Five Things No One Knows About Me

My friend Broschat has tagged me to play along with a bloggers’ game of revealing five things nobody knows about me. This confirms my growing realization that Broschat has become a nerd. In high school, he was the coolest guy I knew, but years of working with computers have taken their toll.

I should get out of this blog business while I still can, but for now I’ll play along.

Since this exercise could lead to humiliation, I’m tempted to write witty but obviously untrue items: “Abandonded by my parents in childhood, I was raised by wild rabbits.”

The truth about my parents is that they were notoriously cheap and overprotective, and even into my early teens, they made me go with them to square dances. I lived in fear that someone would find out my parents were square dancers.

Notice the curly blond hair in my blog photo? My Aunt Katie nicknamed me Rossie Tossie Cottontail. I still kind of like the name.

I comment on Broscat’s blog that I was once nearly arrested in France for public urination. That’s true. I actually got roughed up by a gendarme. In France at the time, public urination was as common as spitting on the sidewalk, so I won’t say any more about why I was singled out for attention. I do know I was very drunk.

I like to think I am fast on a motorcycle.

I was a poor trumpet player in the high school dance band. However, I once sang a scat solo to “Jumpin’ with Symphony Sid” at a parents’ night concert. I was good enough that the band director had me take two extra choruses. At home, though, my parents said they didn’t understand what I was singing.

I’m the only guy I know who lost his virginity while—oh, wait!—that was five.

Free to Roam

I’ve been trying to keep a good attitude about my temporary disability, but the truth is I was getting cranky. I know it’s supposed to be comforting that I have it way better than some Sudanese farmer watching the Janjahweed ride into town, but this is my Winter Vacation and I’ve been pretty much confined to quarters. It hurts to walk and it hurts just to stand up for more than a few minutes.

As usual, the practical and emotional solution to the problem lies in getting some new wheels. Candy-apple red!

At last, I’m free again to go shopping and hang around in video arcades. Now all I need is some competition.

Also, I haven’t found the motor on this thing yet, but I know there has to be one.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

The poor little electric car never had a chance. GM made only one mistake. When the California Air Resources Board (CARB) told automakers in the mid-1990s that they had to make ten percent of their fleet “zero pollution at the tailpipe” by 2002, GM turned the project over to its Saturn Division, which actually thought its job was to build a great electric car. Before GM realized its mistake, Saturn had done just that and leased several hundred of them to drivers in Southern California.

Within a few years, hundreds of fully electric EV-ls were in use on the roads and freeways of SoCal. What’s amazing is not so much that GM recalled the cars from loyal owners and buried the project, but that they did such a good job of burying the story.

It took a few years in the late 1990s for the automakers and oil companies to stack CARB with their sycophants and get the new standards eliminated. Once they did, they began to call in the leases on the EV-ls. By 2004, GM had recalled all their electric cars and actually crushed them in wrecking yards. Today, there is only one known EV-1 in an auto museum, and it’s just a shell. The motor, batteries, and drive train have been removed.

The documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? tells the story through interviews with owners, engineers, Saturn executives, and former CARB board members, as well as lots of footage of the cars on the road. The film can be rather depressing, as these David and Goliath stories usually are (only in the Bible did David win), but it’s a fascinating study and it ends with two hopeful notes: one, hybrid electrics aren’t as good as a totally electric car, but the automakers are willing to produce them; and, two, with a Democratic majority in Congress, we might still see more on the electric car.

And if you thought you already hated the Bush administration, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

I highly recommend Who Killed the Electric Car, available through Netflix and your local video store.

The Care and Feeding of Your Hernia

I initially took the news of my hernia rather hard, (“Why me, God!? The horror!”) but I’m actually adjusting to the enforced confinement rather well.

True, I’m impatient to get the operation done and get back to my good old self, however good my old self might be. I was even going to call some local surgeons and see if I could get put on standby. Maybe they lose a patient on the table early in a procedure and they're all scrubbed already, it's a shame to waste all those gowns and latex gloves. What do they do for the next four hours, play canasta?

But probably I'll just lounge around like Cleopatra for another five or six weeks. Frankly, I don’t want to do anything that might rush or confuse folks up at the local hospital. They only recently stopped advertising “Now, with anesthetic!” And “cutting edge” is not a comforting hospital slogan.

Despite the enforced confinement, it cheers me up to make a list of things I can’t do and can do. Basically, I can’t do anything that involves lifting or being on my feet for more than about two minutes. This would include all the labors of Hercules, plus such lowly chores as

Help Mary unload and stack two tons of hay for Woody
Shovel snow
Wash the dishes
Vacuum and dust
Clean up dog poop

Things I can do include

Feed myself
Move from one chair to another
Watch DVDs
Play video games
Read
Write letters to the editor about what an idiot the president is
Start an ant farm
Go to bed

I can also watch television, which I’m finding has an occasional fun program. I get four or five stations with my rabbit ears. (I have free television; think about it!) I’m becoming a fan of Ellen Degeneris, who has an afternoon show. I think she’s funny, and I like the idea of a self-deprecating lesbian comic who doesn’t do attack comedy or gross potty-mouth humor.

All in all, this is a life some might call perfect. People a little over-stressed from work who can’t afford a month off in the Caribbean might opt for an elective hernia. I’m comfortable as long as I stay seated or reclining. Mary is always cheerful if I ask her to fluff my pillow or bring me a mint.

Not My Job Award

My Christmas Vacation

I don’t know what the rest of you dudes are getting for Christmas, but I got a hernia.

This was not one of the items on the list I text-messaged to Santa last June so he’d have time to get it right before the advent of the chaotic holiday season, now generally acknowledged to begin the day after Labor Day (renamed by the Bush administration National Right to Work in America Day).

Santa usually totally blows my Christmas list. I ask for a Power Commander titanium slip-on muffler for my VFR, a muffler which will deliver to this fine motorcycle a guaranteed 3.2 percent increase in torque and horsepower and which will allow me to finally blast my zero-to-sixty times below the insufferable three-second barrier known as “The Great Wall of Inertia.”

Santa brings me a wool scarf and says “Hey, an elf checked ‘muffler.’”

Or I ask for a Street Sweeper semi-automatic combat assault shotgun plus a few dozen bowling pins and some watermelons, and Santa delivers unto me a holiday CD, Enya Sings The Sacred Celtic Hymns of the Winter Solstice. It sounds to me like bats on Qualudes.

This year I thought I’d try to lowball Santa and only asked for a new snorkel and three weeks in Belize. Instead, right after classes got out, I was catching up on my laying on the couch when I started to feel some discomfort and pain in what is commonly referred to as the groin and general pubical area. My tolerance for pain is less even than my tolerance for Enya.

Over the next few days, the discomfort grew worse, accompanied by swelling. Of course, my first thought was I have cancer. Cancer runs in my family like some families get frequent lice. If I have a toothache, I assume I have tooth cancer. Pretty much the slightest ache or pain and I go to an emotional DEF-CON 3 and start planning for hospice care.

My second thought was a hernia, maybe a malignant hernia. I wasn’t sure what a hernia actually was, but I had the notion that if you slightly underfill a water balloon and then squeeze it, a hernia would look a lot like that. This seemed like a good description of my groin, so I self-diagnosed probably a hernia

I called Old Doc Novak and made an emergency appointment because my groin was about to explode, and after a record-low three hours in the waiting room I was rushed to the inner-office where another of the interchangeable cute nurses who I had as students only a few years ago went to work measuring my blood pressure and checking my weight. (Am I here because I’m fat!!??)

Novak came in after a few rounds of golf and gave me his usual cheery greeting. “Take off your pants.”

And so, after just a few minutes of groping my balls and sticking his fingers in my butt, Novak diagnosed a bilateral hernia and told me to make an appointment with a good surgeon. I don’t happen to know any good surgeons offhand, so he gave me a few names. As I was leaving, he offered a cheerful parting observation, “This will lay you up for a few weeks.”

“And a happy religiously and ethnically appropriate winter holiday to you and yours as well!” I wished him and his.

I thought, well at least I’m on winter break and I can just pop into one of these surgeons’ offices and get this thing tied off or lasered or whatever they do these days. I’ll use my break time to be laid up and let Mary wait on me. But when I start calling around for a surgeon with a little slack in his calendar, I find the earliest appointment I can get is mid-January.

“What is this, Canada?” I ask my short-list of Professional Office Administrative Assistants Tasked With Scheduling. “Not! This is America! I have insurance!”

But to no avail. I have to spend my winter break nursing a swollen and painful groin, then when I go back to work in January, I have to get practically major surgery and limp back into the classroom within days to lecture on faulty parallelism and other venal sins.

Or maybe I could show a movie, but I’m just an adjunct now. I don’t have sick leave, and if you miss even one day of class they fire you and give all your remaining courses to one of the many Middle-East immigrants on expired work visas who have an Associate’s in General Studies and who will lecture for food.

Life is so unfair, but at least I’ll be getting a handicapped parking sticker. They’re good for a year and you can cut off fat people driving old Buicks and get the parking place right by the Fred Meyer front door. And maybe my insurance will pay for one of those electric wheel chairs to use during my long convalescence.

I want one with a Power Commander.

Introduction to Poetry

I’ve only recently begun to read poetry, a strange confession for someone who graduated with honors in literature some thirty years ago. But then I haven’t read Moby Dick yet, either, nor Don Quixote, never mind the whole dizzy slew of postmodernists like Pynchon.

(I feel compelled to point out I’ve read plenty of difficult stuff and even partially understood some of it. But my list of things I haven’t read will always be longer than things I have.)

Reading poetry, I sometimes feel angry at the author.

“Why does it have to be so difficult? Why can’t you just say what you mean?” Some poems seem to mean something on a literal level which I can’t quite penetrate. Others seem intended to resist any kind of literal paraphrase.

I find, though, that I’m often drawn more to poems which are hard to understand. I can often say I like it, I just don’t know what it means. (My friend Broschat makes the same observation about films over on his Montlake blog.)

Here’s a poem I think I understand, but I like it anyway. It says something about how I try to read poetry.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

Or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Oregon’s Republican Senator Gordon Smith has made his strongest remarks yet about the war in Iraq: “I for one am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd.”

He used the word "criminal."

Smith said he’d like to see US troops withdrawn “quicker rather than later” and that he would not have voted for the war if he’d known the intelligence had not been accurate: “It was not accurate, but that is history.”

If Smith were a Democrat, people would be crying “cut and run” and calling him a “flip-flopper.” Since he’s a Republican, some are saying he’s just worried about his election in 2008. Granted, no United States Senator gives an opinion on so much as broccoli without thinking about the next election, but I think it takes courage to admit you were wrong and change your position.

I’m proud that all of Oregon’s Congressional Democrats—Senator Wyden and four Representatives—voted against the war. They were right from the start.

How To Save Iraq

The blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group has recommended a slow withdrawl of US troops from Iraq. Not a timed withdrawl exactly. More of a drawdown, but not a drawdown with any particular timetable. A phased redeployment maybe. Something time-released.

Even Donald Rumsfeld, it turns out, was thinking exactly the same thing just two days before he resigned as Secretary of Defense. He said pulling a few troops out would force the Iraqis to "pull up their socks."

I know this is good military strategy because I heard it first thing every morning in Army basic training (1967) when Drill Sergeant Johnson would turn on the lights and roar "Drop your cocks and pull up your socks!!" And by God we did, and just a few months later we were all in Vietnam, and everybody knows how that turned out.

Now, though, conservative pundits are pointing out correctly that if we leave Iraq, things will only get worse. Liberal pundits are correctly pointing out that we've been there going on four years and things have done nothing but get worse. You can see why the President needed a Blue Ribbon Study Group, but I have to say, I have some better ideas, and I didn't even get an expense account.

First, as others have been discussing on the Web, we could rehabilitate Saddam and bring him back.

Dust off the fedora. Give him back his gun.

He's just the kind of tough leader we need right now, and the fact that he's a criminal shouldn't stop us. After he was pardoned by President Ford, Richard Nixon was rehabilitated and was seen as a kind of elder statesmen. I think he even went to China a few times, and China is our friend now.

Still, lots of people would have a problem with that, which is why I did some more thinking and realized there's only one guy who can negotiate a settlement in Iraq.

Dr. Phil.

Dr. Phil is kind of a bully and he wouldn't have any problem telling the Shiite death squads they need to knock it off with the electric drills and all the time dumping bodies.

He would tell the Sunnis, "Saddam's gone! You're not it charge any more! Get over it! "

Like all good counselors, Dr. Phil speaks in exclamations.

These are just ideas, but Henry Kissinger has been hanging around the White House lately, and the last thing we need is to let him get involved. It took him years to get us out of Vietnam (Peace with Honor), and he already has a Nobel Peace Prize. Give somebody else a chance!

Celebrity Diplomats

When Captain Kangaroo died a few years back, millions of parents faced the tough decision of how to tell their kids. Most didn't want to say Captain Kangaroo was dead because kids that young don't understand death. Instead, many parents chose to say he had been "cancelled." Since then, a lot of kids have been hoping Captain Kangaroo would come back one day.

And now he has.

Turns out, the good Captain was hiding out as the US Ambassador to the United Nations under the assumed name of John Bolton.

Now he's resigned because of what President Bush called the "stubborn obstructionism" of the Senate, which refused to confirm him.

Others thought the Captain had some management issues. In an unprecedented public letter to the Senate, 64 former American ambassadors and diplomats wrote "On many occasions, [Captain Kangaroo's] hard core go-it-alone posture . . . alienated the bulk of the diplomatic community and cost the United States its leadership role with the U.N."

Oops.

The Captain, at least, can return to his role as the beloved host of his popular children's show. But who will the President nominate to be our next Ambassador?

Actually, I know a former kid's show host who's looking for work.

The Explodiness of the Whale

I'm proud to be an Oregonian. We may not read much Melville, but we know how to handle a beached whale. Moby Dick itself might have been a little more entertaining if Melville had thought to use dynamite.

Here's a link to an Oregon site which shares part of a Dave Barry column then takes you to a YouTube video of one of our prouder moments.

http://www.blueoregon.com/2006/11/oregons_explodi.html

Melville Revisited

In comments to an earlier entry, my friend Pat gently chides me (“Cretin! Philistine!”) for not fully appreciating the elegant prose of Melville. He’s right: I’ll have to take another look at Moby Dick. It’s on my reading list, which I’m now organizing based on how many more years I might reasonably expect to live and how essential it is that I finally read a certain book before I die.

But I might ask my friend Pat, “So, you say you’ve read Melville, but have you actually been there?! Non?!” Well, I have!

In 1999, I landed a job teaching summer school aboard the California Maritime Academy’s training ship The Golden Bear, a 500-foot former Navy sub chaser. More about that adventure another time, but one of our stops was Nuku Hiva, described below in an excerpt from the journal I kept at the time. I was reading Paul Theroux’s The Happy Isles of Oceania and comparing my impressions of these still mostly unspoiled Pacific islands to his. He called Nuku Hiva possibly the most beautiful island in the Pacific, and I couldn’t disagree with him.

In this excerpt, I’m taking a trip across the island on the only road—steep, muddy, and treacherous—with some CMA students and a native guide driving a Toyota pickup. I was reasonably sure we’d never get back to the Golden Bear alive:

****

We stopped a few times for pictures, then continued down a sharp canyon road into the village of Taipivai, the setting of Melville’s Typee. Although Melville only lived in the village a month, the experience led to his first and, during his lifetime, most popular novel. Theroux says it’s still the best account of village life in the Marquesas, excluding the few modern features like the bank and post office. I expect that statement is rather more inaccurate than less, but it does catch a little of the flavor of island life as I saw it.

We followed a road up out of the small village and stopped at the stone foundation of what was said to be Melville’s house, now overgrown by jungle. There was little to see or photograph, but I took a few pictures for the record. [This concludes my scholarly discourse on Melville.]

The road as it climbed the next steep ridge was even more harrowing than it had been, and the views at the top even more spectacular. We looked out over huge valleys of dense vegetation. At one time, when the islands had as many as 80,000 inhabitants, the bottoms of these valleys might have been inhabited, but now it seemed clear they had quickly been reclaimed by the jungle. It was as remote and dramatic a place as I’ve ever seen. Above the jungle valleys, the tops of mountains are in many places bare rock pinnacles. Theroux says “It is almost impossible to overstate the ruggedness of the islands—the almost unclimbable steepness of their heights or their empty valleys. At the head of every valley was a great gushing waterfall, some of them hundreds of feet high.” We stopped for pictures of one across the valley, a drop of what certainly seemed to be hundreds of feet over the bare rocks.

Then on to our next stop, the first of two archaeological sites. Our Marquesan guides, playful and personable guys, spoke reasonably good English and showed us around the ruins, stone foundations of what had been thatched huts for families and religious places. The site was being worked by one native and two French archaeologists, all of whom spoke English. They were mostly busy cutting back the jungle and had a large fire to burn the branches and vines they cut. From there they could then start to excavate and reconstruct the site. Much work had been done and the area we visited covered a few acres and had perhaps twenty separate structures uncovered.

According to Theroux and the guidebook I’m reading, all the Polynesian peoples practiced cannibalism, but none apparently with more relish than the Marquesans. (Oh, I am proud of that pun!) The best evidence was what we were told was a sacrificial altar site. At the center was a banyon tree, one of the most extraordinary living things I’ve ever seen: huge, but made up of what looked like not a single trunk but many separate trunks, each joining the total structure at the base or further up the tree. This structure, a giude explained, allows the tree to live in poor soil and also hold on in the hurricanes which might otherwise level trees of such size.

Next to the banyon was a stone slab where the victims were killed. We were told that their heads were put among the roots of the banyon. Most striking, though, was the “bone pit,” perhaps thirty feet deep, lined with stone, where the feasters tossed the bones of their dinner victims. Perhaps this was to fertilized the tree or somehow further consecrate the site.

Oddly, it didn’t feel too eerie or horrific to be here, perhaps partly because the students were clamoring around being their usual goofball selves, partly maybe because the anthropologists were there to provide some scientific distance. In a sense, being there and talking to the Marquesan guides and scientists somehow reduced the sense of dread I’d had in the past when reading about such horrible things and places. Not that getting eaten by your enemies would be a fun way to go out, but these had been a fierce people, with each valley populated by a clan that would fight for its territory and food supply, which was more seasonal and uncertain here than in other tropical islands.

*****

Cannibals figure large in both Typee and The Happy Isles. Theroux’s theory is that Pacific Islanders love Spam because it tastes most like boiled human flesh. I’m not sure of the basis for this theory.

Typee was indeed Melville’s most popular book because it contained not only adventures among cannibals but highly suggestive intimations of free love among the beautiful young women of the islands.

I’m a little sorry we did make it back.

Speaking of Starbucks

I don’t spend that much on lattes, but when Starbucks went up to $3 for a grande, I kept track for a week or so, and it adds up. It seems a good part of what I’ve been saving on diesel fuel has gone into specialty coffee drinks. Another reason I’m not rich.

So I decided I’d buy my own espresso maker, one that would steam milk so I could froth up a good head of foam, which I like. The cheapest one I could find locally was $50, but it wasn’t hard to find a high-end steam engine for over a grand. In the end, I decided to stick with the occasional store-bought.

Then, a few weeks ago when I was shopping, I was in the coffee section and noticed the Melita one-cup coffee maker. I had an idea, so I bought one for two bucks, along with some paper filters and espresso beans.

Back home, I heater water in a kettle and ground enough beans to make a very strong shot. Meanwhile, I started heating milk on a hot stove, stirring gently with a wire whisk so it wouldn’t scald. When the water got hot, I poured a shot-full through the cone and into my Starbucks Tokyo mug, which I bought in Tokyo in 1998 when I was teaching English there for a semester.

While the shot was seeping through, I picked up the pace with the whisk. In a surprisingly short time, I had a nice head of foam. I poured the hot milk into the coffee and spooned a little peak of foam on top. It looked like the real thing. I let it cool a minute and took a sip. Delicioso!

I find that one- or two-percent milk works best for my tastes. Nonfat isn’t quite as sweet. Also, I can make a good mocha by just adding a shot of espresso to a cup of hot chocolate, then spurtzing whipped cream on top.

Yum.

Now I’m saving as much on coffee drinks as I am on commuting costs, with only a tiny investment up front.

Still, I’m not rich and will have to look again at the budget.

Mr. Starbuck!

Somewhere in my profile I joke that I never finished Moby Dick. Has anybody? Why?

Over on defective yeti, which is a funny blog, our poor blogger has set himself the task of somehow reading the whole book and reporting as he goes: Here's his report at the 1/4 mark:

Page reached: 140 of 522 (26.82%)
Status Report: Oh, man. Chapter 32. This is probably a strong contender for the title of Most Skimmed Chapter In Classic American Literature. I would have skipped it myself if I hadn't resolved to read this book in its entirety.
Thirteen pages long -- about three times the length of the average chapter -- "Cetology" has the narrator giving an impromptu lecture on the nature of the whale, grouping the beasts into fourteen categories and offering lengthy descriptions of each. Here, Melville uses a literary technique known as OMG BORING! In some other context I might have found this engrossing, but here it's like, "Dude, you got your marine biology lecture in my adventure story!"
I wonder how many people have quit reading Moby-Dick at "Cetology". I bet this chapter is a veritable Goodwin Sands, with a thousand shipwrecked readers littering its shore.
I could have been one of them, as Moby-Dick is perilously close to violating my One-Third Reading Policy, which states that I shall abandon any book that I am not enjoying when I am a third of the way through it. Unfortunately I am determined to finish this thing, so quitting on page 174 isn't an option. But Cetology has sapped my of all momentum. Chapter 32 is a disabled vehicle in the center lane of this book's narrative.

You can follow the fun at http://www.defectiveyeti.com/

Spring Lake

About a month ago, Mary wanted to take the scooter for a ride on a beautiful fall afternoon. I followed along on my motorcycle.

I thought I’d ridden pretty much every road within at least a hundred miles in my many years of motorcycling around Oregon, but Mary led the way on a few country roads that were new to me, and in less than ten miles from town, we were at Spring Lake, which I’d never seen before. It’s a beautiful small, natural lake surrounded by farmland and rolling hills, and the fall colors were spectacular.

The north end of the lake is natural, with wetlands, reed beds and lots of waterfowl, including herons and egrets, as well as a variety of hawks. (In the winter, the basin is also home of the largest concentration of bald eagles in the lower 48, but the eagles haven’t arrived yet this year.)

The south end of the lake was a particular surprise, with a tidy but very modest trailer park with single- and double-wide trailers and a few spots for RV overnighters. The park had a beautiful lawn with a small dock and tables and chairs. Although it’s private property, we stopped for awhile and enjoyed watching geese and a trio of pelicans sitting on a floating log.

I was struck by this scene in part because the surrounding farmland is starting to be bought up by land-rich retirees, mostly Californians, who are building luxury mansions often costing over a million dollars. This lakeside property has to be worth a fortune, but a lucky few regular folks get to live there for now. I didn’t ask what a monthly rent might run, but I have a feeling it’s still an inexpensive little secret.

I was struck also because the longer I live here, the more beautiful I think it is. Spring Lake is just another delicate, picturesque little spot that’s been there all along, only a few minutes from home.

I’ve posted a few shots to my site at Flikr, and you can view them by clicking on the Ross’s Photos link in the right-hand column.

Life the hound Eqivocal

Mary and I were sort-of attacked by pit bulls over the weekend, and let me first assure friends and family that we made it out alive and with all of our fingers and toes.

Watch: QWERTY

See?

Right hand: POIUY

We decided to spend the three-day Veterans Day weekend at the Lava Beds National Monument, which is only about an hour south of town and which has several virtues.

First it’s only about an hour south of town.

Also, it is a historic battlefield and you can visit the sites of various battles between Modoc Indians and United States Cavalry in what was the last Indian war in North America. (Basically, the Indians won all the battles but things didn’t turn out so good for them anyway. The rest is history.)

Finally, there are lots of caves.

The best thing about the lava beds is that it’s almost entirely deserted in winter and has a nice primitive campground, so when there’s a lot of snow in the passes, Mary and I can pull our trailer down there with a reasonable chance of making it back home when we have to. Since I’m not a big fan of battlefields, caves, or even lava, for that matter, the best part for me is building a big fire, because it’s very cold in the winter, and listening to coyotes while I look up at the stars at night.

In my drinking days, I would drink a lot and howl at the moon. Now I just howl at the moon. It’s amazing how much fun you can still have sober.

Except, anyway, this time as we drove down to the campground we couldn’t help but notice that every campsite was occupied by multiple vehicles, numerous tents, and dozens of kids, most of them of the teenage persuasion. We drove around awhile and weren’t sure we were going to be able to find a place to even stay, so we finally asked one group what was up. They told us that there were one or two sites still open and that they were Pathfinders.

Pathfinders?

Like Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, but for Seventh-Day Adventists.

Sweet Holy Jesus (!), (literally), I’m thinking they’ve got back issues of Awake! or The Watchtower in all those utility trailers they’re towing and Mary and I are the only heathens within fifty miles. I’m feeling a lot of solidarity with the Indians, but we decided to set up the trailer in a rather nice remaining spot and whatever happens, we don’t answer the door.

It turns out that Seventh-Day Adventist teenagers are unimaginably well-behaved, enough so that it was starting to creep us out a little. Mary teaches junior high and I’ve substituted eighth grade, and we know something’s not right with these kids. But still, the weekend is quiet considering our few hundred neighbors. I shivered beside my campfire, and our dogs had some nice walks. No coyotes, but the dogs prefer it that way after a close encounter in the Grand Tetons last summer.

Sunday morning as we were packing up, a young woman of twenty-something, not quite looking like an Adventist somehow, walked by with two pit bulls. Nice dogs, she assured us, and they were, if a little oafish. Still, these are scary looking dogs even if they’re licking your hand at the moment. Brindle, they were, which is pit bull for camo. She said she got them at the pound and one was part lab and one was part Shar Pei because it had wrinkles. And I’m thinking “Right, and I’m part white mouse because I have blond hair going to gray.” These were pit bulls, but she never uttered the “PB” words. Our dogs were safely tied to the picnic table and not acting like idiots for a change, a pretty good sign they know who not to mess with. They didn’t mess with the coyote in Grande Tetons, either.

We had a nice morning packing up, and then we decided to take the dogs for a last walk around the campground before we left. All the Adventists were packing up and leaving, too, and the next part reminds me of a poem I read recently.

The Hound
By Robert Francis (1901-1987)

Life the hound
Equivocal
Comes at a bound
Either to rend me
Or to befriend me.

I cannot tell
The hound’s intent
Till he has sprung
At my bare hand
With teeth or tongue.
Meanwhile I stand
And wait the event.

Since Mr. Francis lived to be 86, I assume life was more or less friendly to him. (I’ve noticed that most poets seem to live to an old age. I think I might take up writing poetry.)

In our case, Life the hound turned out to be the pit bulls and I was fairly clear on their intent. They were going to kill us or kill our dogs, maybe both. Mary saw them first and yelled a commanding—NO!!—which they ignored and came on fast. Their heads were down, hair up, and they were growling. This wasn't a social call to see if we'd like to read a few Bible tracts.

Each of us had one of our little dogs, Bandit and Nick, on a leash. The pit bulls separated and one went for Mary behind me and the other for Bandit, and I, I had my trusty walking stick which I pretty much don’t leave home without any more because this kind of thing isn’t all that rare. My stick, actually an aluminum pole, has a big wooden ball on one end and a sharp spike on the other. I’ve done this before, and as the pit bull closed in I gave it a good Old Testament smite on the head and it stopped him in his tracks. I could see he was looking at some stars of his own. He was still eyeing Bandit and growling, though, so I smote him again, and he backed off.

Meanwhile, Mary just behind me had picked up Nick and turned her back to protect him, and some saintly Adventist guy had intervened and somehow got a hold of the second pit bull’s collar. Thank you, Jesus.

The whole thing lasted a few seconds and was accompanied by a lot of shouting on our part and barking by all the various dogs, and then it was over and there were dozens of Adventist kids looking at us with their mouths open and you could tell everybody was really scared, us included. I just said “Let’s go” to Mary, and we walked away, me with the spike end of my stick covering our retreat.

So that was it. Life the hound equivocal, and I’m reminded sometimes that it can swat you dead, in a heartbeat, like a bug, and there’s really not a lot you can do about it. My walking stick wouldn’t deter even one really determined pit bull unless I actually ran it through with the spear end, and I doubt I could ever do that in time because you never know if it’s an actual charge or just a regular dog thing that will end with everybody sniffing butts.

It all got me wondering what I’d do in a more serious attack, so I checked out some martial arts web pages when I got home. One said to wrap a shirt around your arm, then when the dog bites the shirt, fall on it and pin it with your chest, then gouge its eyes out with your thumb. Be sure to get them both because a pit bull will keep coming if it has a good eye left.

Good idea! These martial arts guys, they’re such kidders! I don’t recall having a lot of time to wrap a shirt around my arm.

Or, I have a gun, but that would risk hitting an Adventist kid, and there’s no better way to ruin a nice campout than by shooting someone else’s dog. My gun is totally false security, but I’ve long realized that false security is the only security. (We’re currently in a very nasty war prosecuted on that premise, but the administration is loath to explain it that way.) I like my gun because I sleep better when I have it with me out in the woods, but I wouldn’t want to ever actually shoot something with it.

So it’s best to laugh about the whole thing and remember what that pit bull looked liked when I conked him on the head and just hope that next time there will be another nice Adventist man to pull off the second dog.

But really, two pit bulls, they’re probably going to win if it gets serious.

Track Day

I was hoping to get in a track day this fall but didn't make it, partly because of money, partly because I got too busy with school.

Still, I try to keep up my technique.

Motorcycle School

The earliest motorcycle was a coal-powered, two-cylinder, steam-driven motorcycle that was developed in 1867 by the American inventor Sylvester Howard Roper. It is recorded that when he looked upon his work he was well-pleased and said, “I shall call it Harley-Davidson.” The bike remains largely unchanged since then.

A gas-powered motorcycle was invented by the German inventor Gottlieb Daimler in 1885. His mostly wooden motorcycle had iron-banded wheels with wooden spokes. This bone-crunching vehicle was powered by a single-cylinder engine. Some fifteen minutes after his first test ride, his son asked, “Hey Dad, can I have the bike tonight?” Daimler is said to have replied, “Gott in Himmell! Not vhile you are livink in my house!”

So the kid snuck the keys and went for a ride anyway, crashing into the garage door when he returned home and bending the iron-banded front wheel. Shortly after, he started running with a bad crowd and listening to hip-hop. He also got a tattoo that said, "Ride hard, Die frei."

And so was born the motorcycle and the ambivalent attitude among enthusiasts anytime a loved one indicates a desire to learn to ride. Such was the case for me after we bought the Vino and Mary said she wanted to get her endorsement so she could ride the scooter to school and around town. I could hardly say no since this had been the essence of my sales pitch in the first place. I was even thinking ahead to when she would want her own motorcycle and I would help her pick out an appropriate first bike, say a Ducati Monster or a Triumph Speed Triple.

One thing at a time, though, and two weeks ago, Mary completed with flying colors the demanding Beginning Rider course offered by Team Oregon, a program co-sponsored by the DMV, Oregon State University, and The Gypsy Jokers, who have moved to Klamath Falls and are trying to become more active in community service.

For three full days, she sat through demanding classroom lectures and quizzes (“Never pass a snow plow on the right. In fact, never ride your motorcycle in the winter. In fact, never ride your motorcycle during a month that has an R in it.”)

When they weren’t in the classroom, they performed demanding maneuvers in the parking lot involving dump trucks pulling in front of you, deer leaping out from cover when you’re riding a forest road at a buck-twenty, and minivans drifting into your lane while the driver talks on her cell phone, applies makeup in the mirror, and slaps at the kid in back who is screaming because his sister won’t stop looking at him.

Mary’s experience on horses served her well, and she completed all the maneuvers successfully. She was particularly good at looking through the turns rather than fixing on obstacles such as potholes the size of a suckling pig or the lifelike baby dolls instructors would sometimes thrown a few feet in front of unsuspecting riders. “Baby in the road!!”


Monday after work, Mary went to DMV and got her motorcycle endorsement, which costs seventy dollars but they knock off ten bucks if you sign a organ donor card. On Tuesday, she rode the Vino to work unaccompanied, and I know how great it feels to arrive in full regalia: helmet, gloves, and a worn leather jacket to die for. Nothing is more gratifying than the admiration of children: “Hey, Ross,” as a neighbor boy called out when I recently rode into my driveway on my VFR. “You’re a cool old man!” (This is true.)

And, of course, Mary received lots of admiring comments about the Vino from colleagues: “It’s so cute!”

Things turned a little sour when she got home and tried to turn around in our narrow street to get a good straight run up our driveway and into the garage. Despite my calls to “Look up! Look up! Agghhh!” she fixed on the opposite curb and did a Laugh In style tip-over that wounded only her pride and left a few rough scratches on the beautiful cabernet finish of the Vino. (Maybe it’s more of a burgundy. Definitely not a claret. )

“It happens to everybody. Don’t be a wuss,” I said, trying to cheer her up in guy fashion. She coached me in how not to be a male idiot. “Say, ‘You must feel terrible about your accident.’” So I said that and she felt better but was still pretty deflated by the whole thing.

With the beautiful fall weather, though, we anticipate lots of opportunities for training outings together, her on the Vino and me riding behind on the VFR, trying not to fry the clutch as she grows comfortable at higher speeds such as seventeen miles per hour.

Meanwhile, we still rarely use the car or truck. One of us grabs the electric bicycle in the morning and the other uses the Vino, and a big gas week for all vehicles combined might be ten bucks.

With gas prices dropping rapidly in recent weeks, I’ve been thinking about picking up a Hummer for running errands, but I’ll probably hold off until after the election when I expect major oil companies to discover they forgot to carry the six in their estimates of strategic oil reserves, causing prices to soar once again.

Breaking Camp

Today’s Oregonian featured a brief editorial about the ongoing sell-off and shut down of our National Forest campgrounds: “The Bush administration has no interest in outdoor recreation. It’s not a priority of Congress, either.”

That’s too bad. For twenty-five years now, I’ve traveled to every corner of Oregon on camping trips alone or to meet friends and family in national and state campgrounds. The best campgrounds are the most remote and least used, but one thing you notice no matter where you camp is that camping is a family activity. There are usually lots of kids and bikes and dogs. If there’s water anywhere close, there are fishing poles and inner tubes.

What’s clear as you look around is that this is how working-class and low-income Americans go on vacation. My wife and I can’t afford trips to Europe, but we spent three weeks this summer camping in the Northwest and had a wonderful time. We’re old enough and well-off enough to afford a modest travel trailer, but most folks in the campgrounds we stayed at were in tents or tent trailers. It’s been this way for generations.

Now, the Bush administration is selling off and closing down many of these campgrounds, trails, and recreation sites. The Forest Service budget is taking dramatic cuts, and we can’t afford to even maintain the National Parks.

But look around next time you’re on the road and you’ll notice the quickly growing number of high-end “Diesel pusher” motorhomes. These rigs cost out at about three-hundred-thousand dollars. Mostly you’ll see them parked in developed private resorts with full hook-ups, where their electronically controlled satellite dishes home in on the best TV reception and the occupants seem never to go outside.

I can’t think of a more visible example of the Bush Administration’s contempt for working-class Americans. It’s just wrong that the wealthy can use their huge tax cuts to buy McMotorhomes while the Forest Service is sent begging for a few bucks to keep its campgrounds open for the rest of us. We’re losing a big part of a national legacy, and it’s going largely unnoticed.

Next spring, when I head out for some of my favorite campgrounds, I expect to find many of them closed, gates shut and locked with a chain. It’s a little thing, really, compared to some of the calamities of the Bush administration, but somehow it’s the one that makes me the most angry.

It never got debated. It didn’t make the nightly news. It’s just quietly happening while we sleep.

Good day/Bad day

A few weeks ago I commented that Mary and I were perhaps a little cash poor on account of saving so much money buying an electric bike and a scooter. I joked that we might be in trouble if an emergency arose, say both our dogs need their rabies shots at the same time.

Surprise!

In fact, both dogs needed ALL their shots at the same time, and it seems dogs are subject to all manner of plagues and distempers for which, fortunately, we have vaccinations. Expensive vaccinations.

In addition to getting them up to date on inoculations, our highly trained veterinarian also verified with his stethoscope that their hearts were beating and visually confirmed that they still had teeth. These goods and services combined cost me $192 and something over five minutes of my time, not counting transportation.

Next time, I might have to take the dogs to Canada. Socialized pet care is looking very attractive.

Even worse—and taken together some people might call this a bad day—I had to drive my truck since the two dogs don’t travel well by scooter, which means I couldn’t save big money running my errands on Big Swede. And then, since we were out already, I thought why not take the little guys to the park and go for a walk, except somehow when I got to the park, I locked them in and myself out with the Diesel engine running.

I could practically see the numbers turning on the gas pump. This truck drinks gas like Homer Simpson drinks Duff Beer.

The dogs, fortunately, were safe inside as I’d left the windows partly open. In fact, they were in no hurry to get out at all because they’d found the “Greenies,” two chlorophyll-enhanced dog bones guaranteed to improve dog breath. Five bucks apiece. The plan was to let them chew a few minutes a day, but another twenty minutes and they’d be ready for seconds.

After trying all manner of breaking and entering into my own truck, I finally flagged down a cop—nice guy but not a great sense of humor—who called a locksmith who was there in ten minutes and into my truck in under fifteen seconds. The dogs jumped up and licked my face, and their breath was still terrible.

My attitude, though, remained mostly positive throughout the whole ordeal. It was a beautiful fall day. I got to watch the pelicans raft up at the head of the Link River and drift downstream gracefully dipping for fish. Then paddle up to the head of the river and drift down eating fish again. Then again.

But best was having a laugh at a big decal a parked truck had in its rear window: A giant American flag, of course, and the inscription “Why the hell do I have to press 1 to continue in English?”

I thought, Man, that poor guy NEVER has a good day.

Why walk/Drive more

With a little dip in gas prices recently, most people are back to driving their cars and not giving much thought to conserving. I certainly don’t have a long tradition of walking, using the bus, or riding a bike. Like most people, I got to work in my car, and the fact that I lived close to work meant I could come home for lunch.

When gas was cheap and plentiful, there wasn’t a lot of incentive to find other ways to commute. Who knew about global warming and peak oil? Arabs were our friends back then.

Now, though, things have changed and it would be nice if people were looking for every opportunity to save fuel and money. That doesn’t seem to be happing, though. According to news reports, most people are driving about as much now as they did a year ago, even though higher gas prices mean they have to cut back in other areas. People are actually trying to cut their spending on groceries so they won’t have to cut their driving.

Columnist Thomas Friedman has been addressing this issue for a few years now with a common-sense solution that will never happen: Friedman advocates a higher federal gas tax, maybe another dollar or two a gallon. The money would go into mass transit systems and development of alternative fuels.

With reduced demand and more alternatives, we’d quickly make a substantial cut in our reliance on foreign oil and within a few years could actually be energy independent. We’d all be riding to work in our solar-powered SUVs or going to the beach in a Jeep that runs on laughing gas. Service stations would exist only to wash our windshields.

Of course, Americans would never stand for a higher gas tax and politicians would never propose it: Republicans get too much money from big oil and automakers, and Democrats have to stick up for the little guy’s right to have cheap gas.

Meanwhile, people concerned about the looming impact of reaching peak oil in a few years argue with each other about whether we’ll enjoy a soft landing or suffer a hard landing when demand exceeds supply. The better data seem to support a hard landing, with some observers predicting a total meltdown of the social order. (See the essay “Imagine There’s No Oil” in the August issue of Harper’s Magazine. I found it comforting since Klamath Falls, where I live, already sounds a lot like the “lifeboats” being discussed by peak-oilers. And we’re already heavily armed. We practically invented the second amendment out here.)

Even now, before things get ugly, with my scooter and electric bike, I feel good that I’m doing my little part both to save energy and promote alternatives to gas guzzlers, like my ¾ ton Diesel pickup which has barely moved in the last month.

Mary’s back at work teaching junior high science, and she’s been riding Big Swede every day. Her kids think it’s boss. (They probably have a different word.) I’ve been riding the scooter on errands and start back at the community college in ten days, so I’ll be using it more then. It got seventy-nine miles per gallon on the first tank I measured. It only holds 1.2 gallons, so I can fill it up on pocket change.

Our incredible summer weather is supposed to come to an end tomorrow, though; no sooner and no later, and it might even snow in the mountains. Part of this experiment for me is to see how practical the bikes prove to be over a full year.

Whatever happens over the winter, for the last month, we’ve both been enjoying the pleasures of bicycling and the fun of scooting around town. As with my motorcycle, if winter weather drives us back into our cars, it will be all the more enjoyable to get back on two wheels in the spring.

September 12th

Aren’t we all glad the fifth anniversary of 9/11 is behind us? I even got tired of reading the editorials I agreed with. Fortunately, we don’t have television anymore so I was spared the worst of the media hype. The political hype, though, is unavoidable.

I doubt that it’s possible to have a simple 9/11memorial service that isn’t laden with political agendas. On the other hand, I had my own little ongoing memorial throughout the day, remembering the shock and horror I felt as I began to follow events on TV, marveling at the selfless courage of so many.

I remembered the remarkable occasion of members of Congress standing on the steps of the Capitol singing America the Beautiful. Here are the words:

"O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! "

And so much for national unity. It seemed, for a brief time, like we might for once do the right thing and stop there: punish the terrorists, free a country and help it rebuild. The world would have loved and respected us for generations. It would have been a far safer place.

Now, we’ve lost that unity and the good will of the rest of the world, and our leadership still claims to be promoting democracy abroad while it tries to stifle it here at home. We’ve never been more divided and more despised. None of this had to happen. Many warned that it would, and they were ignored or ridiculed.

I am saddened and angry, and at the same time I feel removed from it all. These early fall days are much too fine to be spent brooding, and nothing, it seems, will much change for the next two years of the Bush administration.

In the meantime, bless the peacemakers and the caregivers. They have more courage and hope than I do right now. It always falls to them in times like these.

How to contact me

I've heard from a couple of people that they might have left a comment but blogger requires you to sign in and reveal personal information like your social security number and how you voted in the last election before you realized how bad it could really get. (I could have told you, but I didn't have a blog then.)

I know enough not to post my email on my blog but not enough to disguise it as a poisonous snake so spammers will stay away. A friend of mine, though, tells me the custom is to use (at) for @ and people will get the idea.

So I've added my email address in my profile and will highlight it here: rosscarroll(at)charter.net. Even this feels risky, but I'd like to talk to others who are interested in electric bikes or any of the other topics I might bring up.

If I'm found out and drowned in offers to buy stock in Nigerian hula hoops, I might have to change my name and move to Mexico. That's something I've thought about from time to time anyway, though, so it wouldn't be that big a sacrifice.

ross

Proud to be Cro-Magnon!

The Three-Thousand-Dollar Screw

Last week, I was doing some simple maintenance on the VFR. When I took the top off the air box to clean the filter, I dropped a screw and couldn’t find it. I decided to go down to the local Honda dealer and get a new one.

The clerk and I had a good laugh when I told him I had to buy a screw. Ha ha! And then I told him that scrod was the fish most commonly used in fast-food sandwiches and there was a pretty funny joke about “Can I get scrod in this town?” but since I had to explain that scrod was a fish, the joke wasn’t that funny anymore.

Anyway, he had to order the screw (!), so I paid him the 75 cents and left. Before I got out the door, though, I was stopped in my tracks by a new scooter the dealer had on the floor, a Yamaha Vino 125. It is blue, “a blue true dream of sky,” as e.e. cummings put it, though he wasn’t talking about a motor scooter at the time.

Time to reboot my townscape: we were going to get by until at least spring on the six or eight vehicles and one horse we already have. Maybe then we’d buy another ebike if we were still fighting over who gets to ride Big Swede today.

But I could see right away that the Vino filled an important niche in our commuter’s stable: the inexpensive two-wheeler that gets great mileage, is fast enough to use on all city streets, is easy to ride, and is practical for trips of fifty or even a hundred miles. In fact, always putting my wife’s interests first, I thought this could be the perfect ride for Mary to take out to her friend Nancy’s, where she keeps her horse Woodrow. She goes out three or four times a week, and that ten-mile drive into the country is really the only time when we have to use a car.

The test was whether Mary could see herself commuting on a scooter and whether she would fall for the Vino or not. I talked her into going down to the dealer with me when my screw came in, and fortunately, she was quickly persuaded by all the practical considerations of owning a scooter.

“It’s so cute!”

“And,” I pointed out, “it will go fifty, maybe fifty-five miles per hour, so it will keep up with traffic even on the bypass.”

“It’s so cute!” she said.

“It gets sixty to ninety miles per gallon. We’ll probably get on the high end since we’re both little people. It will practically pay for itself in, uh, a year or two.”

“It’s so cute!”

It is cute. It also has a big storage area under the seat, and we’ve ordered a basket for the rear rack, plus a windshield for cold-weather riding. Like the ebike, it will be great for commuting and shopping.

Mary loves it. She’s already doing some practice rides in a parking lot with me providing gentle coaching. (Turn! Turn! Aaaggghhh!) She’s signed up to take the three-day beginning rider course through the Motorcycle Safety Foundation. Even on a scooter, learning to ride is a little intimidating.

So now we’re out $4,000 in less than a month for two new bikes. It sounds like a lot of money when I say it slow, and our “savings” might be stretched to cover an emergency, like if our dogs both need their rabies shots at the same time.

Still, just last spring I was thinking about getting another car so I wouldn’t have to drive my truck. An inexpensive used car that gets good mileage, maybe a five-year-old Honda Civic. Probably eight, ten thousand bucks. Only 35 or 40 mpg.

Not that cute.

The View From Home

I've lived in the same home in Klamath Falls for over twenty years. You'd think I'd get used to the view, take it for granted, mostly not notice.

Or not.

Some people who live near Mount Shasta think it is inhabited by spirits. I think they're right.

Big River Ride

This in from an electric vehicle site. I’ve clicked over to the website and it looks like it would be fun to follow the adventure:

Check out his web site here: www.bigriverride.com

On Thursday, Quentin van Marle, a travel writer, begins a 2,000-mile ride along the banks of the Mississippi River astride an electric Torq eZeebike. The nine-week trip starts at the source of the river at Lake Itasca in Minnesota and winds its way south to the delta beyond the battered city of New Orleans. The ride, sponsored by the eco-friendly detergent manufacturer Ecover, will represent the longest journey made on such a machine. Van Marle, 61, is a cycling veteran; he has pedalled a conventional bike coast-to-coast across the United States, cycled the length of Australia and crossed South Africa from Durban to Cape Town.

"I suppose I hope to establish that electric bikes are not only here to stay but also that they offer urban commuters an absolutely viable alternative to the car," he says."I expect to pedal most of the way. But I will certainly make use of the powerful electric-assist whenever a steep hill looms."

Chamber Of Commercespeak

"The northeastern part of Oregon is riven by volcanic fissures that gushed lava in giant flows and formed coastal cliffs. This complex scenery has always drawn visitors. These days, coast-hugging towns like Astoria are rebooting by transforming their townscapes."

But wait, there's more!

"Oregon's coast has another compelling characteristic: It faces what may well be the longest uninterrupted stretch of open ocean in the world. Waves originating off Japan's islands eventually break along the coastal bluffs of Oregon--something I just had to see."

Waves from Japan? In Oregon? Fire up the Diesel pusher, honey, we're going to the beach!

The above, from the current National Geographic Traveler, may explain why I failed so utterly as a travel writer.

Outings

Since I got Big Swede two weeks ago, I’ve only used an ICE (internal combustion engine) a few times. Almost all of my commuting, errands, and recreation have been on the electric bike (or my conventional bike when Mary is riding the Swede). My biggest expense so far has been sunscreen. I estimate fuel savings to be about $50 a week. I’m also counting up the saved maintenance costs associated with frequent short trips in an ICE.

(A note: Pets and sometimes vehicles tend to get new nicknames rather frequently around here. Green Bike was too cute, and the Giant Suede name kind of morphed into Big Swede.)

Despite the big money savings, the best part of Big Swede is that it’s fun. Last Sunday, Mary and I rode the bike path from our house to the small store in Olene (Olene consisting entirely of the small store in Olene), exactly ten miles from home. We took a lunch and bought soft drinks at the store, then ate at a picnic table outside in a shady, grassy spot off the highway. It was a beautiful summer day and a great outing.

Big Swede gets twenty to almost forty miles on a charge, depending on terrain and how much time I spend on cruise, which propels me along at twelve miles per hour without any pedaling. Most car trips are ten miles or less, so I can do the equivalent of two or three car trips on a single charge, which costs about a dime.

I’ve also used the bike for all our shopping over the last two weeks. I bought two folding canvas saddle bags ($70) that just drop in place over the rack and can each hold a full paper shopping bag. When I bought a new coffee maker that came in a big box last week, I strapped it on the rack with bungee cords. Even with this 20-pound grocery load, the bike pulled up our steep hill with only minimal effort.

It’s also great for running errands: downtown to the photo shop, a stop at city hall to ask about some construction a neighbor is planning, maybe a break at the Daily Bagel for a coffee and the newspaper.

Almost everywhere I stop, people ask me about the bike. Most don’t notice that it’s electric; they just say, “nice bike.” And I say, “Thanks, it’s electric,” and then they get really interested and I try not to get too over-zealousy about it but usually I can’t help myself.

One guy, a fireman, took it all in for a moment then said, “Hey, you’re beating the system!” And I thought about it for a few seconds and said, “I am beating the system.”

Links

I finally got around to setting up a few links in blogger, which is mostly text oriented. Milesbandit is my location name on Flikr, which is more photo oriented. You can go there to see more pictures from our Sunday ride on the Klamath bike path. I’ll be posting more from time to time about whatever.

Montlake blog belongs to my old friend Michael. He posts text and pictures from his world travels, plus interesting ruminations on his eclectic tastes.

Mike’s web log belongs to a tech writer at Microsoft. We’ve never met, but he posts interesting and amusing observations on tech writing, which I teach, though I’ve never actually tech written. (Yeah yeah yeah, “those who can. . . .” )

A nameless yeast is my friend Pat from jazz-l. He’s a fine photographer with a wry sense of humor.

Concluding Scenes from our Little Life (for the moment)

Since I've emailed friends and family and invited them to drop by the blog, I started uploading a few recent pictures in my earlier post today. Blogger seemed to decide I'd had enough, though, and wouldn't take any more photos in that post, so I'm adding a few more here.

(One thing I don't necessarily like about blogs is that they post most-recent messages first. I'm sure this is a reflection of modern culture--blah blah blog--where ten minutes old is a long time. We've moved on.

I'm still stuck in older notions of beginning, middle, and end. Imagine a novel written backwards. [I'm sure there must be one.]

But I won't go on about the end of culture because I've gained so much from technology. Our new computer and high-speed connection, for example, have opened up whole new avenues to music that weren't available to me here in my small town in the past. Check out Pandora, if you haven't already. And Napster, which is now legit, is a wonderful resource for finding and listening to music. There are lots of other sites).

But on with My Summer Vacation:

Mary and I took three weeks in our trailer and visited the Rockies in Montana and Wyoming. Our longest stop, and scenically most spectacular, was Grand Teton National Park. This was the view from our campground.

Actually, when I took this photo, some dope a few hundred yards away was running a radio-controlled speedboat up and down the shore. If I'd had a good sniper rifle, I would have shot it out of the water. This, actually, could be a fun game and I'm surprised it hasn't caught on.

Overall, though, I was impressed with how the Park Service manages such large numbers of visitors and still preserves a magnificent experience of wildness for those who want it. It would be nice to go back in the fall some year when there are far fewer people, but until we're both retired from teaching, we'll have to settle for the on-season. (Yes, I retired three years ago but am now back part-time at the community college in town. Couldn't stay away from it. I think everybody should work part time until they don't want to work anymore. These days, though, the trend seems to be going the opposite direction)

After almost a month on the road, it was good to get back home.

I liked it so much I stayed for three whole days, then took off on a ten-day motorcycle trip to Monterey for the World Moto GP races. Now, though, I really am glad to be home and not planning any more travel until at least next month. In the meantime, I'm getting ready for classes and looking forward to school again.

More below, and hope you'll drop by from time to time. I'm working on a piece about the end of life as we know it but need to stop now and go shopping for dinner.

Ross

Scenes From Our Little Life

I've invited friends and family to stop by the blog, so I thought I'd share a few photos and comments. In general, life is wonderful and not much changed. We've had an amazing summer of vacation and play. Now we're settling into the rhythms of fall, which means getting ready to go back to work. Mary starts next week and I still have a month left. Both are excited to be going back and a little sad that summer break is coming to an end.

Here are a few pictures from the last few months. Mary is still quite shy and introverted, lacking enthusiasm for life:

I'm still an easy-going guy, though I do occasioanally wonder about the meaning of life.

Dogs have always been an important part of our life. Bandit and Nick are our Jack Russell Terriers. Most of their time is spent taking life easy and enjoying each other's company.

They are such loving companions and never give us any trouble.

And don't forget our dear friend Woody. Despite his serious demeanor, Woodrow can be playful and mischievious.

At this point, Blogger doesn't seem to want me to upload any more pictues. I assume I'll be able to correct this shortly, but for now I'll sign off. I hope to hear from friends and family from time to time. Drop me an email or a link to your own blog.

Cheers,

ross

Portland Jazz Festival

Read a preview in this morning’s Oregonian of the Portland Jazz Festival coming in February. Wow! I can’t believe the lineup: Among others, Chick Corea and Gary Burton, Charles Lloyd with Geri Allen, Don Byron, Dave Douglas Quintet, Branford, Roy Hargrove, Kurt Elling, Jacky Terrasson, and several names I’ve heard but don’t know. I think I’ve heard Polish trumpet player Tomasz Stanko but can’t place him.

Any two of these would be more live music than I usually hear in a year, and it’s all happening over nine days.

The festival is loosely a tribute to ECM, and founder Manfred Eicher will be participating in afternoon discussions and presentations, which will also feature videos of Keith Jarrett, among others. The festival is going out on a limb, booking concert halls that exceed any previous ticket sales.

It’s my job to support them. (Whee!) My first thought was I’m going to make the whole thing. I have friends who have a condo on the MAX line, which runs straight downtown in about twenty minutes. I just won’t teach this winter and will get tickets to everything. I’m not getting any younger.

Then I thought maybe I could arrange a three- or four-day weekend and get to see a large portion of the offerings. I’m not sure I could handle nine straight days of this level of music. My head might explode.

Anybody interested in being in Portland Feb 16-25? Info at www.pdxjazz.com

ross

How does it work?


The Giant Suede e is powered by an electric motor in the front hub. When you pedal, the bike’s torque sensor matches your output to the rear wheel with a double-shot of juice to the front wheel. Other than an initial sense of undeserved acceleration when you push off, it feels entirely like a regular bike except your legs hurt less. In essence, then, Green Bike does two-thirds of the work and you do one-third, which seems fair to me.

That’s mode one. Mode two is cruise control. For cruise control, twist the right grip just like on a motorcycle. You have to already be moving so you don’t accidentally drive into the bottle-recycle machine they put next to the bike rack at the supermarket. Give the pedal a good push, then twist the grip, and the bike accelerates up to about twelve miles per hour on level ground, give or take some head- or tailwind. I’ve checked this with my GPS.

Mode two is my favorite because it seems to confuse people. When I’m “coasting” uphill or silently accelerating without pedaling, I notice people realizing that something doesn’t add up here. If people actually scratched their head in confusion, I think I’d be seeing some people scratching their heads.

There is also mode three, which the manual has a name for, but I lost the manual already. I have another one ordered. I call mode three “turbo boost.” Again, twist the grip, but this time, continue pedaling. Green Bike can sense that your legs are about to explode and gives you a little more juice. Suddenly, you’re accelerating up steeper hills as if the Oregon Vortex were sucking you forward. If you don’t try to hurry, it takes very little effort to climb moderate hills, say up to about six percent. For more exercise, try to hurry a little.

Turbo boost is definitely how I get home up my four-block-long hill, with grades up to ten percent. I’m practicing doing hard parts of my ride totally without measurable effort because I want to be able to keep riding when I’m officially a senior citizen. (I’m still a junior citizen).

Mode four, not covered in the manual, is your battery’s dead because you’ve been using too much mode two and three. Fortunately, Green Bike is at heart still just a bike. You can ride it on home just like the Beaver did after he finished his paper route, but remember: Green Bike is a leviathan of bicycles. It weighs over fifty pounds. Even without the motor, it’s considered a cruiser, which is a bicycle built for old people to ride from their retirement cottage down to the clubhouse without the aid of an LPN. This is why most retirement communities have no hills.

Despite the ease, Green Bike asks something in return, and you will get some exercise on it. I think I might even be getting in shape. I’ve been riding ten or fifteen miles a day since I got it on Tuesday, and my legs are already slightly less rubbery when I get home. Think Gumby after a couple of shooters.

But you have to start from where you are, not from where you’d like to be. Without Green Bike, I wouldn’t be starting at all.

Green Bike is here!

Green Bike is a Giant (brand name) Suede (model name) electric-assist bicycle. I call it Green Bike because it’s green (in color) and its environmental credentials are second only to those of conventional bikes. The electric motor provides about two-thirds of the juice and recharges for a few cents. I provide the rest of the juice and recharge for a buck or two, unless I’m feeling like steak or lobster. (But have you ever seen a lobster riding a bike?)

Over the coming weeks or months, I’m going to be posting now and then on my daily experience using an ebike for commuting, errands and recreation. For now, I’ll just say that the photo above is a brief history of my personal transportation over the last six months. The Diesel truck was purchased almost entirely to pull my wife’s horse trailer and our small travel trailer. It gets about ten miles per gallon around town, and I used it more than I wanted to get to my part-time job teaching a couple of classes at Klamath Community College, to go shopping, and to run errands.

When gas prices spiked late last winter, I started riding my motorcycle, a Honda VFR 800. It’s fun to ride the bike, and I admit I felt a little show-off pride when students would admire my zippy sport bike. Still, the Honda gets only about 30 mph around town, and I didn’t like riding it short distances and using the clutch so much for stop and go driving. I’ve always ridden motorcycles for recreation, not transportation.

So I was looking around for options. I thought seriously about a scooter but rejected those because they cost more than I wanted to spend. I also think they’re unsafe because they’re not fast enough to keep up even in city traffic.

As often happens these days, snooping around on the web led me to what I wanted. I’m feeling a lot like PeeWee and looking forward to my Big Adventure. At the moment, I think I might be the luckiest kid in the world. A month or two into winter, though, we'll see what happens when Green Bike tries to make it in Real World.

Stick around for more about how an ebike works and how things go. Right now, I’ve got some errands to run.

18,000 ride the bridges

Today's Oregonian reported that 18,000 bicyclists participated in the 11th annual Providence Bridge Pedal. The event opens many city bridges which are normally automobile-only for a bicycle-only day.

I was thrilled to see that the lead photo in the story featured an electric-hybrid bike. Mine's on the way and should be here this week. Can't wait!

Yesterday, my wife and I went for a beautiful ride on our conventional bikes, but we drove them down to the bike path in the back of our truck. Too many steep hills for our tired old bones to start out from our house. The hybrid will allow us to start from home and pull the long, steep hill back to the house with relative ease.

More to come.

No, I don't ride a Harley

There are a lot of ways to die.

Motorcycle fatalities in Oregon, for example, were up 29 percent from 2004 to 2005. In Washington, fatalities were up 89 percent. The actual numbers are still relatively low. Oregon deaths rose from 37 to 48.

Still, is this a trend that should concern motorcyclists?

Not really. Every death, of course, is a tragedy for the family, but riding motorcycles for those of us who have ridden for many years is neither more nor less dangerous now than it’s always been. Accidents, fatal or otherwise, are always out there.

An article in this morning’s Oregonian tells of the death of Russ Mosier, an experienced rider and motorcycle safety instructor. Mosier made a mistake. He was following a car that slowed for no visible reason. He chose to pass, and when the car made an unexpected left turn, they collided and he went down.

If Mosier were here to teach another class, he’d say that when the car slowed, he should have hung back until he figured out why. But all of us make mistakes like that. When the juice is up and the ride is right, it’s exhilaration and not good judgment that twists the throttle grip.

The death of an experienced rider, though, is atypical. So who’s getting killed out there? Virgin Harley riders. These guys (still mostly guys) are making every mistake in the book, starting out by riding Harleys, which are heavy, handle poorly, and have bad brakes. But, of course, if it weren’t for Harleys, they wouldn’t be out there to begin with since for most of them, it’s not much about riding at all but about being seen riding. Even more, it’s about feeling cool. When you’re a 55-year-old dentist and your life is leaking away, a new Harley might feel like just the plug in the dike you’ve been looking for.

The Harley, of course, isn’t enough. You have to have the costume, which might be a set of fringy new leathers or just jeans and a tee-shirt.

But the most important thing, even before you take delivery, you have to get rid of the stock muffler and put a Screaming Eagle pipe on it. A Screaming Eagle is just loud enough to be illegal and annoy the neighbors. If you really have no sense of who you are and where you fit in the universe, you’ll go with straight pipes. “Rolling thunder!” Rolling Thunder annoys the whole neighborhood and is probably bearable only by riders who are already partially deaf. In fact, these riders are screaming “PERSONALITY DISORDER!” to as much of the world as they can piss off per mile, and a full-on straight pipe can piss off a lot of citizens in a single mile.

Everybody I ride with hates Harleys. What we really hate about them is that non-riders think we’re all just like them. When I mention to somebody that I ride motorcycles, the two most common responses are “Aren’t they so dangerous?” and, “Do you ride a Harley?”

No, I don’t ride a Harley!

The question isn’t about what kind of motorcycle I ride. It’s about how desperately I need an off-the-shelf identity. I don’t want to tell them that Harleys are stupid bikes, I want to tell them that I’m a little further along the path of personal evolution than that. (Okay, not much, but still.)

In the meantime, this beautiful Sunday morning, thousands of new Harley riders are looking in the mirror at themselves in their fringy new leathers, tying on their do-rags, and firing up their Hogs. Tonight, a few of them will be dead.