off into the bushes in this steep-sided area. This Apple Orchard area is the highest elevation on the Parkway in Virginia and had an above-treeline look. It was still early spring up there so the trees were just budding. It was a perfect place to see that buck.
At Peaks of Otter I ordered fried green tomatoes for lunch. Though it was in the appetizers section of the menu it turned out to be a full-size plate of thick, juicy (yes, green) tomatoes, lightly breaded and deep-fried. They were served on a bed of lettuce with two slices of red tomato and I had a small cup of a good salsa and sour cream to add to them as I wished. They were terrific.
After lunch I met a fellow motorcyclist in the parking lot. He was from North Carolina and was now headed south after five days aboard the bike in the mountains. He was riding a Honda 1300 ST so we spoke for awhile about the relative good and bad points on our particular choices of mounts. It turns out we both had each other’s bike on our short list of candidates for a sport touring bike when we were shopping. He was an interesting guy. He was wearing a hat emblazoned “Glory Bound” (I didn’t ask) and a full riding suit. As we spoke about his riding the twisty North Carolina road called ‘the Dragon’s Tail’, I could tell he was a common-sense rider, enjoying himself but riding responsibly. Good for him.
I spent the afternoon taking the Parkway another hundred-plus miles to the North Carolina line. I had picked the Blue Ridge Music Center as my turn-around point since I want to be home for the Memorial Day weekend.
I spent the evening in Galax, VA, again at a Super-8. Shortly after checking in, another bike pulled up and I spoke for a few minutes with a rider from Boston. He was on a Ducati Multistrada, was headed for Asheville (NC) and had grown up in the Gettysburg area.
I again ate at a locally-recommended restaurant but this one was only ok—filling but not that special.
Afterwards I walked to a local park, the New River Trail State Park, and walked four miles on the railroad bed along the pretty creek before returning to my motel.

Tuesday, 23 May-
Today I departed on my first longish motorcycle trip. Until now the longest trip I had done was a five-hour ride to my brother’s home near Rochester, NY and then the trip back the next day. My goal today was to do some of the Skyline Drive.
I had some last-minute things to take care of at home so did not depart until after ten so didn’t get onto the Skyline Drive (Shenandoah National Park) until 1415.
I had beautiful weather—sunny and 70—so was surprised to find most of the visitor’s centers and the Mathews Arm campground had not opened for the season yet. I stopped at the first few overlooks and marveled at the view across the Shenandoah Valley. Along the way I would see a deer here and there, browsing on a hillside or along the grassy roadside. I could see they had no sense of fear or nervousness at all so that lent a Garden-of-Eden feeling to it. At Elkwallow, I found the visitor’s center closed but behind it were a dozen painters at their easels spread throughout the field, each concentrating on a nearly-finished painting of the wonderful view from there. There were few cars in the parking lot but one of them was a van from Northern Virginia Community College so I assume that’s where the group was from.
Shortly after leaving Elkwallow I came upon a large wild turkey crossing the road with eight tiny little chicks (‘poults’) scrambling behind. The poults were smaller than I’ve ever seen. They didn’t yet have the longer legs I associate with young turkeys so it looked like a turkey with chicken peeps following, and what a comical sight it was.
At the Big Meadow visitor’s center I spoke with a young ranger lady and mentioned I was having a good day, having seen the deer and turkey poults and some spectacularly-plumed barn swallows. She said all I needed yet was to see a bear—which is exactly what happened a few hours later.
Near the end of the Drive, around mile marker 92, a bear cub came out of the woods on my right and loped across the road. To give you an idea of the cub’s size, let me try this: if I had been standing beside the cub, its back (as it stands on all four feet) would only have come up to a little above my knee. It was indescribably cute and that encounter alone was well worth the trip.
I spent that evening in Waynesboro, VA just off the south end of the Skyline Drive. The Drive is 105 miles long and it took me more than four hours to complete it. The speed limit is 35 on the Drive and I had no traffic.
In Waynesboro, I stopped at an auto-parts store to pick up some windshield cleaner wipes and asked if there was a cheaper motel around. They directed me to a nearby mall area where I found a Super-8 tucked in an odd corner. At the Super-8, I learned the best restaurant nearby was the South River Grill. I tried the North-Carolina-style (vinegar-based) bar-be-que platter and afterwards stopped at Starbucks for a coffee and to read the papers while sitting on the verandah and occasionally looking up at the sunset-shadows climbing the nearby mountain ridge. On the way back to the motel I stopped at the Wal-Mart and bought a Lisa Scottolini paperback to start this evening. Talk about living the easy life!

Monday, 22 May-
This morning I went to a dental appointment near my old workplace and because my appointment ended just before lunch time, I called up a friend and former workmate, hoping he’d be able to meet for lunch. We met at a nearby Thai restaurant which had been a favorite. We had a great time catching up on what’s been happening since we last talked at my retirement party nine months ago.
On the way home, I stopped at Pinchot Park for a jog. I slow-jogged the Lakeshore Trail from the Conewago Day-Use Area parking lot to the dam and back, about four miles. I thought I might have problems with it because the last time had been very exhausting but it went well.

Sunday, 21 May-
I spent most of the morning working on the blog and email. Because of our talk with the Mohawk re-enactor at Dill Tavern yesterday, I surfed the web looking for more info. That led to an interesting afternoon of reading about the Caughnawaga Mohawks and about the history of Mercersburg, PA, particularly here: http://apps.libraries.psu.edu/digitalbookshelf/bookindex.cfm?oclc=28055678.
That evening we watched “The Beat that My Heart Skipped”, a French film about a man who is working in shady and sometimes violent real-estate schemes (like something you’d see in a Sopranos episode) but all is not well; he’s unfulfilled. When he has a chance encounter with his former piano teacher, we learn that his mother had been a concert pianist (managed by the piano teacher) and he himself had been very good as a teenager. Would he be interested in an audition to become a concert pianist?
The film is a remake of a 1978 film called “Fingers” with Harvey Keitel. IMDB summarizes ‘Fingers’ as follows: “Keitel plays the lead in this schizophrenic movie in which he is continually pulled by the two conflicting sides of his personality, on the one hand that of a quiet piano virtuoso and on the other a ruthless debt collector for his mobster father. Keitel is introspective as only Keitel can be, really making the audience feel for him and his pained existence.”
“The Beat That My Heart Skipped” is similarly worthwhile for the intensity of its acting, this time by Romain Duris.

Bezabor: PickleFest, Mohawk encounter (posted from home)

Saturday, 20 May-
Today Labashi and I went to Dillsburg, PA for the PickleFest. Actually we were more interested in seeing the Dill Tavern and an ‘Indian encampment’ in its back yard (there was also a Civil War encampment but I’m more interested in the French-and-Indian-War times). We took an informal tour of the tavern and it’s great to see how authentically the reconstruction is being done. As we stepped outside, we met author John L. Moore, a storyteller from Northumberland, PA, who was selling his booklets about the Pennsylvania frontier (one title is “Traders, Travelers, and Tomahawks”). I went for his sales pitch about his works being true tales based on historical research (as opposed to a novel representing the times) and bought copies of each of his three booklets. As we talked, he told a story about his grandparents looking for (and seeing) Lucky Lindy as he flew across Pennsylvania after his trans-Atlantic flight.
Then we met the highlight of the day, a re-enactor playing a Mohawk warrior (I think he said a Caughnewaga Mohawk). This guy was fantastic. He was dressed in skins and had painted his shaved head a startlingly-bright red accented with black. He had a top-knot which I still don’t know how he did it—I think part of it was a real pony tail but the rest was a bright orange nest of spiky grass or small reeds. But the really great part was his encyclopedic knowledge. We spent an hour and a half with him as he explained all the things he had on display to the small group. After the others moved on, we somehow switched to historical events like Braddock’s campaign in 1755, James Smith and his ‘Black Boys’ (see http://www.libraries.psu.edu/do/digitalbookshelf/28055678/28055678_part_03.pdf#page=15 and scroll down to page 56 for a great read), the burning of squatter cabins by PA government officials (one of my great-grandfathers was one of the settlers whose cabin was burned in 1750), Pennsylvania’s frontier forts, etc. What an incredible guy. He will be at Pinchot park sometime this summer but I have no other info on that yet. I’ve got to keep a lookout for that event and go talk to him some more.
At lunch time we walked up the street to the Maple Barn and had a roasted pork sandwich, then another highlight for the day—fried pickles. That was my first taste of fried pickles and they were great. I believe it was the spices sprinkled on the lightly-breaded pickle slices that made them so good.
After we returned home that afternoon I spent much of the late afternoon and evening on the web looking for more information on the subjects we had discussed with the Mohawk.

Friday, 19 May-
We spent the morning with the new graduate (and hubby), then took a leisurely drive home. With rain threatening late in the day (and a new Netflix shipment in hand) we decided we needed a movie. We watched ‘Broken Flowers’, Jim Jarmusch’s somewhat-weird film about an aging Don-Juan (Bill Murray) who receives an anonymous letter, apparently from one of his lovers, telling him he has a 19-year-old son. We enjoyed the film but I think I’d like to have seen someone new in the lead role—someone we could more easily see as a former Don Juan (who Jarmusch names ‘Don Johnston’). But we did like Jarmusch’s choices regarding the female characters in the story.
That evening we watched another movie, ‘Everything is Illuminated’. Elijah Wood was terrific in this story of a young Jewish man who goes to the Ukraine to try to find the woman who reportedly saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Good movie. And it was interesting to follow it up by reading the author's web site.

Thursday, 18 May-
Today was a special day. We drove to the Fairfax, VA area to attend the graduation ceremony for our sister-in-law at George Mason University. She’s over 50 and graduating with honors (and a 3.9 grade average!) after working full-time at a local post office and taking courses part-time for many years. Afterward, we celebrated at a nearby restaurant, spent the evening talking and watching a movie (‘The Producers’).

Wednesday, 17 May-
I drove the Miata into town to exercise it a little and to pick up some laserjet cartridges for Labashi. She’s doing a large mailing for a book project she manages and will be printing several thousand pages. Later in the day I took the KLR to Rocky Ridge park and jogged an hour on the west-side double-loop and outer-loop trails.

Tuesday, 16 May-
Today we had rain threatening most of the day. I made a run into town in the morning to pick up another six-pack of Heineken so I can use the cans to play some more with the penny-stove design. That afternoon I thought I’d sharpen the blades on the mowers and then mow as much as I could before the rains started. Sure enough, it started sprinkling while I was taking off the mower blades. But that stopped after a few minutes and I was able to complete the mowing—a good workout for the day.
That evening I received a call from my brother. He had built an alcohol stove, improving on the design. He had decided that the penny-stove design needed more surface area in the center to transfer the heat of priming to the main fuel chamber so it would vaporize the fuel better. His stove blooms consistently within 30 seconds and has many more jets.
I spent much of the evening exploring the links at zenstoves.com, looking at the many different designs.

Monday, 15 May-
I spent most of the morning looking at the Great Roads/Great Rides web site (www.greatroadsgreatrides.com). I had noticed a few errors on the web pages and thought I’d let the webmaster know. That turned out to be an all-morning-and-some-afternoon project to both find and explain the errors but also to explore the many links the site took me to.
Later in the day I went jogging along the creek near my home. I thought that would go a little easier than it did. As it turned out, I developed cramping in one leg, perhaps brought on by the highly-crowned road surface. I was able to jog about 40 minutes but it was slow going.
That evening we watched the 75th Annual Academy Awards Short Films DVD. We were surprised to see that the finalists really weren’t all the good. The award winners were the best of each category (‘Animated’ and ‘Live-Action’) but even they seemed only to be exercises to demonstrate film-making skills rather than interesting films in their own right.

Bezabor: Motorcycle breakfast, Mother’s Day (posted from home)

Sunday, 14 May-
This morning I read the freebie motorcycle mags and surfed the web. I was interested by an ad for a motorcycle touring book, “Great Roads, Great Rides” and spent some time on their web site. I’ve got to get that one to help in planning some regional rides.
Later in the morning we left for a Mother’s Day celebration at my brother’s home. My other brother and his wife drove down for the occasion. We had a picnic in the back yard and a wonderful time talking. My brothers and I spent a good two hours playing with my two penny stoves in the garage. We were perplexed to see that the stoves don’t ‘bloom’ consistently and were trying to figure out why and how to fix it. In the end, we still don’t really know why yet but have some possibilities to check out. I guess I’ll have to go buy another six-pack of Heineken’s for scientific purposes.
We spent the day and evening talking and laughing and just having a fine time and got home late.

Saturday, 13 May-
I wanted a bit of a ride and a bit of a jog today. I took the Concours to Don’s Kawasaki in Hallam, then rode some really nice back roads in Lancaster County to Trans-Am Cycles in Lititz. I was looking around to see what’s new and didn’t really find anything at Don’s but Trans-Am had some freebie motorcycling magazines of interest and some interesting bikes. They had a brand-new Concours in the showroom and those always interest me. This one was dark blue in color. The Concours has been around since 1986 and has changed little but color in all that time. It still is carbureted while the modern bikes have fuel injection, for instance. But it’s also less than half the price of the fancy bikes yet is still an excellent sports-touring bike and it’s a great year-round bike.
The shop also had a brand-new BMW F650-GS adventure bike which looks pretty good but the specs show it’s pretty heavy for any off-road riding. But I’ll have to look into that one some more.
I did my jogging at Rocky Ridge Park. Today was an airy day so that helped me extend my distance a bit. I had recently done a double-loop of the west-end trails there. There’s a central trail on the ridge which bisects a larger circle trail. The central trail ends in a tee where you can turn either way to loop back to the start. A double loop means taking the ridge trail and turning left at the tee to the start, then jogging the central trail again and this time taking the right-hand turn at the tee to loop back to the beginning.
Today I did the double loop and then an outer loop, i.e., after finishing the double loop I jogged the outer loop. And that was PLENTY for the day.
That evening we watched the documentary “Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room”. It’s amazing to see how easy it was for Enron to pull off their fraud and how some of the nation’s largest financial institutions and accounting firms were played for fools.

Friday, 12 May-
Today I attended a motorcycle breakfast event at the Country Cupboard inn north of Lewisburg, PA. I don’t know if the event has a name and don’t know how it started. I heard about it from a former co-worker. He had mentioned it in passing last year while I was still working and then sent me an email several weeks ago inviting me to meet him and his wife there. That turned out to be a great idea.
The event is very simple. Riders simply show up at the Country Cupboard on the second Friday of the month (in season) for breakfast and then go do whatever they want to do afterwards. That sounded good to me.
All week long the weather man had been calling for rain showers for that morning. I thought I’d take a look at the regional radar that morning and so long as the showers were light and fairly-well dispersed, I’d go anyway, even though the rain would hold down attendance and there might not be many bikes to see. But early that morning the weather channel map for the day showed rain all over the east coast except for this nice, big hole in central Pennsylvania. Whoever organizes that event must have an ‘in’ with the weather man!
I left the home at 0700 that morning, anticipating a traffic backup on I-83 as it approaches Harrisburg. But that turned out to be very minor and within the half-hour I was well north of the city and enjoying wonderful morning light on the shining Susquehanna. I had my electric jacket-liner plugged in but turned down low, making it a very comfortable, yet fresh and airy ride.
My leisurely pace took me to the inn by 0830, which gave me a half-hour to look at bikes before my friends were due. My arrival put me near the end of the second line of bikes across a very large parking area. I’d guess that each line held at least 100 bikes (next time I’ll count!) so there were already 200 bikes there by 0830. The bikes were comprised of many varieties but I was surprised to see that there were more Gold Wings than anything else, followed by Harley touring bikes. Thankfully (after my recent black-leather-and-loud-pipes overload at Daytona), I saw only one chopper. There were three Concours in addition to mine and they too were understated in their farkle-ization. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_farkle).
I was quite interested in the various touring beemers (see http://www.bmwccbc.org/misc/tech-and-trivia/bimmer.html) but there’s something that isn’t quite right about the newer models.
My friends arrived shortly after 0900, by which time there were another three rows of bikes in the parking lot and we went in to breakfast. The restaurant was set up perfectly for this. All we had to do was walk in and pick out a table, then head for the buffet. After we were seated, a waitress came around for drink orders. The buffet was very well done and despite the large number of people, there was plenty of room and no rush. We spent more than an hour and a half at our breakfast table, catching up on the news.
After our breakfast, the front portion of the parking lot was starting to thin out but bikes were still rolling in at the back. I’d guess there was something on the order of 700 bikes there, pretty impressive for a regular Friday morning in rural PA.
I was also very struck by the riders. Many of them were older than me. I didn’t see more than a two dozen or so twenty-somethings and only a small number of crotch-rocket bikes.
After the meal, we took a look at the latest set of incoming bikes and then prepared to go home. I said goodbye to my friends who were heading home and took off, not knowing exactly what I wanted to do. As I got to Lewisburg, I found myself behind a very large oversize-load truck pulling half of a modular home and taking up both lanes of traffic. I turned off at Route 45, thinking I’d take a look around there and then probably go into Lewisburg proper to look around. But the open road pulled me on and before long I was out among the strikingly-clean farms of Buffalo Valley, heading toward State College. I came upon an espresso shop built into a home-decorating business and stopped for a café-mocha and to figure out how to get home. While sipping, I plotted out a trip on SR235 through part of the Bald Eagle State Forest and connecting up with SR 322.
That was a terrific route. The roads had no traffic to speak of and wound through very pretty rural scenery. I’ll have to try that route again in the Fall.
Once to 322, I rode only one exit of the superslab before turning off at Millerstown and following the back road to Newport, then took 849 to Duncannon, all nice, twisty and smooth roads perfect for a motorcycle. At Duncannon, I came out in an unexpected place and took a wrong turn. I found myself crossing the Susquehanna so decided I’d go on over to Boyd Big Tree Conservation Area for a little jog before heading home. After taking off my protective gear and changing to my sneakers, I started my slog down the East Loop trail. That trail had me working hard very quickly since it was just one almost-continuous gentle uphill. Actually it was good for me since the trail would be steep enough to get me huffing to the point where I thought I’d have to stop, then would level off enough to let me catch my breath, then another hill. I followed that trail past the powerline and was getting comfortable as it looped back to the powerline. But at an intersection with the pink-blazed trail, my green-blazed East Loop led downhill and I wasn’t yet ready for that. I turned onto the pink-blazed trail heading up the powerline and it wasn’t long till I had to walk. But before long I crossed the powerline and re-entered the woods on a nice, flat slate jeep trail paralleling the ridge. It led me to a short downhill, then another jeep trail running parallel to the ridge and blessedly level. I followed it around to the pond, and then back downhill to the bike for a total jog time of an hour.
At home that evening we watched ‘Good Night and Good Luck’, the outstanding film about Edward R. Murrow’s role in bringing down McCarthy in the Fifties.

Bezabor: Penny Stove (posted from home)

Thursday, 11 May-
Today I built another penny stove. After all, I had bought a six-pack of beer and had to do SOMEthing with those three extra Heineken cans. Actually, I wanted to try a couple of small changes. This morning I had tested my newly-sealed original stove and found it didn’t work very well. Instead of ‘blooming’ after it’s heat-up phase, it went out. It did work on the second try but now I was curious—what had happened? I built the second stove and made a mod to the burner. It too went out before blooming. What was going on? I decided to make the second just like the first had been made. It did manage to bloom, but just barely. As I kept playing I realized that several other factors were important. I needed to have a wind-screen around the stove so it could more quickly raise its operating temperature during the bloom phase. And I also need to have the pot above the stove during fire-up. And I think the stove just doesn’t work as well in today’s lower atmospheric pressure (we have rain approaching today).

Wednesday, 10 May-
I rode the Concours down to the REI outdoors store in Timonium for some backpacking gear and for a longer bike ride on such a nice day. I just bought some little things like hiking socks but spent a long time checking out all the spiffy gear. I did snag deals on a set of saddles for Mocha Joe’s kayak rack and on a wind shirt.


Tuesday, 9 May-
I rode the Concours over to the hardware store to pick up some JBWeld epoxy for the backpacker’s stove then came home and sealed the stove joint and set it aside to cure for the day. Late in the day I rode down to Rocky Ridge and thought I’d try a longer jog. I jogged from the parking lot to the far (eastern) end of the park via the hawk-watch and north-side trails. I wanted to see if I could keep up a jog— perhaps only a minimal jog on the uphill sections—throughout my route. I had forgotten how long the uphill sections were on those north-side trails but did manage to make it with some struggle. I had originally planned to return to the parking lot via the center-of-the-ridge trail but I was feeling pretty good after making it up ‘Heart-Attack’ (the steepest hill in the park) and getting my breath back on a friendlier side trail. I made it back to the bike in an hour and a half and that was definitely it for the day. That evening we watched “The Memory of a Killer”, a Belgian (Flemish) film about a killer who has Alzheimer’s disease. Not bad.


Monday, 8 May-
In the morning I built a backpacker’s stove from three beer cans. I had found the plans for this alcohol stove while surfing the web. It’s called a ‘penny stove’ because it uses a penny to regulate it. Besides the penny, it requires three Heineken beer cans. To build it, you cut the bottoms off the beer cans at specific places. One of these can-bottoms is turned upside-down and, after it has been drilled and crimped, forced into one of the other can-bottoms, forming a repository for the alcohol fuel. In the center of the burner is a hole which is blocked by the penny lying on it. After the stove is filled, lighting it causes the entire stove to heat quickly. The penny serves to regulate pressure, allowing the alcohol to boil in the compartment below and flames begin shooting out the six jets, looking just like the large jets of flame of a commercial gas stove. (see http://www.csun.edu/~mjurey/penny.html for details and pictures).
Later in the morning I fired up the stove and it worked! I did notice it had a small leak around the burner, though, and decided I should seal that before using it any more.
In the afternoon I rode the Concours down to Rocky Ridge Park and went jogging. I’m so slow that I hesitate to call it jogging, maybe I should call it ‘slogging’ (for slow jogging). I pretty well exhausted myself by jogging two circuits around the trails in the west end of the park in about an hour.

Sunday, 7 May-
I spent much of the morning doing email and updating my blog. In the afternoon, we went to visit friends Amy and Mike for the afternoon and for supper. Amy prepared a wonderful meal for us and introduced us to two new wines. It was great spending an afternoon and evening with them; both the food and conversation were outstanding and I learned new things about both.

Bezabor: ‘Last Life in the Universe’, ‘A Day in the Dirt’ (posted from home)

Saturday, 6 May-
I felt I was moving a little slowly today and perhaps needed some rest. In the afternoon I took a ride in to a local sub shop to pick up a six-pack of Heineken beer in 12-ounce cans. I’m not a big fan of beer, I just need these particular cans to build a backpacker’s alcohol stove based on this can design. I also rode over to Starbucks for a coffee and along the way realized that my reflexes seemed a little off. It occurred to me that this probably came from taking a pain pill yesterday evening—it was still affecting me all these hours later. Pain had started developing in my jaw at the dental implant last evening even though I’ve had no pain there for over a week and everything checked out with the periodontist yesterday. Perhaps his poking around to remove sutures had kicked this off. In any case, I had taken one of the hydrocodone-ibuprofen pills prescribed by my periodontist as the pain worsened. By this morning, I was relieved that the pain had disappeared. But apparently the pill was still affecting my motor skills. The effect was very minor as far as being able to operate the motorcycle. I mostly just didn’t feel quite right and felt like I had to concentrate more to shift properly and to balance the motorcycle at stoplights on this windy day.
By evening I was back to normal and wanted a walk. But I thought it made little sense to ride the motorcycle somewhere to go for a walk when the lawn could use a mowing so I did that and just completed it before dark.


Friday, 5 May-
I was still pretty well wiped out from yesterday’s jog and spent much of the morning on the web. The good news is I didn’t have much stiffness or any pain from the jog. Later in the morning I drove the Miata in to Eastern Market to pick up some fresh orange juice and my favorite Lebanon bologna. That afternoon, Labashi and I enjoyed a convertible ride on the beautiful day as we went out for an early dinner of baby back ribs at the Texas Roadhouse. We love the ribs there and they are a bargain. We always split a full-slab of ribs that gives us each a good salad (the two ‘sides’ of the meal) and more ribs than we can handle, all for a total bill of $16.95 plus tip! That evening we watched two DVDs, “John Cleese’s Wine for the Confused” and “A Day in the Dirt” (great combination, eh?). The former is Cleese’s intro to the various types of wine grapes and wines. He does a good job of both informing and entertaining in this low-budget piece. ‘A Day in the Dirt’ is a motorcycle dirt-racing documentary summed up by this line from IMDB.com: “Experience the pain and the passions that dirt bikers everywhere know and love.” I enjoyed seeing the historical footage of legendary motocross and desert racers.

Thursday, 4 May-
I worked on the Web in the morning. That afternoon I rode the Concours to my appointment with my periodontist to check on my recent dental implant post. That only took a few minutes to verify that all is well and schedule the next step for a month from now. On the way home I stopped at Pinchot Park for some exercise. I decided to try jogging from the main parking lot to the dam. That was a favorite route years ago when I was doing a lot of jogging. My goal today was to make it to the dam and then turn back and see how far I could jog back, if at all. Surprisingly, it went better than expected and I made it to the dam and back to the parking lot, a total of about four miles. But that jog pretty well did me in; I felt like I barely had enough strength to don my motorcycle gear for the ride home.
That evening we watched ‘Last Life in the Universe’, a strange little film about a young Japanese librarian’s assistant living in Bangkok who repeatedly (though half-heartedly) attempts suicide. He meets a girl. IMDB has this plot summary: “An obsessive-compulsive Japanese librarian living in Bangkok spends most of his empty days contemplating suicide alone in his lifeless apartment. His life completely changes when he witnesses the death of Nid seconds before he was about to jump off a bridge. This pivotal event paired the lost Japanese with Nid's elder sister Noi as these two lost and lonely souls help each other find the meaning to their meaningless existences.” Though the plot summary sounds depressing, the movie’s actually pretty good. And the interview with the director is quite surprising.

Bezabor: ‘Yes’, ‘Donnie Darko’, and Nixon Park (posted from home)

Wednesday, 3 May-
This morning I put Mocha Joe back in order from the weekend’s trip to pick up the KLR. In order to pick up the motorcycle I have to dis-assemble the bed, bundle up the mattress, arrange tie-downs, and re-arrange everything so I can roll the KLR up a ramp into the back of Mocha Joe and strap it down. Once home, I have to reverse the process to put everything back in place. This also gives me the opportunity to clean and re-stow everything properly (and remind me where I’ve put things) so it works out well.
In the afternoon, I rode the Concours down to Nixon Park below York. I’ve not been down there for quite a while and wanted to see it in its new Spring regalia. Nixon has a great nature center. A local great white hunter contributed his collection of trophy taxidermy mounts to the park and they truly are outstanding. Want to see a polar bear? How about a ten-foot standing grizzly? Antelope? Kangaroo? Elk? Water buffalo? Go to Nixon Park. They also have many bird and smaller mammal mounts as well as butterfly collections from all over the world.
I stopped in at the visitor’s center and chatted briefly with Jere Jones, who I knew to be a long-time York County Parks employee. Jere founded the York County Astronomy Society and I knew he had written a book about gold-panning in southeastern PA. I couldn’t remember his last name so asked him. When he replied, I said “aren’t you the guy who wrote the book about gold-panning in York County? Well, what are you doing working here?” He laughed and said “I guess that tells you how much gold there is to be found”. Jere said he was originally trained as a geologist and that started us on a long conversation about mining in the area. He spoke of iron and manganese mines and clay pits all over the area. When I mentioned I had recently been hiking around the Center Point Knob area, he told me of mines there. I’ve got to go back to see him and learn more—what an interesting guy.
Afterwards, I hiked several of the trails in the park. The park lies in a steep-sided valley so any trail but the one going down the valley will take you up some fairly steep hills. I took the Old Field trail around to the Geology trail to the Hardwood Trail and then branched off to the adjacent Kain Park #4 trail, then back around to my bike at the parking lot. Along the way I found a very pretty little creek that I really, really, really have to go back and fish. Also, the #4 trail out of Kain Park tells me I have to go back for a more extensive visit to that park and all its trails. My afternoon today gave me a good workout of about four miles of hills and Kain Park looks like it would also be nice and hilly too.
That evening we found ourselves between Netflix shipments so we watched one of the NBC Dateline series shows on child-sex predators. This time they were in Darke County, Ohio and over a three-day period had 17 men show up at the door intending to have sex with a 13-year-old girl (or sometimes a boy)! That’s absolutely incredible. One guy was there despite the fact that he had been convicted of a prior offense and was to report to jail the following week. What can be done? I think the pressure has to be ratcheted up. These stings should become more widespread and more publicized. Every local jurisdiction should run stings and publicize the results. It’s also time to take on the Internet chat room providers. They should be posting clear warnings and should be running software which looks for problems.

Tuesday, 2 May-
I worked on the web this morning then rode the Concours down to Rocky Ridge Park for a walk. I decided to try jogging the same loop I had done a week or so ago and see how that goes. Since the start is slightly uphill, I started off in a jog so slow that any ants or spiders or beetles going my way were undoubtedly passing me. Once at the top of the rise I picked it up a little but not much—I was just keeping it comfortable. But that was a good thing. By the time I got around to my previous out-of-breath ending point, I was able to keep going about half-again the distance I had come. At that point I was going uphill again so took a break and walked the road a little, then jogged a downhill path for awhile before climbing one of the steepest paths back to the parking lot.
Back home I recovered from the walk until evening, when I washed Mocha Joe, something that was long-overdue. That evening we watched “Donnie Darko, Directors’ Cut”. We enjoyed it and enjoyed the process of figuring out what it meant. RottenTomatoes gives it a 90 per cent Tomatometer rating and I have to agree—not life changing but well worth seeing.

Monday, 1 May-
I took the Miata to my local garage for its annual inspection and walked home (about a mile) this morning. I worked on the web awhile and then spent most of the afternoon assembling, installing, and adjusting a metal frame with casters for Labashi’s radial arm saw. This frame allows her to step on a pedal to elevate the saw onto its casters. She can then roll it out of its storage barn onto our patio when she wants to cut longer pieces of wood. Pressing another pedal lowers it to the patio and stabilizes the saw for cutting.
That evening Labashi joined me in walking back up to the garage to pick up the Miata, then we watched ‘Yes’, an interesting (but in my opinion, flawed) movie about an unhappily-married woman who has an affair with a Middle-Eastern man. Their prejudices doom the relationship to failure. The interesting thing about this one is that writer-director Sally Potter had the audacity to do a modern movie in which the characters speak in iambic pentameter. Predictably, she gets nailed for it. RottenTomatoes.Com’s critical consensus is this: “Emotional pretensions / Can’t stop the curse / Of ever-present pretensions / Writ in heavy-handed verse”. But it’s actually more interesting than that sounds. Its camera work and interesting and she has the maids address the audience directly while action goes on behind them. But for all its merits it just can’t pull off the verse. Here’s a sample which explains the title of the film: ‘And, in the end, it simply isn't worth / Your while to try and clean your life away. / You can't. For, everything you do or say / Is there, forever. It leaves evidence. / In fact it's really only common sense; / There's no such thing as nothing, not at all. / It may be really very, very small / But it's still there. In fact I think I'd guess / That "no" does not exist. There's only "yes"’.