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The Bezabor Log

"The Bezabor Log" is my online diary since retiring in September 2005. My blogging name,'Bezabor', is an archaic term used mostly by canallers in the 1800's and early 1900's. It refers to a rascally, stubborn old mule. In the Log, I refer to my wife as 'Labashi', a name she made up as a little girl. She had decided if ever she had a puppy, she'd call it 'McCulla' or 'Labashi'. I'm not sure how to spell the former so Labashi it is. Emails welcome at bezabor(at)gmail.com.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Thanksgiving, Caledonia’s Bistro, Michaux State Forest, Meadowgrounds, Golden Plough

(posted from home)
(This post covers 23-29 November)

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Wednesday, 29 November-

This morning Labashi and I went to a local tourist attraction in York, the Golden Plough Tavern. We’ve lived in this area for many years but have never been to some of the local sites. The Golden Plough is a gem and it’s the oldest building in the county, dating back to 1741. This building has a special meaning for us in our familoy history research since it would have been there when my sixth-great grandfather lived in this area and attended Christ Lutheran Church just down the street back in the 1740’s.
The Golden Plough was built by a German man named Eichelberger and had German half-timbered construction you can see here: http://www.yorklinks.net/VirtYork/plough.htm. Today it’s decorated with period furniture and tavern-ware, including a traveler’s trunk which is, literally, a hollowed-out tree trunk. The tavern is connected to the General Gates House, which brings us forward in history to the time of George Washington. It was here where the ‘Conway Cabal’ was derailed, largely by the influence of the Marquis de Lafayette. Our tour guide spoke of a toast by Lafayette wherein he toasted General Washington and thereby indicated his (and France’s) support for Washington rather than Gates, resulting in the failure of the plot. This link tells the story a bit differently: http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=493
We next toured the Bobb House, a later log home of weaver Barnett Bobb. And finally we toured the Courthouse. Here’s an excellent article on the Continental Congress in York: http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=492.
After our tour we ate at the White Rose Café. There I learned that York Town hasn’t changed – at least in some aspects-- since the Continental Congress; my ‘pit ham’ sandwich was merely a very plain sliced—ham sandwich, dramatically over-priced.
That afternoon we drove up to our ‘local’ Cabela’s. I thought I might be able to pick up the scope I’ve been interested in. But it was not to be. I did pick up some hard-to-find butane cartridges for our cook-stove in Mocha Joe but that was it.
That evening we watched two more episodes of ‘Desperate Housewives’.

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Tuesday, 28 November-

This morning I had my appointment with the periodontist to re-do my bone graft for my dental implant. The periodontist told me he does 50 to 60 of these a year and this will only be the fourth time since 1986 that he has had to re-do one. He said we’d first try to remove the implant from the bone by unscrewing it and if he was able to do that, it would confirm that the graft was a failure. The new bone material is supposed to mend to the existing bone and around the implant very tightly and it should be impossible to remove without cutting (he had a special ‘ossifier’ machine ready to assist in that procedure). But he was able to back out the implant using a hand-tool. The removal was actually a fairly dicey thing in that he had to use enough pressure to see if the implant would back out but not so much as to crack my jawbone. When it released, he said this confirms that the graft did not ‘take’ properly and professed some relief that the implant removal did not require a more extensive procedure. After removing the implant he packed the socket with new bone-graft material and sent me home. We will now have to wait two months for it to mend.
Back home I took my prescribed antibiotics to ward off infection and thought I’d practice a little with my air-soft gun. But the gun’s trigger jammed, then lost all feel entirely; it had broken internally. I decided I’d better take care of that immediately and took it back to Gander Mountain for an exchange. I took a circuitous route home and ended up at Pinchot Park. There I decided I’d try another jog, this one to the dam and back. I noticed more than the normal number of cars around and these were parked near the deer-hunting areas of the park. But I thought I’d be fine on the Lakeside Trail and indeed did not see any hunters there. I had some pain from my left foot and my jog took longer than normal, 56:08 this time.
That evening we watched two episodes of ‘Desperate Housewives’.


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Monday, 27 November-

Today I spent the morning on the web. By mid-day I was anxious to get out on such a fine day on the motorcycle and go somewhere for a walk. Given it’s the first day of buck season I was reluctant to walk in the wooded areas of Rocky Ridge or Pinchot parks because I know they are open to hunting. But Rudy Park is all open fields and has a nice walking track and a cross-country running course. Though I’ve not jogged for a few weeks I thought I’d try jogging the 3-mile cross-country course and see what happens. Some two miles into it I was doing okay but heard someone coming up behind me. A little gray-haired, fifty-ish woman soon joined me and very enthusiastically congratulated me on making it this far. “You’re doing GREAT”, she said. “I saw you starting as I was walking the track and wondered if you were going to try the whole course”. She went on to tell me I had passed the two-mile point and I’d feel like Rocky when I crossed the finish line (to which I replied I was already feeling ‘rocky’). She continued on, saying she bet my kids, if I had any, couldn’t do this and told me she has lost 100 pounds in the last year. She was amazing. After our little chat she trotted ahead effortlessly. I picked up my pace a bit in an effort to keep her from widening the gap so quickly but she seemed to just keep accelerating away. After she crossed the finish line way out ahead she began walking and occasionally looking back. As I crossed the line a few minutes later, she raised her arms Rocky-style and so did I. It DID feel good! Back at the parking lot she saw me approaching the drinking fountain and yelled over to tell me it had been shut down for the winter but I was welcome to one of her spare water bottles. We then chatted for a few minutes and I learned she and her husband have a fifth-wheel travel trailer and go to Florida each winter. She said they pay $1000 for the month of January and more for the month of February for their little parking spot along A1A south of Daytona.
That evening we were ready for a movie so I picked up the ‘Desperate Housewives- Season Two’ disk set and we watched the first three episodes.


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Sunday, 26 November-

This morning I was poring over the map of the Michaux State Forest I had picked up this weekend and it occurred to me my brother Maypo may want to ride along today. When I picked him up we decided instead to take US30 west, across Tuscarora Mountain and on to Meadowgrounds Lake on the State Game Lands. There we walked across the dam at the south end of the lake to the Jarrett Trail. As we walked across the dam we had a magnificent view of the 200-acre lake stretching off into the distance; this view looks like the inland lakes of Maine or Quebec. We followed the trail down into the beautiful little creek valley but it wasn’t long until we ran into a problem; the trail continued on the other side of the creek. We took a deer trail up the right bank then turned back along the creek, hoping to find a way across it but the creek soon cut across to a sheer bank. So much for that plan. Since I had a GPS in my daypack we pulled it out and established a waypoint we could return to if necessary, then headed cross-country, following another deer trail. We eventually came out to a gas-line clearing we recognized just as a hunter came down along the pipeline trail. He was out preparing for opening day tomorrow and told us of two forest roads we could take on the mountain above us.

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Saturday, 25 November-

After our drive through the Michaux State Forest yesterday and a forecast for two more sunny-and-60 days, I decided to head back to the Forest. I didn’t get started until noontime but by 1400 I was fishing in Fuller Lake. I had a great spot in the sun and just enjoyed trying out a variety of lures, all of which were of no interest to the fish. I then started fishing Mountain Stream with some new (to me) ultralight jig-style lures called ‘Trout Magnets’. After fishing for a couple of hours I took a break and drove Mocha Joe over to the Pine Grove Furnace State Park campground. When I realized I had to take the registration envelope to the park office, I decided I’d walk back to Fuller Lake and fish until dark, then circle back via the park office to drop off the envelope. On my walk to the lake I surprised four deer near one of the cabins. By the time I reached the lake, I only had a half-hour until dark. I had two hits on Trout Magnets, then no luck with a plastic perch minnow and a small silver countdown Rapala. As darkness fell a barred owl began calling in the distance—very cool!
I walked back to the campground in the rapidly-falling temperatures and made supper in Mocha Joe, then watched the movie ‘Sniper’ with Tom Berenger. This is one of our movies from a collection lent to us by my nephew. I try to select ones I don’t think Labashi would like. This one could have been worse. It had a few plot twists that kept things interesting. With the sun setting so early I had finished the movie by 2000 so fired up the laptop and blogged for awhile before turning to my bed and a good book. The book in this case is one of three very good books lent to me by my other brother when I visited a few weeks ago. They’re about Alaskan bush-pilots and their many adventures. Tonight’s is ‘Wager with the Wind; the Don Sheldon Story’.

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Friday, 24 November-

We spent the morning visiting a long-time family friend who is now in an assisted-care facility near my brother’s home. She and her husband had befriended Labashi’s family when they first moved to this town in the mid-Fifties. Later, they also happened to be the adult leaders for the church youth group I belonged to and it was through them that I first met Labashi in the Fall of 1967. We had a great visit today and were happy to see she has made a lot of progress in her physical therapy treatments and is re-gaining a measure of her independence. We wish her the best.
Afterwards we began winding our way toward home, first stopping at Starbucks for a pick-me-up, then Labashi wanted to stop at the local Wal-mart for some special Christmas decorations which were out of stock at our home Wal-mart. In mid-afternoon we were extra-hungry and stopped at a new-to-us restaurant near the Michaux State Forest. In the past, this place had been a somewhat-rundown bar which appeared to cater to hunters (judging by the vehicles parked outside back then). But on our trips through this area in the past few months we had noticed it had new owners and had changed into a bistro. Given the stone parking lot and pickups outnumbering cars in the parking lot today we hoped we’d be able to get a decent hamburger and a beer and if not, we’d keep going. We were pleasantly surprised to find it’s a very upscale, white-tablecloth restaurant inside. In fact, from our experience here, we think it’s now the best in the area. Instead of a beer we had specialty martini’s (I’m a sucker for a chocolate martini). Labashi had an ultra-fresh seafood wrap and I had a crab-cake sandwich, then we shared a fantastic homemade crème brulee for dessert.
After our late-lunch I talked Labashi into taking the longer way home on this beautiful 65-and-sunny day. We drove into Michaux State Forest and took the dirt road back to Long Pine Run reservoir. I fished for an hour while Labashi read and just relaxed in her lawn chair alongside the reservoir lake.
As shadows told us we didn’t have long till dark, we headed home and spent the evening at our computers.

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Thursday, 23 November-

Happy Thanksgiving! Today we spent the morning doing a few chores then drove to my brother’s home for a Thanksgiving meal. After our turkey dinner and pumpkin cheesecake dessert, we spent the evening chatting and reminiscing about family and friends. Afterwards, Labashi and I spent the night in Mocha Joe parked in my brother’s driveway. That makes visits simple; we don’t intrude and we sleep very well in our own comfy bed.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Student-run restaurant, Jury duty, ‘My Lobotomy’, Air-soft adventures, “Uber Goober”
(posted from home)
(this post covers 15-22 November)



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Wednesday, 22 November-

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and another good day for a motorcycle ride. I spent much of it continuing on my search for a scope and I picked up some shooting supplies. I also bought a little air-soft pistol and a target/BB-trap today. The $20 air-soft gun shoots plastic BB’s and is a replica of a Walther P-22. It’s just what I’ve been looking for. I’ve been reading on the owner groups about using an air-soft gun to train your eyes for both-eyes-open shooting. Back home I set up the target/BB trap across the living room and was about to give it a try. But Labashi saw what was going on and sent me to the basement. For some reason she’s concerned about the lamp and the mirror in that corner of the living room. As it turns out, her fears were well-founded. I shot two clips-worth in the basement, then came back up and told Labashi I had no problem hitting the target. An hour or so later she was in the kitchen when I decided to try an instinctive-aiming technique (HAH!) and blasted a BB off the frame of the target and around the living room. She was VERY impressed. (Fortunately, the BB didn’t hurt anything.)
That evening we watched “Uber Goober”, a nice little documentary about Dungeons and Dragons-style gaming. It’s clearly aimed at fans and assumes a little too much knowledge about Dungeons and Dragons coming in but was very entertaining. We particularly enjoyed footage of fundamentalist preachers describing how Dungeons and Dragons is the Devil’s work.

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Tuesday, 21 November-

Today I spent much of the day on the Concours. I love riding the bike in weather like this. The bike’s engine likes the cooler, denser air and it’s running great. I was just cruising around doing some shopping errands. Primary mission for today was to check out some possible scopes for my newly-repaired .22 rifle. I’ve been doing some reading on the web about scopes and I’ve been surprised to see how expensive a ‘cheap’ scope is. One site claims the cheapest scope worthy of consideration is a $150 one (http://www.charm.net/~kmarsh/scope_rec.html). Well, in that case I’m just going to have to live with a not-worthy-of-consideration scope; my budget is $40. I quickly learned that one of the problems with finding a scope in this price range is they are packaged in blister-packaging so you can’t get a look through the scope. I had gotten a look through a Barska 4 x 32 mounted on a new rifle for sale at Gander Mountain and liked that one but they don’t have the 3-9 x 32 version I’d like to see. Then at Dick’s I found a Simmons 3-9 x 32 and almost bought it. But I lucked out—I noticed the blister packaging had been slit open by someone and it was far enough open to pull out the scope. I pulled it out of the packaging and looked through it; it was terrible.
Wal-mart’s web site advertises the Barsaka I was looking for but the local Wal-Mart doesn’t carry them. Bottom line: keep looking!

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Monday, 20 November-

Today was jury-duty day. I didn’t sleep well last night and the night was a long one (though I did get some good reading in). I was surprised to learn that I was one of three-HUNDRED jurors in the pool. We gathered in the giant jury assembly room and after receiving our instructions, most of us read or did puzzles while awaiting the jury calls. At 1030, some 25 people were called to duty. We broke for lunch at 12 and I walked to Samuel’s Café for a coffee mocha, then took a leisurely walk around York’s square. I remember first moving to this area in the early 80’s and finding a blighted downtown and many empty stores west of the square. Today, most of those empty stores have been taken over by county government agencies and non-profit community-service organizations.
After lunch we again went back to our reading and puzzles and jury calls. There were two more calls around 1430, again taking about 25 people each. By 1500, those of us remaining sensed we’d be sent home shortly given that it was unlikely additional juries would be established that late in the day. Then we heard a surprising announcement. For the first time in the long experience of our jury-assembly clerks, the requirements for all cases for the week had been met on the first day and our services were no longer required. We were free to leave.
So I completed my jury duty without ever entering a courtroom. I’m not eligible for another jury call for three years.
That evening we watched ‘Down in the Valley’, a very flawed movie starring Edward Norton as a drifter cowboy/criminal in the San Fernando valley. The first half of the movie is pretty good but the second half gets completely lost. This would be a great film for students to understand some of the many things that can go wrong on a film in its journey from concept to celluloid.


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Sunday, 19 November-

Things are finally starting to dry out a bit after our recent rains so today we did the final lawn clean-up for the year. Labashi raked and I mowed. Later, I continued researching podcasts and trying to determine the best way to equip Mocha Joe for them. We tend to travel in areas where we have a limited selection of interesting radio programs. I considered satellite radio but lost interest when I realized the stations I’d like to have are spread across both Sirius and XM. I’m very reluctant to subscribe to ANY satellite radio service at all so if the answer is I can’t get what I want, well, that makes it easy; I’ll take neither. Unfortunately, even when we do have public radio stations, we don’t often hit them at the right time. But I’ve been finding some pretty interesting podcasts and it occurs to me that time-shifting is indeed the answer. All I need to do is take along a selection of podcasts to listen to when we’re bored with driving or want something to listen to on those long evenings.
That evening we watched ‘Tarnation’, a gritty film well worth our attention. It’s a film by a young gay boy/man whose mother received hundreds of shock treatments for her mental illness, yet she’s an integral part of him. He was raised by his grandparents who also had their challenges. The film’s images and music are remarkable and unforgettable.


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Saturday, 18 November-

This morning we had fun replacing light bulbs in the ceiling fan in our foyer. It’s in the oddest place. We had to bring in the extension ladder. That’s plenty high enough but it can’t be placed in such a way that you can reach the light with both hands. Removing the glass globe one-handed was tricky, replacing it impossible. We had to shift things around several times and finally Labashi pulled off a minor miracle by replacing the globe while seated backwards on the steep extension ladder and extending both arms out to the light.
In the afternoon I continued my Christmas research and happened upon a podcast on NPR.org called ‘My Lobotomy’. It’s the story of Howard Dully, who as normal 12-year-old boy was given an ‘ice-pick’ lobotomy in the Sixties. It’s called an ice-pick lobotomy because a surgical-version of an ice-pick is pushed into the brain by aligning it along the nose and inserting the point under the eyelid, then pushing it through the orbital socket bone and into the brain. There it is twirled (‘like an egg-beater’) to sever nerve connections within the brain. The story is told by Howard, who, in his Fifties, went searching for the reasons why this was done to him.
That evening we watched ‘Dateline NBC’ and yet another ‘To Catch a Predator’ city, this time Petaluma, CA. Later, I read that the series has become controversial since the suicide of an assistant district attorney in Murphy, Texas. He had solicited a 13-year-old boy for sex and shot himself when police arrived at his home to serve a warrant for his arrest. It’s an amazing thing to read the reactions of some citizens of Murphy. Many letters to the editor of the local papers complain that the stings should be stopped because they affect property values in the communities where they happen. Some complain of perverts being brought to their communities (though many of those arrested ARE from the community). Some complain that the alleged criminals should not be arrested because they hadn’t done anything; they weren’t actually caught in the physical act of abusing a child (they only showed up at the child’s house with the intention of abusing a child!!!!!!!!!!!!). My thoughts are pretty straightforward on this one. The complainers are foolishly writing out the first thought that occurs to them and if given the chance to understand the law and the implications of these men showing up at children’s homes to abuse them, they’d react differently. I’d bet some would even volunteer to allow their homes to be sting sites.


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Friday, 17 November-

I spent most of the morning preparing the documentation for my Florida non-resident gun permit for mailing and in studying Florida’s gun laws. I also did some searches on the web and learned that two states, Michigan and New Hampshire, honor Florida-resident permits but not Florida-nonresident permits. That’s not a problem for me in Michigan since my Pennsylvania permit is good there but I’m out of luck for New Hampshire. The application requires five documents, each of which can lead to a rejection. I was ensuring the package is complete and correct and making copies of everything before sending the package off by certified mail this afternoon. The application instructions say my application will be processed within 90 days and that will be about right for my winter trip plans.
Today’s mail brought the parts to repair the safety on my .22 rifle so I went ahead and disassembled the rifle and fixed it. The safety is now working as designed.
I also spent an hour today reviewing the paperwork for my jury duty which begins Monday.
That evening we went out to dinner. We went to a very nice little part-time restaurant in York. It’s run by students of the Yorktowne Business Institute as part of their Culinary Arts program. We’ve talked about trying this restaurant for several years but it seemed we’d only think of it when the students were on some type of break or we’d think of it on a weekend and the restaurant isn’t open weekends. Even this trip had its moments of doubt. The web site said the restaurant is closed for break but then we realized the posted date for re-opening was already behind us. A phone call got us a reservation tonight-- and it turned out we had selected the last night of service before the Thanksgiving break.
Our meal of seafood Newburg (me) and mahi-mahi (Labashi) was excellent. Service was a bit uneven but certainly not a problem. Our waiter was a 40-something guy who (when we asked) said he was a second-career student and had been working at the restaurant for seven months. He had been a human-resources specialist for a large retail store in his first career. When we asked how it’s going, he said the restaurant business was a little too much like his previous experience in retail. We’re not sure if that meant he’s unhappy or not but his body language when he said it suggests he’ll be embarking on a third career sometime fairly soon. Cost was $23.95 per person and may be a bit high but with the excellent appetizers it seemed reasonable to us.
Back home, we watched ‘Game 6’, with Michael Keaton and Robert Downey, Jr. This movie is another marginal one as far as quality. Again, it’s a labor-of-love for the director and one which took years to fund and make. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the ring of truth to it. It looks more like a challenge-exercise in a film-writing class. “Your challenge today, class, is to write a script tying a playwright’s fears for his play possibly being reviewed by a savage critic on its opening night to Game Six of the 1986 World Series, which happens to be played on the same night”.
Puh-leeze. I do like both Michael Keaton and Robert Downey, Jr., though.

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Thursday, 16 November-

Today’s another rainy one and in fact a record-setting rainy day for many communities in this area. We had our own excitement today when we noticed a rush of water running through the trees at the edge of our property and threatening our storage barn. We rushed outside in the heavy rain and grabbed tools from the barn to clear the storm drain grates on our hilly side street. We’ve seen this before. The grates were jammed by leaves and branches, as happens to some degree each Fall; this is just a bad one. Water on the street was up to a foot deep on the street and overflowing the curb onto the neighbor’s lawn at a low point. From there the water was accelerating rapidly downhill and through our property at the tree line, carrying away the mulch and exposing the landscape cloth as it roared into the little stream below us. We had a heck of a time even finding the two grates in the deep water. Fortunately, Labashi had selected a pitchfork as her tool-of-choice and found the grate-slots through the two-inch-thick layer of leaves. After a few minutes of digging we had whirlpools going over each of the two grates and in twenty minutes had the situation under control. It was actually kind of fun; very much like two kids playing in a BIG mud puddle. One of our neighbors came home toward the end of this little adventure and gave us a big smile and a wave as she drove through the rapidly-draining pool of water.
The other thing I did today was write a letter to our state district representative. We had attended a community meeting Monday evening about a proposed plan for property tax relief. The plan is to shift the school-tax burden from property to income by offsetting a property-tax reduction with an additional income tax burden, either as a higher ‘earned-income’ tax or a new ‘personal-income’ tax. Either one would be good news for me since neither one taxes pension income. I’d get a four-hundred-dollar reduction in my school taxes. However, I don’t think the proposal has any chance of passing. Charts in the presentation show a breakeven point of $41,000, i.e., if your income is less than $41,000 your overall tax burden is reduced. If over $41K, then you would have to pay in. I can’t imagine anyone voting for ‘property tax relief’ if it means their overall tax bill goes up. And given the demographics of the district, most people would be paying more.
My letter, however, addressed two issues. First, the tax board says they plan to recommend an increase in the Earned Income Tax (as opposed to the Personal Income Tax) because the state has not told them how a Personal Income Tax would be collected. That seems like a cop-out to me. Any decision about which tax is fairer to the citizens shouldn’t hinge upon the mechanics of collection. Secondly, the tax commission failed to include any gaming income. The recent approvals to allow gaming in the state were based on a promised billion dollars in gaming-taxes providing property-tax relief. The local tax commission says the state has failed to identify how they would receive so they didn’t include it. That means the charts showing the break-even point are artificially low and citizens voting on the referendum question of whether or not to adopt the new plan will have inaccurate data.
That evening we watched ‘Survivor, Cook Islands’ and a PBS program on Iran.

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Wednesday, 15 November-

Today was a rainy day and I spent most of it on the web. I spent the morning blogging and emailing and the afternoon researching some Christmas-present ideas. ‘Nuff said on that…..

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Teddy in Tasmania, Yella Sam, World’s End State Park trails, ‘Lonesome Jim’, ‘Da Vinci Code’
(posted from home)
(this post covers 9-14 November)


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Tuesday, 14 November-

This morning I went once again to my periodontist to have the dental implant checked and the news isn’t good; I’ll have to have the bone graft redone. I feel a twinge of pain as the periodontist works in the area and that should not be. The bone graft apparently didn’t ‘take’ completely. We start all over again right after Thanksgiving.
I then stopped by the local Starbucks and read the Times. Several months ago I had met a Starbucks employee named Jim there and we started talking about photography. We’ve talked off and on about it on my occasional visits there. Today he joined me during his morning break and we talked about his experiences with photography in the Olympic Peninsula rain forest and Mount Rainier while I told him of the millions of dollars of rain and flood damage there being reported in the NPS Morning Report.
I spent much of the afternoon blogging and ran a few errands on the bike.
That evening we watched ‘The DaVinci Code’, the Ron-Howard-directed bomb of a movie adaptation of the Dan Brown mystery novel. I see RottenTomatoes gives it a terrible rating and I have to agree it’s not very good. IMDB.com readers give it a higher rating. It was a tough project to take on but with Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou he certainly had the talent to work with and I did enjoy watching them at work. But the story itself drags and confuses.

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Monday, 13 November-

Today marked the end of the three-week processing period for my local pistol permit. This process is a little odd here in York County. You submit your paperwork and wait three weeks. If you don’t receive a letter of denial, then you assume it has been approved and come in to have your photo taken and the permit issued. And, by the way, don’t call the office; they will not accept any calls to request status. So I took them at their word and I’m happy to report it happened just as they promised—no hassles at all.
I then ran some errands, picking up some photo-printer ink for an art project Labashi is working on and doing some grocery shopping on this rainy day.
I spent the afternoon working on my boyhood 20-gauge shotgun and .22 ‘plinker’ rifle. The shotgun just needed a routine cleaning and oiling. The .22 was given to me by my parents on my 12th birthday and has spent the great, great majority of its life stored away. It had become dangerous to use because the safety didn’t work properly. My brothers and I had noticed years ago that something had changed with the safety. It no longer locked into either the ‘safe’ or ‘fire’ position and it was possible to get the trigger positioned in such a way that taking the gun from ‘fire’ to ‘safe’ actually fired the rifle! So today I took it apart. I found it had a broken safety-spring. This allowed the safety’s trigger-catch to rotate ever-so-slightly out of position; just enough to let the trigger mechanism to slide past and jam against the trigger. Any effort to free the jam then allowed the trigger to release the firing pin. By googling for the rifle model I found a source for safety-springs for this 44-year-old el-cheapo .22 and ordered two of them. Hopefully they’re on their way. In the meantime I’ve changed the safety so it can’t jam the trigger.
That evening we watched the extras on the ‘Desperate Housewives’ disk. That Mark Cherry (the developer and chief writer of the show) is a very interesting guy and no shirker when it comes to working hard to make his dream come true.

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Sunday, 12 November-

It’s a rainy day today and I spent most of it on the web. I continue to be fascinated by the variety of videos showing up on youtube.com and video.google.com. I also spend a good bit of time ‘patrolling’ favorite interest groups and owner’s groups. I like to read the National Park Service’s Morning Report (www.nps.org/morningreport) once or twice a week and am intrigued by all the incidents that happen in our parks. I also like to check the Pennsylvania DCNR web sites (www.dcnr.state.pa.us) to see the latest news about our state parks and state forests.
That evening we wrapped up the first season of ‘Desperate Housewives’. We can use a break now before starting Season Two but we’re looking forward to it.

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Saturday, 11 November-

This morning I took the Concours to my favorite bike shop to have a clutch-switch installed. The bike had developed a quirk of not starting unless the clutch lever was depressed slightly. It was completely reliable as far as starting if you DO depress the clutch lever but that’s not how it should work. The changeout only took a half-hour and then I headed to my brother’s home about an hour away. We went out to lunch and caught up on the news from my latest trip and then I buzzed on home by dark.
That night Labashi and I watched three episodes of ‘Desperate Housewives’.

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Friday, 10 November-

This morning I left my campsite at World’s End State Park and drove Mocha Joe up to the Canyon Vista viewpoint as a trailhead for a walk on the Link Trail. I again had a sunny day but it was somewhat airy and I kept taking off top layers then putting them back on as I moved from sun to shade and back again. The Link Trail winds across the mountain-top and ducks in and out of impressive stands of hemlocks. I walked for an hour and a half and came out to a forest road. I crossed and continued on for another half-mile before returning to the forest road. My map showed I could take the forest road back to the vista so I did that rather than backtrack the same trail. Along the way I was thinking how alone I was up here when two pickups full of hunters came by. A short distance further I saw a parked truck, then another, and another. I also saw one hunter just off the road; his orange cap drawing my eye. Judging by where they were parked and by the one hunter I saw, they were apparently hunting the area I had just come through and I had thought I had the woods all to myself. This just reminds me to continue to wear my extra-bright hunter-orange cap when hiking during hunting season, even when it seems nobody’s around.
My walk today lasted a bit over two-and-a-half hours.
After returning to the van I drove to a parking spot at the Loyalsock Trail intersection and made lunch, then decided it’s time to head home.
I took Route 42 south to Bloomsburg, then 11 to its intersection with 15 and then home, arriving by dark. I see the odometer says this week’s trip totaled 750 miles. Mocha Joe now has 89K on him and has done very well for us.
That evening Labashi and I watched the movie ‘Lonesome Jim’, a Steve Buscemi-directed farce starring CaseyAffleck and Liv Tyler. I’m not sure I’d have given it a two-thumbs-up rating but it did have some pretty funny moments. I see RottenTomatoes.com gives it a 43% ‘cream of the crop’ rating. I probably would not have rented it if I’d known that. My experience is I don’t like movies that don’t get at least a 60% rating there.

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Thursday, 9 November-

After my stay at the local Wal-Mart last night, I spent much of this morning connected to the internet. I was in Mocha Joe and parked in front of the Ten West coffee shop in Mansfield. This setup works well for me. I have a power source for my laptop (and can avoid the hassle of trying to find an outlet somewhere in the coffee shop), a private place to work, and I get to enjoy a morning coffee-mocha while doing my work. Today I was uploading my blog entry and handling emails. Among my emails today was a very interesting one. A woman in Tasmania had taken her son to a geocache in Tasmania where one of my travel bugs (Teddy the Traveling Turtle) was supposed to be located… but he isn’t there. Some background: I sent this travel bug (http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?tracker=449363) on his way in January of 2004 and very shortly thereafter he was taken to Australia. He then went missing for a year. The geocacher who took him to Australia contacted visitors to the cache where he’d been left but to no avail. But then he showed up in Tasmania. He traveled around there from January 2005 until July of 2005 but has not been seen since (or, more correctly, has not been logged as having been found). The email I received today came from a woman who had read about Teddy and had taken her young son, Michael, to see him and pick him up. But Teddy was gone; someone had apparently picked him up and didn’t realize he’s a travel bug. She kindly offered to replace him with another turtle if I want to send a replacement travel bug tag and explained that poor Michael had cried when Teddy wasn’t found where he was supposed to be. I declined the offer, thinking I’ll send some emails to visitors who have logged their visits to the cache and may yet come up with him but it’s a long shot. If that fails, I’ll have to re-think how to get him going again. I liked getting copies of log entries each time he moved and I enjoyed how some people would play along in the game of helping Teddy travel the world. In the meantime, I’ve ‘picked up’ Teddy’s travel bug number so it doesn’t continue to appear in the cache listing only to disappoint any kids hoping to find him there.
And that brought up the subject of Yella Sam. That’s another travel bug (http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?tracker=449587). This one is a little yellow army-guy with a parachute attached. I sent him out in February 2004 and he traveled frequently until March 2005. But then I received an email from a geocacher in North Carolina which told me Yella Sam had been lost while in their possession. I again was hoping it would show up but today was the day to finally admit defeat. I logged his travel bug number back into my possession.
By late morning I was back on the road and heading east on Route 6. I stopped for lunch at Mt. Pisgah State Park and thought I might try a little fishing in their pond on this beautiful sunny day but decided instead to continue on to World’s End State Park, my goal for the day. Shortly after leaving the park I saw a six-point buck cross the road just ahead of me and this one also stopped right after crossing the road and posed for me in an open field.
By 1400 I was at World’s End and in my campsite. I spent the next hour fishing the Loyalsock Creek across from the campground and saw one nice trout in the ultra-clear water but had no hits on the various spinners and spoons I tried. I need to work on casting accuracy anyway so my time there was by no means wasted. I’m not sure it’s even possible to ‘waste time’ when you’re fishing on a sunny day along a very pretty trout stream.
At about 1530 I decided to take a walk on the Canyon Vista trail. Since it was getting late I thought I’d just do a quick out-and-back but in only 30 minutes the trail was climbing very steeping toward the top of the mountain, so steeply that I was having trouble with the leaves causing me to occasionally slide back downhill. When I finally made the top I thought I’d rather not return down that steep section. The map showed I could continue on and intersect the Loyalsock Trail to return or just continue to the vista then continue on via the Canyon Vista trail as it circled back to the campground. When I reached the Loyalsock Trail I was only ten minutes from the vista and if I hurried I’d be able to see the sunset from the vista. I reached the vista as the sun was just touching the horizon and watched it set, then started down-trail as fast as I could walk--- darkness was coming on very quickly. I knew there was a forest road nearby and I could catch it if the trail got nasty in the dark but I did have two lights in my day-pack so I was fine. I made it back to the campground with about ten minutes to spare. That turned out to be a four-mile walk.
That evening I watched ‘Mad Max’ (the original 1980 one) and I was surprised how little I remembered of it. The bad guy looked familiar but otherwise it was a new movie for me. I enjoyed seeing the various Hondas and Kawasaki Z900’s in their cafe-racer versions --- very cool.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Concours14, New York trip (posted from Ten West coffee shop in Mansfield, PA)
(this post covers 2-8 November)

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Wednesday, 8 November-

Today I headed out. My plan was to rejoin Route 6 in northern PA about where I had left it two weeks ago. I spent a few hours working my way across the southern tier of New York after just turning off at one of the exits and heading ‘sort-of’ in the right direction. Before long I was hopelessly lost but all I had to do was keep driving and eventually I came out to a marked road and could find it on the map. My route took me out 417W which my atlas showed as a scenic route and that was indeed the case (if you don’t count the fog). At Wellsville, NY I turned south toward PA and was soon in Galeton, then at Colton Point and the Grand Canyon of PA. The state park campground was closed but I did walk the Barbour’s Rock trail loop. I liked the walk but could hardly see anything in the Grand Canyon; it was filled with fog. But as I drove out of the park, a perfect four-point buck crossed the road ahead of me and climbed the bank, then stood there in a picture-perfect pose. I then took a turn-around through pretty downtown Wellsboro and went on the Mansfield and the local Wal-mart for the night. This evening I watched 'Hellboy'-- and liked it!

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Tuesday, 7 November-

Today my nephew had a day off so we hit four geocaches and checked out a couple of gun shops. Our first cache was practically a drive-by, an instant find near the road. Our second was supposed to be tougher but we got very lucky and found it right off. The third took us down a muddy trail with the GPS pointing into a swamp but we just had to be patient for another access path to open up. But it still had a little trick for us—we walked right under the box with our eyes glued to the ground for clues while the box bungied to a tree-limb above us silently chuckled. My eagle-eyed nephew found it on the next pass. Our fourth for the day was in a little park and we noticed a mommy with two kids and a stroller near the little trail where we had to enter the woods. We found and logged ourselves into the cache and on the way out we thought we’d better say something to ‘mommy’ so she doesn’t think we’re in there retrieving a drug stash or something. We asked if she had ever heard of geocaching. Her face brightened up and she said “I THOUGHT that’s what you were doing when I saw you carrying the little box (the GPS).” Good. We don’t need any cell-phone calls to the local law-enforcement guys about two ne'er-do-wells acting suspiciously in the woods at the local park.
That evening we had dinner at my niece’s home. Somehow I again got separated from the herd again and found myself ‘dancing’ in the most hilarious jump-around-shake-your-booty fashion with the two kids (the sixteen-month-old is actually very good!). Everybody else soon joined the party and we all had a good laugh.

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Monday, 6 November-

This morning we went out to breakfast in preparation for a day of geocaching. My nephew picked out a couple of geocaches in Ontario County Park for the four of us (my brother, my nephew and his wife, and me). We had a nice warm day and found the first geocache without much effort—it wasn’t far from our parking spot. But the second one was a different story. We knew the GPS showed that it lay about a mile-and-a-quarter away down the Finger Lakes Trail. But those were as-a-crow-flies miles and our walk on the FLT was anything but a straight line. We eventually passed a sign saying we were now two miles from the park and we still had another half-mile to go. But what we didn’t know going in was the trail dropped pretty steeply in the last mile—steep enough that we kept sliding in the leaves covering the trail. We didn’t have much trouble finding the cache but we all knew it was going to be a struggle getting back up that long, long hill and back to the car. And it was. But all we really had to do was slow down and keep putting one foot in front of the other and somehow it all worked out. Actually, after the first mile back up that hill, the rest seemed easy. But GiddyUp wasn’t real fond of the climb.
That evening my brother had to work and my niece was busy with the sixteen-month-old so my sister-in-law and I took the three-year-old to dinner at ‘Sticky Lips’, a very good little bar-be-que restaurant in Rochester. All went well until I decided I’d better carry the three-year-old down the steep stairs of the restaurant as we were leaving. She screamed bloody murder. And then she sceamed even louder-- MUCH louder, attracting the attention of everyone in the restaurant. Of course I wasn’t going to give in to a three-year old (due, I believe in retrospect, to my lack of experience) and so I hung on tight. For a moment it looked like the other patrons were going to attack me for mistreating the little angel. After we were safely home I asked her what the problem was. “My mommy knows I’m big enough to walk all by myself and I won’t falled down.” Duly noted, angel.

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Sunday, 5 November-

Today I loaded up Mocha Joe and headed north, bound for my brother’s house near Rochester, NY. It’s about a five-hour drive and a very scenic one, particularly along the Susquehanna. Once above Mansfield I noticed the trees no longer have any leaves at all except in a few patchy areas, quite a difference from just two weeks ago when I was a few miles west of here in the Pine Creek Valley. I made it to his home by about 1430. My niece has two young children, a boy of sixteen months and a girl of three-going-on-fifteen. The three-year-old somehow separated me from the rest of the herd (of grown-ups) and before long we were making pretend-soup out of the population of her doll house, were changing Barbie into her swimsuit to take a swim in a pretend-pool made out of a doll-blanket, and went to visit the three-year-old’s pretend-friend named John Mayer who lived in the next room. “Hello, John Mayer, where are your toys? And where are your babies? Don’t you have anything to eat? Would you like to come over for some soup?” And so we made another batch of soup.

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Saturday, 4 November-

Today I spent all day on the web reading quite a variety of things. I’m still working my way through the various message threads on KTOG.org and KTRange.com. I also did quite a lot of reading on TheHighRoad.com about gun safety and gun laws. I also enjoyed watching a lot of videos on youtube.com and video.google.com. I went in with the idea of finding some videos about stances and techniques for my pistol but somehow got sidetracked into air and motorcycle crashes, ultralight aircraft, gyrocopters, hang-gliders, jet-propelled-radio-control model planes, video-camera-equipped model rockets and radio-control model helicopters. BOY, there’s a lot of stuff out there.
That evening we watched another batch of Desperate Housewives episodes. They’re very funny but do require a healthy dose of ‘suspension-of-disbelief’.

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Friday, 3 November-

Today I drove into Eastern Market hoping to find some tabouli/tabbouleh and maybe even some falafel. And sure enough one stand had both plus several types of bean salads. Labashi will like that! On the way home I stopped at the video store and scanned the shelves for some new series to try. I picked up the Grey’s Anatomy box since I’ve heard it’s the top TV series but I don’t think I’m into hospital dramas. I had a similar thought about Desperate Housewives but I’ve read some good things about it lately so thought we’d try it. At home we kicked off the evening with the Desperate Housewives pilot and quickly were hooked—right after the narrator commits suicide. We watched two more episodes after the pilot and would have gone for another but midnight was approaching.

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Thursday, 2 November-

Today I spent much of the morning blogging then drove down to York and Dover to three gun shops for miscellaneous cleaning supplies and to check out their inventories of used guns, mostly out of curiosity. I’ve been looking for some type of deep-sided tray to use for cleaning the pistol at the range to keep all the parts in one place and hopefully avoid losing any of them if I happen to drop something during dis-assembly and think I’ve found something that will work. While in town I rode over to the cycle shop to see if my clutch-lever safety switch has come in but no luck there. I did have a nice long conversation with the service manager about the new Concours14 coming out in the 2008 model year. My Concours is a classic in that the first bikes of that design were sold in 1986 and they’ve changed very little since. Kawasaki has finally gotten around to an update and is basing it on their new Ninja, the ZX-14. That bike took the title of world’s fastest production motorcycle from the Suzuki Hayabusa. My current Concours has a modified Ninja 1000 engine and the Concours14 will have similar mods done to the Ninja 1400 for mid-range torque and driveability. It will also be thoroughly modernized with fuel injection, ABS, variable valve-timing, theft-deterrent ignition, petal-type disc rotors on four-piston radial brakes, etc. The rumor is the new bike will sell in the ‘twelves’. That will probably mean I’ll just stick with my Concours classic but we’ll have to see what kind of reviews the new one gets. The service manager tells me he already has deposits on two of them even though the price has yet to be announced and it won’t be showing up until the 2008 models come out.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

‘Lost City’, ‘Akira’, ‘Metropolis‘ (posted from home)
(this post covers 29 October to 1 November)

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Wednesday, 1 November-

Today was supposed to be threatening rain but was warm and a sunny 70 degrees. Labashi has a large mailing going out for one of her volunteer projects so we took care of hauling boxes of books to the post office and shipping them off. I then decided to check a couple of gun shops I found in the yellow pages for the holster I’ve been looking for. I could call, I suppose, but then I’d not get to look around the shops. I took the Miata today and went searching, but I had no luck at all. Two of the three shops in the Yellow Pages are now closed and the other didn’t have what I wanted.
After striking out there, I drove to Rocky Ridge park and thought I’d try the end-to-end jog I had been doing in the heat of summer. I’ve not been doing nearly enough jogging to expect much so I was surprised when I realized I was going to make it the whole way. Time today was 94 minutes even.
This evening we started the anime film ‘Metropolis’ but abandoned after only about 15 minutes. Looks like we’re not going to become anime fans.

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Tuesday, 31 October-
Today was a spectacular day, weather-wise. Labashi’s daffodil bulbs arrived yesterday and she’s heavily into that. She will be planting her 500 bulbs for days to come but still says she doesn’t want me to help—in fact she chased me away. But she did have an appointment in Hershey to pick up some heavy packages so I volunteered to take care of that. In the meantime I had another appointment to check on progress of my dental implant so I took care of that, then spent an hour or so browsing around at Bass Pro’s gun shop before going to the appointment. Back home I decided it was just too nice a day to stay inside so I went for a five-mile walk along the creek near our home. I saw a pretty sight along the way. A small ridge parallels the road but sits about 150 yards across the field on part of my walk. A car passed me and stopped, I thought to look across the field at something on the hill or back in the field. And sure enough on the top of the ridge and in silhouette against the setting sun-lit clouds were three deer making their way across the ridge. When I turned back, I saw the guy get out of his car and approach a sign along the road—he had just stopped to read the no-hunting sign. But what great timing for me. Those deer were like ghosts; too far for any sound to reach me but bounding easily along, backlit by the red clouds of sunset. It was fully dark by the time I reached home and there was Labashi just putting away her gardening tools. She had just finished the first ‘drift’ of daffodils under our paw-paw trees and had a big smile.

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Monday, 30 October-

This morning I added a dot of white paint for an undercoat then a bright-orange color dot of paint on top of it on the front sight of the pistol. I’ll give that a try before possibly adding some color to the back sight. Opinions on whether the back sight needs the paint are mixed on the owner’s group. I then took the Miata to the shooting range on Route 74, about a 20-minute drive for me. This time I was working on adjusting stance and establishing a better trigger-pull. I only shot 35 rounds and decided that was enough until I have a chance to do some more reading. I then drove over to nearby Pinchot park and jogged for 45 minutes from the east parking lot to the campground and back. Along the way I heard what sounded like a low-flying plane. That turned out to be an airboat. I’d think that engine would be exceeding the horsepower-limit for the lake but maybe they’ve increased the limit. My jog was a bit of a struggle; I just couldn’t seem to get into it today.
That evening we watched an anime feature. I had asked the local video store guys to recommend a beginner’s anime and they recommended ‘Akira’ and ‘Metropolis’. We watched most of Akira but lost interest about two-thirds of the way through. Labashi went on to bed to read and I finished off the movie but wasn’t into it. The movie had too much gratuitous violence and the director was particularly fond of streaming a lot of very-bright-red blood over everything—much like a video game. I did enjoy some of the graphics, particularly those depicting futuristic motorcycles and helicopters.

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Sunday, 29 October-

This morning I updated my blog and did my email and normal web work, including some reading on the owner’s group web site for my new pistol. I also spent some time reading my Traveler’s Guide to Gun Laws, particularly with regard to laws about transporting it through states where my permit will not be honored and into Canada. In the afternoon I rode the Concours down to the Gander Mountain store in York, looking for a holster and a lock-box for the pistol. I bought a reasonably-small lock-box but the holster brand I’m looking for is tougher to find than I had imagined. I stopped by the Wal-mart and picked up two bottles of fluorescent-color model paint so I can brighten up the teeny-tiny little sights on the pistol. At the gun show I had seen some special (and expensive) paint for this purpose which is supposed to glow in the dark but that’s only true if the paint has been exposed to light for some period of time; it wouldn’t work for a pistol that’s holstered almost all of the time.
That evening we watched ‘Lost City’, an Andy Garcia film about the fall of the Baptista government and Havanna in the late Fifties. It’s obviously a labor-of-love for Andy but we found it a little uneven. Watching the extras helped us understand just how much this 16-year project meant to Andy and that made it a worthy rental for us. Fans of Cuban music might appreciate it for the extensive use of music.