Scootin' da Valley

Nature Comes Calling

2011-09-10T22:42:00.000-04:00

I was away on August 23rd when an earthquake struck in Virginia. When I got a call to ask me if I'd felt it, I had to admit that I hadn't because I'd been in the car for much of the day, but it had been felt here in the valley as well as in the western county where I was staying.

Five days later, Hurricane Irene hit Jersey, one state to the east. We caught the edge of it and it came with some mighty winds and rain in biblical proportions. Trees fell. Big things got blown around. Some folks were left without power for a week or longer as electric companies worked around the clock to restore service as fast as they claimed they could. I was stuck taking the car to work instead of the scooter.

Roots and all came right up as Hurricane Irene's caboose rolled through.

Advance the clock a week and in came Tropical Storm Lee to further drench an already saturated northeastern Pennsylvania and cause catastrophic flooding throughout the valley and within feet of my own house. With just about every other school district around for miles closed down tight for two days, mine stayed open.

Thank God for the arrival of the fall beers, just in time, at the local distributor!

My house is four doors away from here, but we didn't flood
in the" big one of '72" so the neighbors and I stayed put.

I generally mark the official arrival of winter by the closing of the gates at the county sports complex near the Forty Fort airport, and likewise I celebrate the arrival of spring, regardless of what the calendar says, by the opening of those same gates. Today, on my approach to said portal, I was stopped in my tracks by this stretch of flooding.

Although a county pick-up truck went through the water on the roadway and made it to dry land further down, I wasn't going to risk trying to take the BV through it only to have it stall with me in the middle. I don't know enough about internal combustion engines to know how deep water has to be before a scooter's engine might fail.

Here's hoping that nature will take her mischief to somewhere else for a while. A week or so of pure sunshine would be much appreciated.

Happy New Year?

2011-09-03T20:42:00.000-04:00

Last month, I believe, was my longest, official dry spell here.

This was not the summer I had looked forward to as the dark, short days of the past winter began growing longer and lighter. Not at all. I did not measure it in scooter rides as I did the past few summers since I started riding on two wheels. I measured too much of it in personal heartache and self-pity.

I had planned, as the freedom of summer vacation drew nigh, for three delicious weeks away, free from all concerns, cares, and worries. It was in the middle of the first of those vacation weeks, only days after school let out, when I received the news that I was being reassigned to a different school. It was the biggest kick in the gut of my career and within seconds of hearing of my being moved everything changed in an instant. It was as if the opposite of rose colored glasses fell onto the bridge of my nose. After four years, the school in which I had been serving had finally come to feel like home to me, but now, I was going to be a stranger in a strange land. I sank deep as the words of my new assignment hit me, in spite of being surrounded by as much love in which I could completely immerse myself.

I thought of the work that would lie ahead of me. Thousands of pounds of things would need to pass through my hands, one at a time, as I'd pack up my old classroom and discard things I'd accumulated that I'd decide not to take with me. Boxes and boxes would need to be hand trucked down three floors (Thank God for the elevator!) and down a final flight of stairs to the parking lot where they'd be packed into my daughter's Jeep and then my car. They'd need to be driven miles to the new place, and taken into the building to be unpacked, again, one item at a time. My heart and my head reeled especially during those first days after learning my unwelcome fate. Worst of all, I'd have to tear myself from the love and support in which I was basking, to come back here and begin the move.

You might recall if you pop in here from time to time that I wrote about this move before. I had, though, the whole summer more or less to try to come to terms with it all, and as the time grew closer for me to start up anew I had neither the energy nor the spirit with which to do it. I crawled through the muck of my heavy heart in setting up a new room and trying to draw from within myself the ambition to keep moving. I took scooter rides, but they did little to raise my spirit, never mind inspire me to write anything good about them. I spent my other two weeks away, plus a bonus one of a four days right before going back to school, and during them I did my best to try to stay upbeat. Luckily, when I failed miserably, I was supported and nurtured and given as much good and love that I could possibly hope to feel.

It was when returning to the valley after my third week away that I prayed much of the way that the Neon would make it, without leaving me stranded somewhere along the 240 mile drive. Days later I would part with my beloved Neon, the first car which had ever been wholly and entirely mine, and despite the excitement of picking out its replacement, I dealt with the compounded sadness I was feeling overall.

(And I just realized while talking on the phone during a break here in writing, that what I'm attempting to do is purge myself of some of the melancholy by doing this cathartic writing. If you stay with me there's a funny coming eventually.)

I replaced the Neon with an Impala. I had test driven a Cobalt the day before learning of the Impala's availability, and while it rode nicely and had more seeming power going uphill than the Neon, I looked down at one point to see the knobs of the window cranks and knew that I didn't want it. It would be little more than another Neon with the manual windows and door locks. I wanted something better. And for all the crap I was dealing with in my pathetic heart, I felt I needed it to pick me up. I had the pleasure of taking my last little vacation trip of the summer in it and rejoiced because if I had looked to get the Neon fixed instead of replacing it, I might not have been able to make the trip at all.

It was on this trip that the funny thing happened. Okay, it was funny in one sense, but somewhat horrifying in its circumstances. I was at a mall with my companion and her daughter. We'd been to a movie and one of us had filled up on buttered popcorn. Suddenly, the lovely lady at my side turned a little green (or maybe it just looked like that to me) and started running toward the bathroom. When she stopped dead in her tracks and her look of alarm turned to one of being mortified, I knew that the worst possible eventuality had happened. I walked behind her as she walked as fast as she could to the ladies' room, and when we parted ways I knew that my assignment was going to be to get her a new pair of panties.

I went off to Macy's with her daughter in tow. Now, mind you, with two daughters of my own, and many trips to the register with girly things of all sorts through the years, there'd be no horror on my part in making such a purchase. In fact, I secretly relished the oddity of being a fifty something year old guy with a full beard who'd be taking a pair of panties to the check-out, and while the girl with me would help me select the undies her mom needed, there was no way that I was going to deprive myself of the fun of presenting them to the cashier. It took us a while to find a suitable pair of drawers because there seems to be some great need for panties to come in millions of varieties. Every time I thought I found the ones that would fit the bill I'd hear something like, "Oh, no! They're silk. She hates silk," or see that they were in multi-packs when all that we needed was a single pair. Just when I was about to give up hope we found the right ones. Off to the check-out!

Now, anybody who's ever been to a store with me knows that I immensely enjoy giving the counter help a little grief when they start with the stupid questions that their corporate marketing monkeys think are such a great idea with which to waste their customers' time. Before she could even get to the usual mindless ones such as, "Do you have a Macy's charge?" and "Would you like to open one?" she made the mistake of telling me that I could save a few bucks if I bought three pairs of panties instead of just the one. When I rolled my eyes and replied in a tone of shocked surprise, "Do I really look like I'm here for a bargain?" she was, to her credit, smart enough to just shut up and ring up the underwear. It was a shining moment!

(By the way, that line of mine was the funny thing - NOT the circumstance that led up to its delivery.)

When I got back to the valley, our opening faculty meeting was the next day. I was greatly relieved when I saw the wonderful relationship my new colleagues have with each other. I knew it was a great school and expected that everybody would be a proud member of the team. Nevertheless, to have it confirmed was very good.

After the meeting I paid a final visit to the old school, to see what the new teacher might have done to my old room. My jaw had almost hit the floor when I had discovered two weeks before that it had been totally emptied so that it could be painted. If I had not been moved, I'd have not been able to make that last trip I took, because, with the painting, that's the week I'd have had to spend in getting my old classroom ready to start the new year. There! A silver lining! And, believe me; I needed one.

One of the highlights of the new place? Look at where my scooter's parked. Right outside my classroom! And I have my own outside door right there at the end of the stack of books. To be certain, I am in a very good place, with great kids who come from wonderful families, a bunch of new colleagues who have bent over backwards to help me get accustomed to new ways of doing things, and a most supportive and encouraging principal. I've spent the past week with my new kids, and we all seem to be quite happy together. The commute is a little longer than in the past, but with the scooter it's fun ride up the side of a mountain with cool twisties. I'll be hoping for a good number of scooter days before the roads start to get iffy with the kind of weather that winter here usually deals us.

So, no, it was not the summer I had wanted as April turned into May and then May into June. There was not a single, truly liberating scooter ride of the sorts that I'd enjoyed for the past few summer vacations, because every one of them brought me right back to the angst and the hard work of moving. As we head into September I'm hoping that the feeling of being overwhelmed by new ways of doing things will fade and that I'll soon feel a comfortable familiarity as I go from day to day toward a June that I need more than ever. I will admit that I'm already longing for that last day of the school year to arrive. I am starving and parched for the summer I had hoped to have with more long trips to where I feel more at home than I do in my own skin most days. Meanwhile, I hope to make the year for my young charges an unforgettably great one!

Oh! They think I'm awesome because I come to school on a motorcycle. Shhhhhh! Scooter? What's that?

Vehicular Anthropomorphism - A Farewell

2011-08-09T16:40:00.001-04:00

It was ironic that in my last post, before I left town for the last of my long, summer get-aways, I mentioned the fear of breaking down with the scooter because before it was time for me to make my way back East to the valley I had misgivings as to whether or not my Neon was going to make the return trip. Its little transmission had been sputtering to some degree since school got out in mid June, but when it started groaning whenever the gas pedal was applied, that old blinking light in the back of the brain started flashing. I could probably sink a few hundreds or better into it to fix the tranny and manifold, but I had it for nine of its 13 years and it served me very well. Perhaps it was time to let it retire.

Here I am the day I pulled the Neon up to the curb for the very first time when I brought it home in April of 2002. It was the only car I'd owned in my entire life that didn't have somebody else's name on the title too.

Tomorrow at around 9 AM I'll trade in the Neon and pick up an Impala. I know there will be some tears shed before I crank over the engine in the Neon for the last time. I emptied it out this afternoon and it felt like I was deserting an old friend. I went to many special places in this car, and to many memorable events. I transported those most dear to me in it time and time again. It felt like an extension of my own self when I got behind the wheel, and on those occasions when somebody else needed to run it, I held my breath most times until it was back, safe in its usual parking spot on the street.

I'm sure there will be some rejoicing when I get behind the wheel of the Impala and point it in this direction tomorrow morning. I'll feel like a kid with a new toy the whole way back to the house. But, I know just as certainly that when I'm leaving the car lot with it, I'll be looking behind for one last glance at my beloved Neon as I leave it behind.

I'll hope somebody will buy it and fix it and run it for a few good years, but if that won't be the case I'd rather not know that it made its last good run ever on Sunday.

Nine years later, and I think the car looks less worn from the ride than I do.

Gone Fishin'

2011-07-31T09:54:00.003-04:00

Okay, for starters, I'm not going fishing. I only did that a few times in my life and never seriously. I remember catching a few sunnies once, but it was total luck because my attention was positively riveted on my girlfriend in her yellow bikini and it was surprising that the sound of my heart beating didn't scare all the fish away. Gee, I love when memories like these pop up, even if they distract me a bit.

I will be gone, though, for the coming week, taking what will be my last "week off" before I have to start thinking about and planning for the upcoming school year in earnest. Tomorrow's the first of August and in exactly four weeks from today I'll be lamenting that it's the last day of summer vacation. My closest friend reminded me even before I leave that I need to concentrate on enjoying my time away instead of acting as if the first day of school is tomorrow. He knows me so well with my tendency to start getting ready for a funeral before there's even a corpse. I plan to take his advice to the best of my ability.

I had, in the months that made last winter so dreary, day dreamed about taking the scooter on my trip this time, a trip that's 240 miles one way. I know that some of the die hard scooterists out there would think nothing of making a trip of this magnitude on a scooter, but as the time to think about it hard and fast came around, I found myself balking once more. With the amount of stuff I take with me, and a lot of it in the form of rather expensive electronics, I need the space the car provides. Well, at least that's one of my better excuses. Closer to the truth is, I'm just afraid of breaking down somewhere. It's not like the average tow truck operator is going to know where to take a Piaggio scooter for servicing if they pick it up. And, it's not like I'd be able to get to and from a motel if I needed to spend a night somewhere because the scooter's in the shop. Then there's my all time scootering nemesis - rain. It pops up anytime it feels like, even when the National Weather Service and the other weather forecasters are predicting plenty o' sunshine.

Yes, it's obviously an older picture.

If I have a chance to putz with the netbook while I'm away I might pop in to say hello, or at least you might see a new picture down there to the right as the "Latest Webcam Image." If not, I'll be back next weekend with maybe a picture or two that are worth sharing. In the mean time, take care of yourselves, and I'll see you soon!

The Pumpkin Road

2011-07-28T15:53:00.001-04:00

After years of bottles and diapers, and then many more of tooth pulling, middle of the night fevers, school projects, birthday sleep-overs, whole bunches of school functions, college searches, moving into dorms, and the like, I could never understand the persons who get to be around my age and have grandchildren on the brain. With a married daughter, I am the proud grandpa of a beautiful orange grand kitty, and that's enough for me right now. She doesn't have to sleep over here when mom and dad need an evening to themselves. I don't have to take her to the park and push her on the swings. I don't have to go shopping when her birthday is coming up, nor for Christmas in her regard. Why would I, or anyone, want to take on the duties and responsibilities of tending to somebody else's kid, whether or not it's blessed with a bit of one's own DNA?

The understanding all came to me in a flash a few days ago when I came upon this place and paused to take this picture. I had intended simply to e-mail it to my girls to see if they would remember it, but as I sat there with the Piaggio's engine idling there was enough time, unfortunately, for me to feel a tug at my heartstrings in the realization that my important time as a daddy is in the past. Oh, to be sure, my daughters and I continue to have some great times together, but there was a kind of magic that was put to bed somewhere through the years that makes me think of and feel the impact behind Thomas Wolfe's immortal, "You can't go home again." The magic of places like this one, I imagine, is why some folks my age are hell-bent on getting their mitts on a few grandkids - to relive some of the times they enjoyed the most in raising their own children.

This was where, every year, a few weeks before Halloween, we bought our pumpkins for carving. Then it was a farmer's stand where a kindly old woman with weathered, leathery skin and a soft voice sold late harvest veggies along with gourds, cornstalks, and, of course, the all important Halloween pumpkins. Now, it's just a vacant shack sitting there on Eighth Street. I don't know if either of my girls knows the actual name of the road. To them it was just, "The pumpkin road," and if I referred to it even today as that I'm sure that each of them would know exactly where I mean.

They were special times back then, but they have passed. Even if I had a few wee grandkids climbing up my legs in eager anticipation of being taken somewhere fun, there are some memories of my own that I could never re-create with them because the places where those memories were made are long gone or shadows of their former selves. I could try with all my might to pretend that I am 30 years younger, but the illusion would not last very long. What was, was. What will be, will be, but without the pretense that I could somehow relive a portion of my life by trying to make tomorrow into what belongs to yesterday.

When I was a young schoolboy my own beloved grandfather carved some awesomely wicked pumpkins with apple cores for eyeballs and green beans for the brows, a long red pepper for a nose, two halves of a green bell pepper for ears, steel wool for hair, and I don't remember what for a mouth. He made one for my kindergarten class and I felt like I was the king for a day in that classroom the day he brought it in. But, never did I try to duplicate grandpa's annual creations because I knew that in doing so I would be trying to bring him back, and that ultimately I would be disappointed when he would fail to materialize.

Maybe someday I will have those grandchildren and take them to places that will feel magical to them, and if I'm really lucky perhaps to me as well. I will remember to love them for who they are rather then just as little cast members in some shadowbox performance in which I try to pretend that I am 30 years younger than my gray beard would prove me to be. I will hope to create for them memories that they will cling to all their lives, maybe in passing by a familiar place on occasion and remembering, Grandpa used to bring us here, with smiles on their faces and maybe a little bit of that heaviness of heart that reminds one that life is good when we are loved and have memories that are worth keeping.

Order in the Court

2011-07-25T13:58:00.000-04:00

I left the house yesterday, intending to ride for about an hour because later I'd need to pick my daughter up for her grand homecoming from California and wanted to rest a bit before having to head up I-81 to the airport. As usual, I pulled onto the street having no idea whatsoever of where I'd go. I made my way to where I'd cross the Susquehanna River, figuring along the way that I'd take the frequent, relaxing ride up and down the rather flat main stretch of the west side of the valley, and put myself into the rightmost lane which would allow me to go straight across the bridge when I got the green light. After a full traffic light cycle it occurred to me that the roadway sensors weren't picking up the BV because while the traffic coming east obviously got the green, I never did.

While I had been idling there waiting for the light, I spied a bench next to the Luzerne County courthouse and thought about making my way to it so I could make a phone call, but getting there would necessitate a left turn and I was two lanes away and on a hill; I couldn't back up and switch lanes because of the decline. Thus, when it dawned on me that I wasn't going to get the green unless a car came up behind me to trip the sensor, I made the right turn on red and then a U-turn to get to where I might gain access to the bench. I found a cut in the curb just past the courthouse and assumed it was a driveway that would get me around the building to where I wanted to park the scooter and sit for a while to gab, but as I made the turn and rode across the south face of the courthouse itself I realized that what I'd ridden through was the cut for wheelchairs at the pedestrian crossing. To my great delight, though, I found a beautiful flower garden on the south lawn of the courthouse. Just a mile from where I hang my hat, and I never knew that this garden existed! If anybody else had been there afoot I'd have immediately left the area rather than to park the bike, but with the area being deserted except for me I could make my call and get some pretty pictures too.

There has been a lot of corruption in this courthouse over the past few years. To our shame, the county has been in the national news because of the heinous criminal actions of a few our our judges and other local, public officials. The beauty of the edifice (even with the ongoing construction project) and its surroundings, nonetheless, shined through on this particular Sunday afternoon.

I suppose I will never understand the love that some people have for politics because it was never a part of anything when I was growing up. My dad voted, but there was never any family discussion of issues or candidates, or anything of the sort. I poked fun at a schoolmate in college because on every election day we all knew he'd be one of those jerks at the polls who tries to stuff his little piece of cardboard in your hand to tell you for whom to vote (because, God forbid, you came to vote with some clear idea of whom YOU would like to have in office), and find myself now, some 30 years later, earning about half of what he makes in a job that he readily admits he got by being part of the political machine in the early 80s. In retrospect, though, I don't know that I'd have changed a thing. I got my job honestly, and I've loved it for most of my 29 years. But, as usual I digress...

I don't know a darned thing about plants nor flowers, but I like that they're kind of miraculous when you think about them. A lowly seed, which appears to be a dead thing, somehow springs into life and grows into something amazing to look at - and those of us with Faith know that that "somehow" means "by the hand of God." Now if only the ACLU and other like-minded groups and individuals would allow God's hand beyond its garden and into the courthouse itself.

Justice? Is there truly such a thing with plea bargains and juries who see insurance companies as just so many deep pockets to be dug into even when people are the victims of their own stupidity? When lawyers keep for themselves ridiculous portions of the settlements for which they do little more than write some threatening letters? When those who are most in need can't find help anywhere but the local criminal element can take what they do of the public dole with impunity? Even when elected officials aren't corrupt, it's hard to have faith in our justice system. In spite of it, though, I can't think of a better one, so we settle for the necessary evil we have, and use it to our advantage when there are pretty pictures to be gotten.

Lest I start to sound too much like the politicos down my nose at whom I look, I'll leave the diatribe behind and try to stick with "pretty" thoughts. The time I spent on the sound side of the courthouse was very pleasant. The tremendous heat wave had let up to a small degree and I was quite merrily savoring the respite.

And not another soul came around the whole time I spent there. I tend to be a solitary person, especially when I'm surrounded by things which inspire the kind of feeling that's reservedly expressed when you're a 53 year old man and "expected" to act or not act in certain ways. I was able to drink in deeply of the amazing beauty of the scene before me without feeling hampered by the presence of others. No, I wasn't moved to tears or anything like that, but nonetheless what I was feeling would have been ruined if anyone else had come along.

I posed beside the memorial where the bell and anchors from the U. S. S. Wilkes-Barre are reposed. I read on the accompanying plaque the story of the ship and its participation in battle, but don't remember enough of it to recount here. It was credited with saving an aircraft carrier in some skirmish; that much I do recall. There's more than I care to read about it on Wikipedia. There is a Korean War Memorial nearby, along with a statue of a deer, and some monstrosity of a sculpture that I should have paid more attention to but didn't because the light was in a terrible place to get any good pictures of it. I'm sure there's a sweet, little, old lady somewhere in a nearby historical society who would be happy to bend and ear or a dozen to talk all about the various things on display there, but I'm much less ambitious than to find such a person and less so to listen to her lecture.

The experience downtown made me wonder about what other treasures hidden right here in my own basic neighborhood I might be missing. I remind myself that I'm a visual creature - happy to see things that inspire emotions of varying kinds, but not so hot on doing any kind of research to learn about them unless they particularly interest me. Don't get me wrong; I love education or I'd not be so happy in it as a career. But, when I want to learn, I learn, and when I want to look at shiny things, (as my younger daughter would call things that demand one's visual attention in a good way), I don't want anybody infringing on my pleasure by seeking to educate me.

So if you happen to come upon me by chance someday to find me toeing the dirt around my scooter and taking pictures, please say, "Hello," but then shut up and go away. Unless you happen to be on a scooter too. Then, we'll talk!

Giant's Despair

2011-07-22T16:31:00.000-04:00

An acquaintance from high school who is now a Facebook friend read something that I had posted on Facebook last week and suggested that I take the scooter for a ride up the mountain road that we call Giant's Despair. it sounded like a good idea but I did not have the opportunity to make the ride until today. When I set out this morning I almost turned back to the house because it was already in the 80s when I got up at six o'clock and even hotter when I rode the bike up from the yard to the street. I realized, however, that it would get cooler once I got out of the city proper and kept on rolling.

It took me a few miles to get to the base of the mountain. This is the view that greeted me as I paused to take a picture. The southbound side of Interstate 81 is the overpass in the foreground.

The ride up the mountain was pleasant with lots of curves to make it interesting and fun. There was nobody on my tail so I was able to ride at a comfortable speed and enjoy the scenery as well as the illusion of coolness as the air moved over me and through my helmet. To be sure, it was hot, but I had been right in my assumption that I would feel a lot cooler once I got moving outside of the city.

When I got to the top I needed to decide which fork in the road to take. Each one would take me to a familiar but different place. I paused atop the overpass under which runs a set of railroad tracks while I thought about which way to go. (Yes, trains also go up that mountain though along a much longer and twisted path so as to make the grade possible for them to climb.) I opted for the left turn which would take me to route 115 at which point I would again need to decide if I wanted to go left and back down into the valley or right to face more decisions. When I reached 115 I decided to go right and to head toward Penn Lake.

Again I traversed a rather pleasant portion of my ride enjoying the light traffic and the breeze. The road leading to the lake also features a number of fun twisties and since I learned to lean this summer so as not to be hitting the brakes every time I approach a curve I had a lot more fun than I used to on roads like these.

Penn Lake brought back many wonderful memories though diaphanous ones rather than any that were specific. The parents of one of my best friends from high school owned a cabin at the lake and our little gang of girls and guys who were inseparable then whiled away many a good summer day right there in the water. I rode around the lake with a big smile on my face in remembering those times and those friends of mine who I still see on occasion from time to time.

Leaving the lake forced me once again to decide where to go. I turned to the right from the access road to the lake and headed toward White Haven where yet another crossroads would greet me. On rides like this one I have a general sense of about how far away places are because I've traveled these roads before well enough to know where I'm going but without knowing exactly when I will get to where I'm heading. When the skies are blue and there isn't the slightest threat of a raindrop in sight, I kind of like not having to think about a timeline at all because the ride itself is what it's all about, and not the destination. It took a while to get to White Haven, but that was just fine on a day like this one.

Because of my affection for all things railroad I had to pause to get this picture of the Piaggio in front of this retired Union Pacific caboose.

It was a relaxing stop. I chugged quite a bit of my cherry drink from the Bubba Keg I took with me, made an enjoyable phone call, and, strangely, I didn't mind soaking up the searing heat for just a little bit. When I had to use the porta potty, though, I was very glad that I only needed to make number one because the heat inside the small plastic room was tremendous. I think it was the very first time that I had ever used one of these outdoor contrivances on the day that it had been serviced. It was amazingly clean inside, including the view down the pit, and the sticker on the inside wall indicated that it had been serviced just this morning. I'll take whatever little bit of luck comes my way whenever it does!

I chose to leave White Haven via a route that would lead me back toward Route 115. My plan was to meet up with 115 at Blakeslee where a left turn would lead me north and back down into the valley. When I got to the turn for Francis E. Walter Dam, though, on impulse I hooked the left to travel the stretch of road that would take me up to the dam and then back to the road that had led me to Penn Lake from which I would pick up 115 again though closer to town. The view at the dam is always a nice one and with nobody else seeming to be around for miles I was able to enjoy a leisurely stop to grab another picture.

I had been out for a few hours at that point and my belly was beckoning me to start thinking about having lunch so I made a beeline back to the house but not without enjoying the rest of the ride at a leisurely pace. I remember thinking distinctly that riding is even better than sitting around in the air conditioning and I stopped right there in the middle of the road to get this picture by which to remember that moment.

About a quarter of a mile from the house I swung around a curve and was delighted to see a train rolling across the tracks that run behind my backyard. While I watched the tankers and boxcars roll by I savored the feeling of having spent a most delicious morning out on the scooter. These are some of the moments I will miss the most in a few weeks when I am back in school, and the simple kinds that I look forward to spending when the day to retire comes along. That will not be for a while though, so my summer rides will have to keep the smile of leisure on my face until then.

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Just a reminder that I am now dictating rather than typing my entries here, along with my plea for the indulgence of your patience regarding any errors that I do not catch in my proofreading.

Master of Indecision

2011-07-21T10:50:00.005-04:00

I think I became an indecisive person in 1962 when I was four years old. Planter's Peanuts was headquartered right here and one of my dad's friends from the church choir worked for them. It was he who gave my dad a collection of little Mr. Peanut figurines, each cast in a very rich hue of the primary and secondary colors as well as white, black, and brown. (Back then, I think we kids had more common sense than kids seem to be born with these days because I was allowed to play with the little guys with nobody fearing that I was going to try to ingest one of them or shove one up my nose.) Each one and a half inch tall Mr. Peanut was posed with his hand on his hip so that his tiny plastic hand was fused to his torso. The triangular space inside the crook of each one's elbow allowed me to pass a string from one to the next and then tie off the loop of string to keep them all together. There was something that positively thrilled me about seeing all of the colors together and I knew that if I had to choose only one to keep, trying to make the decision of which one to hold onto would have given me the four-year old version of a nervous breakdown. That early realization that I would not have been able to cope with that hypothetical choice, I believe, helped to make me into a person who goes into a tizzy when trying to decide on which leftover to have for lunch.

Major portions of my summer days demand that I make decisions for the sake of not dying from sheer boredom. Thus, when I found myself awake this morning at 4:30 and unable to fall back to sleep, I just knew it was going to be a banner day because I would have even more time on my hands with which to decide what I wanted to do. I decided initially that I would begin working on a modification for the scooter that I had been planning, but after about 15 minutes, even in the shade, the heat of the day was becoming nearly unbearable. It was then that I put away the tools, hopped on the scooter, and drove it from the yard up to the street only to face that huge decision I have to make every time I want to ride but have nowhere in particular to go: Where shall I go?

I decided that since my main objective was simply to cool off I would head up to one of the larger strip malls, make my usual morning phone call from one of the benches outside a department store, see if I could find something worth taking a picture of, and just roll around the parking lot to get the air moving through my sleeves and under my helmet. As is often the case when I am looking for something photo worthy, I find little. The nearly empty parking lot itself, though, almost begged to be photographed in its quiet calm before the shopping storm.

In realizing that the shopping center was populated at that hour only by employees arriving early to the various stores at which they are employed, it dawned on me that I could get a shot of myself that I had wanted to get for some time but had not yet gotten for fear of getting strange looks from bunches of people. Outside Target are what appear to be two, red concrete balls. I needed a picture of myself perched on one of them, though I know not why. I took advantage of the opportunity. Okay, perhaps my bucket list is an odd one, but score me another check mark for this shot! The constipated look was merely a function of the morning sun shining brightly in my eyes.

Upon leaving the parking lot I noticed the yellow glow on the dashboard telling me that the scooter was rather low on gas. In my four years of scootering I had seen the desperately-needs-fuel light maybe twice before because I am generally good at keeping an eye on the display and filling up when I get to under the halfway point on the fuel gauge. Although there were a number of gas stations between where I was and my usual filling station I rode the extra distance to my regular place where I have yet to get any bad gas. I had made the mistake twice before of getting gas elsewhere only to have to drain the tank and refill it with the "good stuff."

Back to being indecisive... Yesterday I found myself in the Lehigh Valley at one of the major photography shops on the East Coast and perhaps in the entire country if you don't count all the dot-coms. After drooling for a while over various cameras, none of which I thought I would be getting when I left the house, I decided on a new Fuji. Here's my old buddy W. T. Duck, showing it off. I am not yet sure where this camera will fit into the digital arsenal. It's too good just to carry in the omnipresent pouch on my hip for daily use, but not quite as serious as the DSLR. Perhaps it will become my camera of choice when I am traveling, for those quick shots that I want to be good when I'm too lazy to get the big Olympus out of the bag and ready to fire.

Somewhere in between starting and finishing this post I had two Yocco's* hot dogs for breakfast, set up a grease and oil change for one of the cars, made an important phone call, and picked up a printer that was gifted to me. Now, comes the serious indecision. There is nothing compelling to do for the rest of the day and it would be too hot to do it even if there were. Maybe something on Netflix will transition nicely into a late morning nap. Perhaps another scooter ride to God-knows-where will be in order. We shall see...

* --------------- *--------------- *
*If you went to the Yocco's link, I assure you that their little "mascot" is not a turd king on his throne. It's supposed to be a hot dog. At least, I think so.

Be Careful! My Family's With Me!

2011-07-18T19:12:00.002-04:00

I've never been a fan of simpy crap. Like those "Baby on Board" signs the yuppie parents hung in their car windows half a generation ago. Like these stupid things we see everywhere now...

My driving isn't going to be any different because your precious baby is strapped into its car seat, or because you have wifey-poo, the kids, and Meow Meow in your SUV.

Frankly, if you have one of these things in your back window, I'll bet those kids of yours are tempted to chew off their own arms to get out of your car now, and to move across the country as soon as they can!

It's Not a Gang! It's a Club!

2011-07-10T17:35:00.007-04:00

I couldn't wait to get to Mass this morning so I could tell Father Mike that I had been to my first scooter rally yesterday. I knew he'd chuckle and bust my butt a little. Father Mike is a biker and it amuses him to my own delight that he gets a kick out of seeing big, ol' me coming to church on Sunday mornings on the BV, so I knew that the news of my having been to a scooter rally would score me a playful ribbing.

Now, to be honest, according to the organizers, by definition it wasn't a rally because the official name of the event was, "THE NOT A RALLY, RALLY." Being a purist when it comes to semantics, I had to dig... According to dictionary.com, one of the definitions of "rally" is "a large gathering of people for a common purpose." Technically, I suppose I can't argue with "not a rally, rally," because we weren't a large gathering by any stretch of the imagination, though we were "rally-like" in having been gathered for a common purpose.

The name of the scooter group is DIS - Disorganized Individual Scooterists. The title of this post comes from an episode of Saturday Night Live in the 70s, back when SNL was still funny. I won't pretend to remember the gist of the skit, but the members of a street gang were being harassed for being a gang, to which they kept reiterating, "It's not a gang. It's a club!" Well, DIS is definitely not a gang, and I know this for a fact because I felt right at home though I just met the other members yesterday morning for the first time. And I don't know that Carl, the de facto leader of DIS would even call it a club being that we're "individual" scooterists. Whatever DIS isn't, I know it was a lot of fun being part of the gang, er, I mean club, um, I mean associating with other disorganized, individual scooterists.

My elder daughter was visiting for the weekend and asked if she could accompany me to the not a rally, rally though she has no love of scooters. She was the one who nearly ran from the scooter crying when I took her for a single spin around the parking lot of a nearby supermarket on the FLY50 a few years ago. I graciously allowed her to follow me in her car to Moyer's Grove in Wapwallopen fully laden with her veritable arsenal of photo gear.

The plan was, originally, that we'd drive out to the grove and hang out with the DIS crew until they were to leave on a ride to an amusement park. I'd make the acquaintance of the other scooterists, and she would fart around taking nature shots in and around the campground. While she did putz around a lot with the camera, it wasn't long before she was talking it up with others just as much as I was, and when it came time for the group to leave for the ride to the park she talked me into riding with them while she'd follow us all with her car. All in all, I was glad she came with me 'cause she talked me into having a lot more fun than I'd have had if I hadn't taken the ride to Elysburg to Knoebel's Amusement Resort.

It felt awfully good not being the oldest guy there which I'd thought I'd be. Now I'm not going to guess ages, but I think at least two of the other guys might have had a few years on me.

I was amazed that one of the gentlemen rode out to join us from Ohio! Another was heading home to Harrisburg to work, but would be returning afterwards, around midnight. And I thought I was putting a lot of miles on the BV just coming up from the valley. Sheesh!

I enjoyed seeing all the scooters lined up just like the bigger bikes had been in Johnstown a few weeks ago. As I thought it would be, my BV250 was somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of size and power.

The real excitement began when we all mounted up and started our engines for the ride to Knoebel's. I'd never ridden in a pack (Oh, my! Dare I use that word?) before but was looking forward to it since my daughter talked me into doing it. Oh, yeah... My shirt doesn't match the others because the biggest of the official DIS shirts would have made me look like the proverbial ten pounds of manure in a five pound bag, but I digress. We waited for the last official announcement from Carl's awesome, electronic megaphone, and we were off!

I've written much in the past about how being in the saddle of the scooter in motion makes me deliriously introspective. On the group ride, I wasn't all that sufficiently carefree so as to do my usual mental gymnastics - at least not as we were starting out. I was concerned when Carl announced that we were going to ride in staggered formation. Although he explained that we wouldn't be side by side, to me it still meant that I was going to be limited to half a lane, and after being accustomed to having a whole lane to myself to play around with the centrifugal and centripetal forces involved in swinging two wheels through a curve, I was a bit apprehensive about making a fool out of myself, or worse, infringing dangerously on somebody else's space. I was very tense for the first few miles, but then grew more relaxed as we continued to ride though I never did get to the point where I'd start to dig into my own brain to ponder the vicissitudes of being.

By the time we got to the park I was wishing that the ride itself would go on longer in spite of my being a little sore in the saddle. I can't explain the feeling that riding with others provided, but it was uniquely good. Even though we couldn't talk to each other on the ride, and our actual interactions short of pacing ourselves with the others was minimal, there was a feeling of being connected with the other riders that was totally neat.

Admittedly, it was more of a thrill than it should have been to park the BV next to the big dogs in the motorcycle only parking area! Once again I was reminded of the rows of bikes at Thunder in the Valley, except this time my own bike was right there in the bunch! Surprisingly, it didn't look all that puny next to the other cycles.

My daughter and I had to be back in the valley to join my aunt for her birthday dinner so we grabbed a quick lunch at the park and left before the rest of the DIS group headed back to the campground. I had had a great time, though, and met some wonderful people who I sure hope to see again. My thanks to Carl and the rest of the "gang" for making me feel so welcome.

A special thanks to the sponsors of our first not a rally, rally:

Team Effort Cycle, Classic Pizza, Gino's Shoe Store

Octagon Family Restaurant, Marsh Motors, DMC Graphics

Most photos in this post were taken by my daughter, Angela.

Not the Summer I Had Bargained For

2011-07-07T08:59:00.003-04:00

When cancer came knocking on the door of my house a few days after school ended in 2010, I knew I was not going to have the summer I had envisioned in the least. I had dreamed of scooter rides galore, various vacation trips, leisurely reading, plenty of web surfing, and in general enjoying the time off between school terms as I had done just about all of my life. Instead, my travels consisted of trips to doctors' offices, testing centers, and hospitals. That summer ended just as all the medical woes had finally been tended to in order to effect a "cure," and before I could turn around the next school term had already begun.

I waited for 10 months to have the summer I had planned to have last year with those scooter rides and blog posts, and anything else I could think of to make up for last summer's misery. School got out in the middle of June and off I went to Western Pennsylvania to begin my summer of fun and reckless abandon. (Okay, I hardly ever do anything with reckless abandon, but I can pretend.) While I was there I received a letter in the mail informing me that I was being transferred to a different school come September. That news was telephoned to me while I was away at the Thunder in the Valley motorcycle rally in Johnstown and it not only put a damper on my day but darn well nearly drowned it.

Granted, there had been some school closings, and we knew that positions would be shuffled as teachers from the buildings that were being closed were reassigned, but none of us suspected that even some of us in established positions within given buildings might be moved around. Amid tears and breaking hearts many of us had done this four years ago when massive changes and closings were effected. Now, here I was facing the prospect of doing the same thing all over again – moving what is essentially half of my life into boxes to be transported to a new dimension.

When I took this picture a few weeks ago, before closing up my
classroom, I was wearing a look of accomplishment as I put
the past school year to bed with no idea that I would
not be coming back here in the Fall.

When the news was first delivered to me I was in a place where I would have not felt comfortable letting the tears fall. I thought of my kids – the kids who I thought were going to be mine for the coming school year. I had built a great relationship with them this past year in having been their teacher for one subject. I had written in many of their yearbooks only two weeks before, "Get ready for the best year ever!" I thought of my scooter rides to school and how the much longer commute might make for fewer such trips. I thought of all of the things I had moved four years ago and how they would need to be boxed up and moved once again and pitied myself in knowing that I would be the one to pack them and move them. I thought about how all of that moving was going to take time – MY time during the vacation – and how once more the summer I had hoped for was not going to materialize. My spirit hit rock bottom. I needed that time both last year and this year to rejuvenate myself and to be my own cheerleader, looking forward to and planning a fantastic school year, but that time for regrowth would be compromised and again I would find myself hitting the ground running on the first day of school.

Since I wrote my last post here I spent three days in my old classroom packing up all of my things and throwing away the junk I had accumulated over the past four years. I also hauled most of it to my new classroom. I still have a small car full of things to take to the new place, and then I plan to take a week off before I start to take things out of the boxes and try to find homes for them in a room whose spaces are still full of the things that had belonged to the teacher I am replacing who retired.

My heart remains a little heavy but I am now beginning to look at this move is a new adventure rather than as a bitter pill to swallow. Amazing, the resiliency of the human spirit. I will have new kids to think of as "my kids." I will have a new beginning at a time in my life when new beginnings aren't that common. I will have new colleagues, new friendships to build, and a new food service from which to get my lunch! I will make the best of this or die trying!

And so there isn't all that much here yet this summer about scooter rides. Hopefully, there will be before I need to tie a necktie around my neck again, put on my best Mr. Rogers smile, and pick up a piece of chalk to write my name on a new blackboard for the first time.

And now for something completely new and different... (Show of hands if you remember that line.) There is a scooter group forming locally and hopefully I will get to meet some of the gang on Saturday when they are holding what they're calling "A Rally That's Not a Rally" at a park not far from here. Ironically, I just happened to meet up with the founder of the group at a local ice cream joint last weekend about two days after having made his acquaintance on Facebook. I almost heard "The Twilight Zone" playing in the background when we met up by chance like that.

So that's my latest report. Happy two wheeling to all, and to all a good night!

Thunder in the Valley – Johnstown, PA - 2011

2011-06-27T16:16:00.000-04:00

Although I missed it last year, I was able to attend the Thunder in the Valley motorcycle rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania last week. I was there once again with the Neon rather than on a bike, but prudence and circumstances dictated that I do it that way. Besides, I am not one of those guys who would park his bike on the street and then go off to find hands to shake and make new friends. I'd probably park my bike, just stand by it for a few hours, grab a little food, and then leave wondering what all the hype was about. Trust me, it's better for me to take the car, park it on the fourth deck of a garage, and enjoy the rally in my own way.

It's kind of funny, but the older I get the less bikers look like the stereotype of the biker that I carried around in my head for much of my life. These guys look like me. Fifty something in many cases and about as threatening looking as the CPAs they very well might be under the leather vests.

For those who are familiar with a church carnival or bazaar, the rally had the feel of one of them minus the wooden wheels with nails running along the circumference to make that distinct buzzing noise when they are spun as wheels of chance. The greasy french fry smell is there, along with the scent of cotton candy and snow cone to complete the picture.

This is how a tourist to the rally might dress to distinguish himself from the guys who really belong there - i.e. the dudes who rode in on their hogs. And while said tourist might have a very good time, he's not part of that great camaraderie that seems evident in the circles of bikers that gather together to compare biking stories, their bikes, and what ever else they typically talk about at such gatherings. Their friendliness is infectious and even if one is not directly interacting with them their pleasant banter makes the event enjoyable for all who pass by.

Once again a few scooters were represented at the rally. This little Honda…

… and a bit bigger Burgman.

Downtown Johnstown was festooned with decorations appropriate for the rally. Even the portable toilets took on a more pleasant than usual appearance. Unfortunately, the decorating did nothing for the smell.

There were some unusually awesome bikes along with the many, many usual ones adapted to give each its own personality.

There is always something spectacular about seeing a row of bikes all together. The bright colors, the highly polished chrome, and the doodads which personalize each machine present a visual package no less spectacular than a great fireworks display. With the bikes however, the visual joy is not fleeting and remains for as long as one stands at the curb eyeballing an entire street full of motorcycles.

Of course, the hucksters were out in all their glory. Like if I were at a motorcycle rally on the bike myself I'd give a rat's diseased behind about taking the time to compare my insurance policy with some other company's offering. Frankly if they offered shots from a BB gun at the huge inflatable gecko perched atop the van behind this bike, I might have spent the day gunning at the ugly little thing.

I can assure you that most of the biker babes, whether with bikes of their own, or riding pillion did not look like this honey who had sampled a ride on a three wheeler. In general I was very surprised at the number of trikes represented at the rally – more people ride them than I would expect.

This guy cracked me up. I think it took a big man, very secure about his masculinity, to ride this contraption down the middle of town. Sort of like somebody on a scooter!

I could post many of the ridiculously large, 200 some pictures I took but none of them would convey the actual experience of being in downtown Johnstown for Thunder in the Valley. It was fun to be a part of the event even though I rode to it in my jalopy and interacted mostly with my own party.

Maybe someday I will do the rally on a motorcycle. I'll be the one leaning up against a telephone pole somewhere nibbling quietly on his french fries.

(I was window shopping at the electronics store a few weeks ago and found Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software for half price. It was something I had drooled over for a number of years, so I jumped on it. Many posts here from now on will be dictated rather than typed, so please look the other way at the occasional mistakes that my proofreading might not catch.)

Choo Choo!

2011-06-17T19:22:00.000-04:00

I was on my way to nowhere in particular this morning when I crossed the tracks halfway to town and only then heard the bells and horns on a diesel locomotive that was rolling slowly to the right-of-way that I'd just crossed over. There was nobody else coming in either direction on the street so I did a quick U-turn, pulled up to the tracks, and reached for my camera holster like Deputy Dawg going for his trusty revolver. I managed to squeeze off a few decent shots of the Luzerne and Susquehanna Railway engine moving a few cars over a nearby switch.

I chase trains much like I chased them as a little boy, running to the far end of Grandma's yard every time I heard one coming. On a really lucky day Uncle Andy's dad, a trainman, would wave to me from a Lehigh Valley caboose as it crossed the small trestle over the creek behind the backyard. Many dreams of my youth were tied up in the comings and goings of those trains, though I couldn't say how in words. There was just something about the railroad that was bigger than life that carried me, in my day and night dreams, far from the confines of this valley to adventurous places of mystery and excitement and magic.

When the day in and day out running of the rat race threatens to cage me in, all it takes is the mournful cry of the plaintive augmented chord wailing from the horns atop a diesel cab to take me, at least for a blessed moment, to somewhere far away in my dreams. Someone waits for me there, asking if I heard the horns. The answer is apparent by the grin on my face and the wave of peace and belonging that washes over me.

I paused just there to sit on the front porch for a few minutes to watch the gentle rain and recalled doing the same with my Grandpa so many times when I was of preschool age. I don't think a day has gone by since he died when I was in the sixth grade that I haven't thought of him in some way and felt a loss in not having him here with me. He would have had all the answers for me. He was the wisest man I ever knew, and the quietest. Hmmmmm. Maybe I need to spend a little more time acquainting myself with a contemplative silence. Or with blasting train horns. Each draws my heart to the past. Each compels me to walk boldly into my future.

School's Out for the Summer!

2011-06-15T09:45:00.000-04:00

I sit here in my classroom, the only sounds being those of the guys erecting the scaffolding on the church across the street and the quiet hiss of the small fan under my desk. My big kids have been gone, graduated, done for the past week, and the kids down the hall are contained in their excitement as they wait for the same sound as I - that of the final bell which will bring to a close the 2010-2011 academic year.

It's a different ending to a year in that one of my best work friends will enter retirement in the 35 minutes or so that we have to go. Although it's never easy, I've gotten accustomed to saying goodbye to the kids as they graduate, knowing even that some of them I'll likely never see again. Bidding that final farewell to a respected and beloved colleage, though, isn't something that's happened enough times for me to have gotten used to it. There's a sadness in me in knowing that when I get here in August to set things up she won't be around, and that when I hear that first bell which will begin the next school year she won't be here any more. Her replacement might be a great person, but it will take me some time to warm up - until familiarity builds and mutual respect is earned.

This empty room almost feels haunted, as if the sprits of the kids who've passed through here remain. They're not tangible presences, but I feel them around me nonetheless in the memories they gave to me in sharing their lives with me this past year. I can look up and remember where each of them sat, and as my gaze moves from one desk to another, so do my thoughts in recounting the many memorable moments that happened here. They were a lively class, full of ambition, and zeal. They loved each other, and me, and no matter how lousy a morning any one of us had awakened to, getting here and being together somehow eased the burden. This is the last career I'd ever imagined, as a child, that I'd make my own, and although an occasional daydream pictures me doing something that would have earned me a lot more money through the years, there's not another thing that I can imagine myself doing now that would give me the same fulfillment I feel in doing this.

Outside these windows the sun is shining, beckoning me to come outside and play. I will! Not long from now I'll mount my trusty steed, Piaggio, and the breeze on my face will feel totally different than it did when I arrived this morning. It will be that unique sense of freedom itself blowing under my helmet and through my shirtsleeves, and I'll want to shout "Yippie!" to everyone I pass as I make the ride back to the house to change into play clothes.

And though I yearn for the freedom that is now only minutes away, I know that in only a few weeks I'll feel the need to be back here. I know full well that in July I'll be here long before I need to - that I'll come up to this very room to sit at this desk and just soak up what I can of the spirits which linger. Likewise I know that when I finally need to return in late August for that first bell, they'll nearly have to drag me up here kicking and screaming because I won't want to give up the freedom. It's the enigma of doing something you love doing, but loving doing nothing nearly as much.

Goodbye, school. Helloooooooo, summer!

Lean On, Me!

2011-06-14T18:42:00.004-04:00

The comma in the subject of this post takes it beyond a seeming quote from a Bill Withers song and makes it an important note to self. For the past week or so I've made a huge adjustment to my riding style because of something posted by a fellow blogger, and to him I'm truly grateful for the suggestion.

It was at The Great Motorcycle Pizza Tour where our gracious host, Lucky, penned the following:

Minimize Your Chicken Strips - In day to day riding, it's best to have a margin of safety, so you shouldn't be riding at the limits of your bike or ability. On the other hand, it is important to know how to handle your bike at extreme angles. You should be able to ride better than you usually need to so you can handle unusual circumstances. So find a safe place and wear down the edges of your tires now and then. It's fun.

Reading that was a eureka moment for me because before I'd even finished reading it I came to realize something that had been lacking in my riding style since I started scootering four years ago. I remembered leaving the lot of Team Effort Cycle in May of 2007 with my little Piaggio Fly 50 and hearing the salesman reminding me, "Don't lean too far until you're comfortable with it!" And I realized when I read Lucky's advice that I'd never moved beyond that "don't lean" mindset. For four years, even after the upgrade to the BV 250, I'd been slowing way too much when going into turns and corners, and watching the cars behind me crawling up my rear end as I was nearing intersections at which I needed to change course. I'd never gotten comfortable with leaning adequately because I'd never really tried it, and so I braked more than I needed to at every turn.

Practicing my turns with more lean and heeding the lesson from the cycle safety course that taught that the bike will go where the eye leads it has made a remarkable difference! You can teach an old dog new tricks - even when you're the dog!

Thanks, Lucky! I hope you find that ultimate pizza someday!

Three Years of This

2011-06-12T21:27:00.002-04:00

The anniversary of Scootin' da Valley passed quietly yesterday without fanfare nor celebration. It was a busy day with seeing my daughter off to California and attending a birthday party for a cousin, but even if it hadn't been there'd have been no horn blowing nor confetti throwing on this account. Except for a single precious soul, nobody in my "real life" knows about this blog at all. Only last week my younger daughter confessed that she and her older sister make fun of me in text messages when I'm in the same room with them. I won't be giving them any additional fodder to get them through the dry spells by letting them think that I fancy myself a writer of some sort. Neither would I want family, friends, nor acquaintances reading into any of the things I put here and thinking they've figured me out to any degree because they'd be bound to be wrong.

To be certain, those of us who blog, especially over the course of multiple years, could be thought to be a pretentious lot, and particularly so when the comments left in response to our writings are few and far between. Pretense aside, though, I continue to write here in spite of the frugal feedback and nothing to jump up and down about in the statistics counter, which bolsters my belief that essentially I write here for myself. Somehow sending the old thoughts down to the fingertips and then out into cyberspace fulfills some vague need in me. When I started this venture in June of '08 I didn't believe I'd last this long, and while I'm glad I stuck it out, I couldn't begin to tell you why I am.

I ride a scooter. Although I enjoy reading the blogs of the real bikers, and often find gems of helpful advice (I have a quote from one of them on my desk at school.) and important safety tips in their writings, I don't have anything by way of enlightenment to return.

I don't change my own oil and swap out scooter parts. You'll never find here one of those tutorials complete with photos that demonstrate how to replace a whatsahoozit or the proper way to fix one's own bobamadinkler.

I'm mildly funny, once or twice, on a good day, and only to certain persons. I savor the writings of guys like Riepe (who's every bit as good as O'Rourke et al in The National Lampoon in the late '70's), but I could never make somebody nearly spit out a cigar or mouthful of Jack Daniels with anything I pen.

I take pictures and lots of them, and the lucky shots I show here, but they're like photos in a family album taken by mommies quickly firing off those growing up moments and not well composed and demonstrative of masterful technique like the photographs of one of my favorite blog writing and scooter riding heroes, Steve Williams.

A local blog writing group has a link to me, but even there I don't quite fit in. They're highly political and have writing agendas driven by local politics. I vote somewhat reluctantly and the only politician about whom I was ever fired up was Richard Nixon - when I was in the sixth grade. And look at what my support got him!

So, I flounder at best in my efforts here, trying to carve out a niche in corundum with a plastic butter knife, but that's okay. And I truly mean it. This is not a pathetic attempt to get anybody to comment, "There, there, Joe. We love your blog!" It's just more of the same soul searching that I do on the scooter that somehow extends into what I write here. And maybe that's the tie-in that makes this a scooter blog to me when I'm not specifically writing about the BV or my experiences on it - pondering that one essence of self. Riding the bike and writing something here give me the same introspective satisfaction and there's nobody to please but me!

Will I be here in three more years? Probably. Will this have evolved into some profound showcase of amazing ability? Heck no! It'll be what it always has been, and is - I just don't know quite what that IS yet.

Riding not Writing

2011-06-06T18:01:00.002-04:00

Yes, I'm riding like crazy, every chance I get - in between the days of scattered thunderstorms and isolated thunderstorms which seem to be alternating with days of partly cloudy and mostly cloudy. Of course none of them preclude the possibility of HOT which it has also been just about daily for the most part. I've been taking the BV to work most days - very nice starts to the mornings, and even though it's a little chilly then I've been riding in just short sleeves because I'm still hot from my shower when I hit the saddle.

I'm always on the lookout for photo ops, but either they've become more scarce, my eye has been off, or I've gotten more lazy in terms of dismounting to grab a Fuji moment. A scoot out to Dallas on Memorial Day got this pic of the bike next to a giant coffee cup. It suits me 'cause there's coffee flowing freely through me till about 1:30 PM most days. The only difference is that I run on generic rather than Dunkin'. A good cup of the latter is hard to beat, but unfortunately the price isn't.

It was perhaps a few years ago when I got a cool picture like the next one in front of a similarly decorated market in Duryea, Pa. When I saw this storefront in Nanticoke yesterday, (and I couldn't have missed it if I'd tried), I knew I had to get a snap. Luckily it was Sunday afternoon and the town square was mostly deserted, so the weird feeling of conspicuousness that I usually feel when I'm taking pictures of my own little scooter didn't bother me much.

Nanticoke's often the perfect choice when I don't want to ride too far but want to get at least a few good miles between my house and the terminus of my ride. One of my uncles grew up there, and it was where we based the polka band that I was in back in college, so it kind of feels a little bit like home itself there. The folks are friendly and the place itself always feels welcoming.

I doubled back for the next glimpse of life here in the valley and wondered how far from here a "PIGGY DINNER" would be understood for what it actually is - a ground beef, pork, and rice mixture wrapped in a cabbage leaf and slow cooked in sauerkraut or tomato sauce or both. (And I'd originally typed "ground beer" in that last sentence. Do I have summer vacation on the brain?)

And speaking of summer vacation it's still not till the middle of the month that it starts. I know, I shouldn't much complain because of all the people who are already unsympathetic toward teachers for anything, but I remember fondly a time when we started back in early September and got out in the first week of June. Now it seems to go by in the blink of an eye, but rest assured that I'll put some good miles on the Piaggio before it's over again.

When It's THIS Hot...

2011-05-26T15:59:00.000-04:00

When it's this hot, one needs some cold beer...

... and a scooter to bring it back on!

Enough said. Too hot to type any more.

Shot Myself Again

2011-05-24T18:48:00.001-04:00

Ever since I experienced the thrill of capturing a picture of myself through one of Pennsylvania's highway cameras I was determined to do it again, from another camera. I had the opportunity this past weekend although I had to finagle a kludge to get the shot. The first picture I did a while ago I was able to capture using my iPod Touch and the free WiFi from at nearby Sheetz gas station. This time the shot would require an internet connected cell phone which mine isn't. Luckily, my partner in crime has one and she just happened to know exactly where the camera was looking out on her end of the commonwealth.

It looks more like some robotic appendage, but the camera is housed inside the bumble at the bottom of the mount. This camera looks down across Route 219 onto Scalp Ave. in Johnstown, Pa. where I'll be attending their annual Thunder in the Valley motorcycle rally in four weeks, right after school is out for the summer.

This is the scene, from street level, upon which the camera looks down. The building, a former Bob Evans restaurant, is home to the Johnstown branch of the Somerset Trust Co. There's my little Neon to the left.

And there we are standing on the sidewalk in the lower right hand corner. The other part of the kludge, since the phone doesn't store internet pictures, was photographing the image on the actual screen of the phone. I shot it in the back seat of the Neon after grabbing the scene with the trusty Fuji digital camera I affectionately call Mama Bear.

To see the actual scene through this road camera in real time, click here.

Yes, I'm doing my share of riding the scooter these days when we have the rare day on which the forecast isn't for scattered thunderstorms. Seems like they're all we've been having lately, and I've been taking the car to work more often than not. I'm guessing I'll be more productive here once I put the school year to bed. Stay tuned!

Civic Duty in a Corrupt Place

2011-05-17T16:15:00.003-04:00

Well, off to vote I went today, though I'm not really sure why. You can spare me the flag waving and the trite sayings about what a privilege it is, how it's our American duty to hit the polls, and all that. My party here offers nothing new that's worth getting excited about. After all this valley and county have been through in the past few years in terms of corruption and big names going to prison I'm filled with disgust at the whole process and more jaded than ever about politics in general.

I voted for two person among a cast of mostly unknown and unsavory characters - a guy I went to college with, and the relative of a person with whom I work and whom I respect.

I voted against the incumbent mayor who has the warm personality of a malignant tumor and an arrogance such as I can't remember in any other mayor we've had since I started voting. He has to have his name painted on just about every piece of equipment the city owns, and how is that expense justified? Everybody here already knows who the mayor is, and nobody from outside the area cares. I find it humorous that a neighbor (who just happens to work for the city) has a re-election sign for this guy in front of his house, but has the mayor's failed run for the Pennsylvania senate signs cut up and used as garden trim.

I voted against the single incumbent name I recognized as running for the school board. We've had more than one school director in prison lately for taking bribes in return for jobs and favors.

I saw not a single campaign in which anybody promised anything worth my vote, but I voted anyway. Civic duty? Patriotism? I don't know why I went out, but I did. So count me in as somebody who has the right to moan and groan and bellyache when the winners go into the general election and then, perhaps, public office to give us nothing more than the same, sorry junk we've been fed for years, all over again. I did my part. I can't wait to see them do theirs!

Meeting Up

2011-04-26T20:52:00.003-04:00

Although I've met some great folks because of riding the scooter, and gotten drawn often into conversation because of it, today was my first opportunity to meet someone because of writing this blog. I was at K-Mart, having gotten one of those way too expensive flat, lithium batteries for the thermometer I keep in the Neon, and I was just about ready to leave when I saw a gentleman a few rows across the parking lot waving in my general direction. I looked around and behind me, and saw nobody else to whom he might have been waving so I rode over to where he was standing. He asked if I write this blog through a hearty smile and when I told him that I do he introduced himself as the blogger behind the pseudonym D. B. Echo across the street from whose home I once took a picture of the BV and with whom I've interacted a few times in the comments section right here at "Scootin'."

To be honest I was a little stunned that he knew who I was until it dawned on me that I probably put more pictures of my own mug on here as I do of anything else.

"D. B." told me that there's a get-together of local blog penning folks like us coming up this Friday, but I'll be away on one of my weekend jaunts. Hopefully there will be one sometime in the future that will find me here and able to attend. Meanwhile I'll keep wearing this twinkle in my smile from having met such a genial fellow who seemed to be as tickled at meeting up with me as I was in getting to shake his hand and chatting a little.

Drat! I should have taken a picture of us to share here. Next time!

Holy Week and Stuff

2011-04-19T09:17:00.005-04:00

It’s “Holy Week” around the world this week – that stretch between Palm Sunday and Easter during which we who are Christian contemplate and in some sense “relive” that three day stretch in the life and times of Jesus Christ by which we believe the opportunity to get into heaven was made possible. Of course, to us Catholics the guarantee of eternal life doesn't end there; we still have to live relatively decent lives to avoid taking the down elevator when our reckoning is complete. Thus it was that the well dressed scooter this past Sunday was sporting some blessed palms on the way back from church.

I was hungry this past Friday for something other than the usual pizza (on whole wheat crust - yeeeech!) and breaded fish nuggets featured in the school cafeteria and treated myself to some McFish burgers at the local McDonalds. I don't know if it's just my iPod or if McWifi sucks in general, but I always have a difficult time getting the log-in screen at just about any Mickey D's, and then going anywhere online after I do. I tried yet again at getting one of those awesome food on the table shots that Steve Williams can do better with his iPhone than I can do with my DSLR, but once more I didn't quite manage to capture the deliciousness or welcoming ambiance that he always gets into his photos. Then again, consider where I was and what I was eating. Sigh!

I had the chance to roll over the new bridge that spans the Susquehanna River on the day that it officially opened for general use and thought it was cool that I was able to do that. The old green bridge standing alongside it will be taken down. It was one of those places where many of us cut our teeth while learning to drive because I swear the width of the old bridge didn't leave more than an inch of space between one's driver's side mirror and those of the cars coming in the opposite direction. I'm sure there was a little more breathing room than that, but it sure didn't feel like it.

Northeast Pennsylvania is removed enough from tornado alley that we don't usually have to worry about high winds, but there was some damage done here in the past week. This old man, on the way between my house and my parents', got a bit of a hair cut on Saturday. I don't know that I've ever been in a wind that strong when out on the BV because high wind is generally accompanied by rain around here, but I'm pretty sure that I don't want to be!

Wishing everybody a peaceful week and happy rides!

Juiced!

2011-04-13T17:45:00.001-04:00

Life is back to being good. The new Dell is up and running. I have a new DSL modem at thrice the speed of my old connection. But the cost?

Initial boot-up!

I had one of the worst experiences with tech support in my life in trying to get my internet connection back. What made it worse than it might have been, was that the flying monkeys apparently working at my ISP's tech support desk speak perfectly fine English and actually sound sincere in attempting to help while after the fact I imagine them poking each other with pencils, flicking blobs of ear wax around the call center, and trying to stifle their laughter in knowing that they're sending the help seeking customer on a one way trip to hell at the doors of which one should simply abandon all hope.

I was nice when the first guy, Corey, came on the line and tried farting around with rebooting my modem, as if I'd not tried that 100 times before calling. I knew he was following the mindless script he was expected to stick with so I played his little game and danced like a chihuahua out of whose reach a burrito was being held aloft. I fell for his eventual promise that someone would be out to the house the following day and braced myself for that evening and night without internet access.

When the expected time of the technician's arrival came and went the following day I called the tech support line to confirm that someone would still be on the way. Casey, (How do they get these Skippy sorts of names?) checked the ticket and had the gall to tell me, "They had to order a part." I was incredulous! How could they need to order a part when they hadn't been here yet? "Oh, they do most of the work outside, he assured me," in spite of my having explained that it was digging through the mess of wires under my PC desk that had caused the problem in the first place. When I started arguing about how stupid what he was telling me sounded he halted, put me on hold, came back and said that he had misread the ticket and that somebody would still be coming. An hour passed. On my next call I got Tammy and she was too adorable sounding to argue with so I asked her to try to make some kind of sense out of the load of crap I'd heard. Now, I don't know if I was just taken in by the sound of her voice, but she candidly admitted that Corey and Casey were both jerks who were taking guesses as to what was happening with my issue. I didn't feel better about waiting for my service to be fixed, but at least Tammy calmed me down a little, and when I later heard that it would be at least another full day before somebody would show up the top of my head didn't blow off.

Day two of Lack of Internet Hell arrived and I went to work confident that the planets would align correctly later on and that I'd be back up and running shortly after school. I kept that hope in my skip till the wife called me at lunch time to tell me that the ISP had called her to tell her that they had come to the house and nobody was there in spite of my having told the tech center and having had them read it back to me from ticket #2 that they were to arrive after 3:00 PM. The part that sent me into partial meltdown mode, though, was when they told her that if we called the tech support center back early enough they might make it back out later the same day.

That was when I called tech support and went ballistic on the flying monkey who happened to be next up in the queue. "Ripped him a new one," would put pleasantly what I did in response to the incompetence of the system.

Then my luck changed. On the way home I decided that I was going to call again, but to chew up and spit out a supervisor just for the heck of it. I keyed the 800 number and then went through what I thought was the right sequence in the voice-mail options. I accidentally hit an incorrect digit and got a guy in networking rather than the usual jerks at the tech desk. I quickly explained my predicament when he asked if he might be able to help and as soon as I finished, he said he'd put me in touch with the local technician dispatch center. A minute or so later I was actually talking to a real live person (who doesn't take to the air with a banana in each hand) who was sitting at a desk only a few miles away. She assured me that a guy would be out shortly, and indeed, he was. After a quick check of my wiring he went to the truck, brought in a new modem, and all was well with the line.

I quickly built a new shelf for the new modem because it was bigger and bulkier than the one it replaced, then set to getting the Dell out of the carton and up and running. By the time I went to bed last night I had about 95% of what I use on a daily and usual basis installed and working on the new machine, in part because after having learned a horrid lesson the last time a computer fritzed out on me I'd been keeping all of my data on external drives along with most of the installation programs for my typical software.

I haven't seen this big a section of the rug under my PC desk

since the early 90's. One of the things I dug out of there was
a long, thick parallel port cable. Can't remember the last time
I used one of them!

So, for better or worse, I'm back, and summer vacation is so close I can almost smell it. Now if I can get my blood pressure back down to a normal level by then to do some serious scooter riding and writing, I'll be okay!

Unplugged!

2011-04-11T07:39:00.000-04:00

I was supposed to have been away this weekend on one of my long, weekend jaunts out west, but plans that had been made before that, but not written on the big calendar on the freezer door, pretty much forced me to stay put. It's funny how things happen, because on Saturday morning I awoke to some kind of odd Windows warning on my screen. You know - one of those, "Sorry for the inconvenience, but we're going to shut you down now," kinds of windows. After that, every computer gremlin in hell was released into my PC. Programs wouldn't start, but they said they were running in the task bar in spite of never appearing on the monitor. Programs that did open seemed to have minds of their own, working, or more accurately not working, in unpredictable fashion.

It's a sickening feeling to me when I have computer woes, as if some part of my very body is out of kilter. I tried restoring the system to a previous working state, but after numerous tries, the problems persisted. I kept rebooting, somehow thinking that eventually all would miraculously somehow be well, but the day went on with more heavy sighs than words coming out of me. The Mrs. simply told me to go out and get a new machine. Tempting, but the thought of reinstalling everything I use often was too daunting to consider it. All I wanted was for the problems to disappear and for all to go on as usual.

It's now Sunday evening as I key this post on the netbook - in Microsoft Word...

I gave in this morning when I got up after a fitful sleep, once again idiotically imagining that maybe a good night's sitting would fix the PC but discovering to my disappointment (surprise, even) that the devil and his minions had taken over my computer for good. I waited for Best Buy to open and picked out the Dell that had been advertised in their weekend circular that would best fit my needs. I got it home, set the carton aside, and then set out to face the intimidating job of untangling the absolute nest of wires that had accumulated under my computer desk over the course of the last ten years or so. A big thick parallel printer cable was among the tangled snakes and worms of wires. I hadn't used a parallel port in ages! I figured it would take a good hour under there. Guess again.

Where the PC should be

After unplugging the DSL modem, sorting out its cables and then powering it back up, it became apparent that something was terribly, horribly, awfully wrong. The familiar sequence of blinking lights didn't do its usual thing and hasn't since in spite of having tried everything I can possibly think of to restore the modem to working order. Yes, there's a dial tone on the line. No, the back-up modem won't boot up to DSL service either. I even took the bloody thing to the basement and attached it physically to where the cable coming upstairs originates. I swapped out each of the cables. And with every failure I just felt more beaten than I had before I tried it. I threw in the towel around 3 when I called the ISP and scheduled a service call for tomorrow afternoon. I paced the house aimlessly. I tried reading and watching TV. And every time I walked past the stinking modem I power cycled it yet again hoping for the best. Around 5 I took off on the scooter to try to clear my head.

It was a nice ride even though my thoughts didn't stray far from the fact that my brand new computer is still in its box. I figured there isn't much sense in hooking it up because as soon as it boots I'll probably be asked to register it online.

A bright part of the day - the county park
is now open for the (riding) season!

I rode to the county park that's locked from when it gets cold in late autumn till the powers that be deem it warm enough to open the gates again in the spring and was thrilled to find the gates wide open! I paused to get some pictures and to make a phone call and then headed back because the chill was creeping into me. Of course once I got back indoors I tried power cycling the modem again, just in case. Yeah, right! I fired up the netbook instead and started typing these words thinking that writing this post offline would take up a good portion of the evening.

It's only 7:30 and I have a newfound appreciation for the lifestyle of those poor folks who lived around the time that "Little House on the Prairie" was set. What did they do to stop from going stir crazy? Oh, Pa played some hymns on the fiddle while the wife and daughters quilted or something, but really? Night after night without the internet? How did they manage to survive?

So, the game plan here is to finish this up and then post it when I'm connected to the 'net tomorrow at work when I'm on a break. That's if I make it through the night. I have a book somewhere, I think, and maybe if I'm really lucky there will be something on The Discovery Channel that isn't a bunch of surly sailors chasing after crabs. If it works out, you'll possibly be reading this before my 'net service here at the house is restored. Send up a prayer or two, please - that I might preserve my sanity till all is back in working order.

Picture That!

2011-03-27T20:49:00.000-04:00

Well, I just learned the very hard way that Blogger's auto save feature can work against one. I'd spent the past hour typing a post here only to have accidentally deleted it all while trying to delete a single line and then watching as the "Draft Saved" notice appeared to inform me that everything I'd carelessly wiped out had been instantly overwritten.

Now, to be certain, it wasn't a stellar post that we lost because I was taking the Family Circus route* in trying to tell what should have been a simple story. On the other hand, that's part of my charm here, isn't it?

Well, without crying over all the spilt words, it came down, essentially, to this...

Pennsylvania has a decent network of cameras** aimed at its highways, a good number of them watching the very roads I travel over to the western part of the commonwealth once a month or so. Last year a new gas station opened right where one of the cameras I pass by regularly keeps its watchful eye on the road. I've wanted for a long time to get a picture of myself through that camera and yesterday I managed to do it.

There's a McDonald's across the street from the gas station and I'd hoped to latch onto their free Wifi with the iPod Touch from the gas station's parking lot. The Mickey D network was visible to the device, but was working like typical McWifi - just sitting there infinitely waiting for the log-in screen to appear. After a while of becoming increasingly more impatient I decided to try hitting up various other wireless networks that were showing, and striking out on every one of them till I hit up the very last one available. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was coming from the gas station itself . (The very chain I'd written to when McD's started offering their free Wifi to suggest that the trendy gas station chain hop on the bandwagon too, but from which I'd gotten no response. Maybe they listened after all?)

So, I parked the Neon and positioned myself in a few different areas around it, snapping pictures with the iPod through the highway camera high atop the pole across the huge intersection from where I was.

Here's the best one...

The lower inset is the actual picture from the camera. The portion at the top and right is a blow-up of the same shot. The bottom of the red line that joins the inset to the enlargement points to the Neon and me in the original photo. That's me standing right above the top of the red line with the Neon to the left of me in the picture. Okay, I'm hardly recognizable, but I got the picture I wanted to get!

Unfortunately, because of the accidental deletion you'll not be reading more about my formative years and how I wanted to be a photographer when I was a kid but couldn't because my family had to save our pennies in case there was another world war or depression. Maybe some other time if you all behave and eat your peas.

*(To see what I meant by Family Circus route, click here.)
**(For the Pennsylvania highway cameras, click here and then check the "Cameras" tab on the left.)

Ride to Work Day

2011-03-17T22:52:00.000-04:00

It's ironic that for how much I enjoy riding the BV to work, the school year usually ends about a week or better before the official "Ride to Work Day" for motorcyclists which is on the 3rd Monday in June. Thus it was that I celebrated my own version of the day this morning by taking the scooter to work for the first time since the first wintry mix of precipitation hit the valley on December 9th.

Though I ride after dark in the evening often enough, I'm much more wary of doing so in the morning, probably because I know there are other folks behind their wheels who are just as much wishing they were still in bed as I am. Just a week ago it was quite light out at 6:45 when I usually leave for work, but it was still darned cold, and while the temperatures were on the rise as we approached the start of daylight savings time, once we turned the clock ahead last weekend it was still mostly murky when it was time for me to leave the house. Today was the right combination of light and temperature and off I went!

I probably won't feel TOO
bad in June when I'm riding
around on that third Monday
and not having to go to work!

Ethel's Last Ride

2011-03-12T21:13:00.000-05:00

I wasn't one of those kids who grew up drooling over certain cars. I'd have to spend some quality time with Google if I cared to find out what kinds of cars were popular when I was growing up, mostly in the sixties and seventies. My dad taught me a lot about a lot, but he never knew cars, and I don't either. Nevertheless, a few of the ones I've had through the years grew on me, to the point where saying goodbye to some of them was met with tears. Today was the parting of ways with one of the special ones. Today we said goodbye to Ethel.

When she became part of our family she was just "The Corsica" at the beginning, and later just "the car." It was in 1999 when she pulled up in front of the house for the first time. She was shiny, and young, and strong. For three or four years she'd be the family car. I was still working a few blocks from the house then and didn't need to drive to work and back, and neither of the kids was driving yet, so one car served us well enough most of the time.

Three years later I got the Neon, and when the Mrs. inherited her father's car two years after that the Corsica went to our elder daughter who was a freshman in college. That Corsica was the last car on earth she wanted. She begged us to let her trade it in and buy something else with her meager savings. We held the line. Either she took it, or she had no car. She took it. And, over time, she came to love it as much as if it were an actual person. It was our daughter's best friend who was also her roommate who christened the car "Ethel" and the name stuck hard and fast. None of us ever said, "the Corsica," again. It was Ethel. And, I suppose all of us came to think of her that way - as one of the gang.

Ethel grew like a typical person. She needed the doctor now and then, and Dr. Gene at The Car Barn worked some emergency room magic more than once to bring her back from what we'd feared would be her certain demise. Our little girl graduated, then married, and Ethel went with her as an inseparable friend and companion, serving her well for quite a while.

A week or so ago old Ethel started to run a fever. Some mechanic down where our daughter lives diagnosed a bum radiator and mumbled something or other about a cylinder and the head gasket to the tune of $1300 worth of repairs. Gene had replaced Ethel's radiator last year and it was under warranty. A tow truck was summoned to bring the old girl "home" where her old, familiar doc would take care of her. Little did we realize that it would be Ethel's last trip up the northeast extension of the Pennsylvania turnpike.

She went straight to The Car Barn and a few days later Gene called with the sad news. The radiator was replaced, but he told us that without a new head gasket she'd be a running time bomb and would probably blow the new radiator in no time. Our little girl went car shopping and picked out something to replace Ethel who went to mark time in front of my parents' house till the time would come to part ways with her.

That time came this morning. The plan was for all of us to take our final ride in Ethel to the car lot, and then to take her to the junk yard after getting some pictures of the old and the new together. But, it wasn't to be. We left my parents' place and started heading over to the car lot when Ethel's temperature gauge spiked. We circled the neighborhood for the wife and our younger daughter to pick up her Jeep while the elder and I would continue to the scrap yard.

For as time consuming as it is to transfer the title of a car to another person, I was astounded at how fast a transaction happens at a junk yard. In five minutes Ethel was signed over, the money was in my hand, and that was that. My daughter is just like me. She lives with a camera in one hand. We took some final shots of Ethel before we left her there all alone.

I'd have insisted, if anyone had noticed, that my bleary eyes and sniffles were from some dust being blown around at the junk yard even though it was quite muddy. It was like saying goodbye to a person. An old friend. Like that last peek you get at somebody you love before they usher you out of the room to close the lid of the casket. When I have to part with that Neon, or the BV, I'll be carrying on like an Italian widow and her sisters.

The Wienermobile Comes to Town

2011-03-11T22:43:00.001-05:00

When my sister sent the news by way of a picture she snapped of the official flyer she saw at the supermarket a few days ago, I knew that today would be a dream come true kind of day for me. What scooter riding boy doesn't dream of someday having his own picture taken of his scooter and himself posed right beside the one, the only Oscar Mayer Wienermobile? (Okay, it's not one and only, but it looked good when I typed it. There are seven of them at a time touring the country.)

It almost didn't happen. It was too gray out this morning to take the scooter to work, and the Wienermobile would only be on display during work hours - from 10 AM till 1 PM before moving on to another venue. With a bit of last minute planning I managed to pull the photo shoot off by leaving work at noon on my lunch break, driving home and swapping the car out for the scooter, and arranging to have my sister meet me at the supermarket to shoot some pictures. It went off without a hitch and folks stepped aside with smiles to give my sister a clear shot with the camera as I sat there on the BV next to the awesome hot dog on wheels, grinning like an idiot.

I was back to work in plenty of time before the lunch period ended, once more returning to the house in between to drop off the scooter and pick up the car. Not only was the sky still gray, but it was colder than it had been in the morning and I wasn't going to risk possibly getting caught in something slippery with the bike. And not only did I get the coveted pictures, but there was a shiny new Oscar Mayer Wiener Whistle in my pocket to boot. God bless a hot dog company cool enough to have a Wienermobile and that still gives out free stuff!

By contrast there's the Turkey Hill gas station / mini mart around the corner... They can afford new gas pumps that can display variable text, usually in the form of advertising their expensive iced tea while you're pumping your gas, but apparently can't hire register monkeys who can be trained to add messages to them rather than hand scrawling signs to slap on the pumps with masking tape? Nothing quite screams CLASSY COMPANY than something like this.

As for that "rewards card?" That would be the card that you present upon purchasing something way overpriced like a bottle of Pepsi that then gives you a discount on the price of your gas. I'd rather get my carbonated beverages around the corner at the place that sponsored the visit from the Wienermobile without feeling like I'm being prison raped by the mark-up, and pay the regular price for my gas, than carry around their plastic card and pay too much for the "convenience" of getting my drinks or just about anything else at the gas station.

Want to Throw in the Towel

2011-03-07T18:55:00.001-05:00

"Rain," the forecasters all predicted for this past weekend. Rain from Friday through Sunday coinciding with my monthly trip to western Pennsylvania. Rain as often as I checked on Yahoo, The Weather Channel, and even the National Weather Service (whose forecasters speak with all the enthusiasm of their staid brethren on PBS).

Well, I rode through 24 miles of that "rain" on Interstate 80 yesterday afternoon, and if I hadn't given up biting my fingernails in the sixth grade when I got a piece of chewed nail stuck in my throat during geography class one afternoon, I'd have devoured every last one of them down to the quick between Lamar and Loganton. Apparently nobody told the rain that it was supposed to be in liquid form and I drove through what seemed to be every form of wintry precipitation that water can take. There was a car upside down in the divider. Another facing backward on the shoulder. A third with an obviously broken axle was down in the gulch beside the shoulder and apparently came to an abrupt stop when the front end rammed the foot of the mountain beside the road.

I ripped a trucker apart on Friday on the CB when he cut his rig right in front of me in the passing lane only to slow me way down to 65, and there I was on Sunday slugging along somewhere in the 20 and 30 MPH range for close to an hour with most of the other sensible motorists, all of us too thankful to be moving along at all. Eventually I hit the dividing line between the crap and the rain and rode the rest of the way back in relative ease.

About 8 PM the junk started falling here. When I was going to bed around 10:30 there was about an inch of slush / freezing rain / sleet on the sidewalk so I ran the shovel over the walkway in front of the house and cleared the cars figuring that the changeover to rain would wash away the little bit of solid junk that was still falling and all would be well in the morning. Instead I was rudely awakened at 5 AM with the announcement that five inches of snow had fallen overnight. School was delayed by two hours and when I got back in the house after clearing the cars and sidewalks completely it was cancelled.

I kept up with clearing the deck with every storm that besieged us this winter, but this time I'm throwing in the towel. After cleaning everything in front of the house, by the time I cleared a single shovel width of what was on the deck surface, I'd had enough. The warmer temperatures later in the week can take care of this. I'm not, and even the thought of running the scooter through the thaw won't make me.

56 Days Later

2011-02-27T18:14:00.001-05:00

Finally! Fixty-six days since I parked the BV under the deck I was able to take it out today. For as long as it had been since I had last ridden, it almost felt like I'd scored some kind of victory in being able to ride this afternoon. I do believe that this break of nearly two months had been my longest riding hiatus since I became a scooter rider nearly four years ago.

I've always been a chicken when it comes to ice and snow. I don't like walking on it. I don't like driving with even four wheels on it. Although we didn't have any storms of monstrous proportion (yet) this winter, since shortly after Christmas we've been nailed with snow often enough to keep questionable patches of frozen junk on the roads with bad plowing and then melting and refreezing. Even today I wasn't certain that I'd not encounter something that might make the front tire skate across it, but I took the calculated risk because I was just about stir crazy from not riding.

I knew exactly where I wanted to go even before I left the house, and if we were to look back in this journal to a year or two ago from right around this time of year, I wouldn't be surprised if I were to find that I'd written an entry similar to this one from the very same place. I went to the county park that closes in late fall, complete with big gates that block the roadway so well that even a scooter can't get around them or the posts that support them. Somehow that spot is like the official portal to spring to me, and until those gates open, regardless of what the calendar or thermometer might suggest, riding season isn't quite here. And, somewhat pathetically, until those gates are moved back, I'll return to that very spot time and time again and mutter to myself a big, ol', "Aw, shucks!" through a disappointed grin each time I discover that they haven't been.

I don't know that I've ever quite measured the passage of my life before in rituals of sorts as I do with the scooter and its "seasons." Ecclesiastes, the third chapter, comes to mind. "To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven." And, although I'm no great fan of the tune by The Byrds set to that set of the Lord's lyrics, the front tire certainly does "turn, turn, turn" as the somewhat distinct seasons of scootering come and go again each year and carry me to many familiar places and now and then to some new ones when I'm feeling particularly daring.

I was out this afternoon for, perhaps, only an hour or so. It was still cold as the wind whisked under the helmet, even with the visor down, and up the legs of my pants that my mom hemmed just a little too short at the beginning of the school year. But, it was a good kind of cold. The kind that invigorates and reminds one at the same time that its proper season isn't here to stay forever.

It was an odd feeling to be back in the saddle. For just the littlest while it almost felt like I'd never ridden a bike before. There was the slightest wobble to my grip. A trace of hesitation in my leans and turns. It all came back to me before I rode the mile or so to the downtown, but there was enough of a cautious reminder in there to keep me on my toes with the realization that riding, like anything else worth doing, takes some degree of practice and that the associated skills can get rusty from disuse.

Signs of spring are there if you know where to look for them. For me, it isn't usually farther than the garden along the walkway that leads from the backyard to the front sidewalk. Soon enough some tiny crocus heads will emerge from these greens and when I spy them for the first time I'll likely look like the Grinch in that famous scene where his heart grows a number of sizes larger than it had been and his face lights up with a beatific smile.

The best parts of life are simple and don't cost a thing. Having a scooter is a blessed bonus.

Briefly Thought About Riding

2011-02-21T19:38:00.000-05:00

It was sometime right before the weekend, before the one just past, when I actually thought about the possibility of taking the scooter out for a quick run just for the sake of being able to say I did it for the first time in over a month. The temperatures were going to get warmer for a day or two, into the mid 40's! Unfortunately, my not having cleaned the alleyway between my house and the neighbor's of snow from the past few storms left an icy mess between the tires of the BV and the street, and on the day when I thought I might get the best chance to get the cycle out, the ice was still holding up like forged steel to the blade of the chopper.

I sprinkled the ice pack generously with calcium chloride that Saturday morning, thinking that after getting back from visiting my little girl at college I'd hop on the BV and take that long awaited spin. When I got back late that afternoon, the salt had done its trick, but I was pooped. A nap won out over the ride and then it was too cold and dark to make the effort worth whatever small, freezing joy I might possibly have gotten out of a quick jaunt.

This past weekend might have been even better, but I was away from Friday afternoon till just today. Two days ago I was shooting trains in Cresson, Pennsylvania, and in spite of a howling, bigger wind, there was much joy to be found in seeing that most of the moderate snow piles made by local plows were nearly melted completely.

Because I planned to come back today, Monday, I watched the weather forecasts carefully to make sure that I'd not have to cut my trip short. The forecasts for today were bad, for tonight, but not for the daytime. Imagine my horror when I awoke this morning, 240 miles away from here, to learn that nine inches of snow had fallen here, while where I was everything was merely wet from some rain. I can't remember a time when the meteorologists, at every major service, were so completely off the mark!

I did trim my time away by a few hours and headed back earlier than I had planned in order to do most of my traveling during what was supposed to have been a lull in the storm. My calculations were excellent and I encountered no bad driving conditions except for a few small areas of fog. In spite of the jokes and complaints about PennDOT, my hat was off the whole time to the crews that clean the highways and byways. Of course in the summer I'll curse them to high heaven when they close down 20 miles of roadway to work on 50 feet, but today they were in terrific form in keeping the roads cleared!

So, here I am again, not much thinking of getting the scooter out any time soon. The snow pile right here where I need to turn the front wheel of the bike to get from the yard to the street looks like this.

Back to hibernating, I guess. Call me when it's really spring!

Just Another Brick...

2011-01-23T16:21:00.006-05:00

It was back in early May of 2009 when my beloved "brick," the Motorola V365 cell phone on which I'd logged over 60 solid days' worth of talk time from July of 2007 till then, bit the dust. When a cell phone dies it's not like just another piece of technology conking out and needing to be replaced. It's more like major organ failure and an ambulance ride to the emergency room with the lights and sirens working overtime. Losing that phone was like losing a part of myself. I've been through four different phones since then, including my daughter's used V365, and for various reasons none of them ever measured up to my own original "brick."

I'd been sniffing around to find something new for myself for a while. Unfortunately, even at that last official upgrade opportunity the guys at the AT&T store (i.e., the too dumb for college boys who will tell you anything you want to hear to make a sale that they don't have to support afterwards), in a rare moment of honesty, pretty much admitted that phones aren't designed much for serious talking any more. They're all about internet access and apps and texting. Besides, AT&T requires you to take out a pricey data plan if you want to get one of the slick phones with operating systems more complex than the computers that drove Apollo 11 to the moon. I talk. I text a little. I don't need all the bells and whistles, and I have an iPod Touch from which the internet is never further away than the nearest McDonald's.

I vowed to steer clear of anything by Samsung. Their reception, based on personal experience and the experiences of friends on AT&T, is substandard in places were other phones have a good number of service bars. And, though they're nearly impossible to find, I wanted a phone capable of auto-answer when I'm on the scooter with a wired headset or Bluetooth device. I don't like Nokias because the ones that AT&T offers look like cheap pieces of crap from China, and the weird brands my kids have are great for texting, but sound awful when I talk to them. What I love are Motorola phones, but AT&T only carries only the ones that require data plans and the big, luggy Tundra which I tried a few years ago and returned. By the time I made my most recent tour of the display walls at the local AT&T store, I'd eliminated every phone they offer from my consideration.

When a man is boxed into a corner, qualities sometimes emerge that he didn't realize he possessed. Thus it was that I (Shudder!) held my breath and stuck my big toe into Ebay to test the water. Within seconds I found a new, still in the box Motorola V365 - THE BRICK! A few seconds later, I took a deep breath and ordered it. And then I waited and followed its progress via the USPS tracking code as it made its way from California to me.

The perfect cell phone - THE BRICK!

The new phone arrived yesterday afternoon, only four days after I placed the order. Because the phone it was replacing was also a Motorola I was able, using proprietary software, to suck all of the contacts, pictures, and ringtones out of it and dump them into the new phone within minutes. By the time I went to bed, I was totally "moved into" the new brick with all of my standard personalizations complete!

Between ordering the new V365 and receiving it I remembered that the expansion card, a micro SD, could only be up to 512 megs because the micro 2+ gig cards on the market now hadn't been invented yet for the phone's architecture to be designed to support the larger models. I knew I'd had a 512 card for the original brick which I'd then transferred to my daughter's when she gave it to me, but could I find it? I hunted over and over again in every logical place it could possibly be among my usual gadgetry, but it was as if it had dropped off the planet. When I was reminded to ask St. Anthony to help me find it I offered up the lite prayer, "Tony, Tony! Come around! Something's lost and must be found," and followed it up with a real prayer invoking his uncanny ability to help Catholics find lost things. It took him a few hours to penetrate my dense skull with inspiration, but finally it came to me... Didn't the loaner camera you were using when the trusty Fuji that you carried on your hip went belly up take an SD card? Didn't you use the 512 card in an adapter? There it was in the Nikon! All was well!

Maybe one of the thickest cell phones ever sold, aside from the prototypic monstrosities, the V365 makes its cousin, the RAZR, look like it has a barfing type eating disorder. That's okay. Inside the V is a battery that boasts a nine hour talk time, and there were times when in the course of day I nearly drained it. For the record, I did love the RAZR which is basically the same phone in a different shell with the noteworthy exceptions that the RAZR doesn't take an expansion card so I was always taking out the pictures to make room for new ones, and the V365 has a more substantial feel in a large hand.

I sent both daughters a picture to let them know I'd gotten myself a new brick. The elder, who gave me her old one when I killed my first, commented, "You learn new technology so you can continue to use old technology?" There's a non-sequitur in there. This wasn't about being afraid of change or refusing to change. It was about having exactly what I want and not allowing a corporate giant to tell me what I need by limiting my choices.

So here it is, "The Brick" hanging from the magnet right here by my computer where my phones have always been docked when not in use. Ain't it purty? Oh, and yeah. The string. All my phones get a plain, white, nylon string with a simple washer at the end. It gives 'em character!

Off Road

2011-01-21T21:31:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid a sick day off from school had a certain feel to it, in part because I wore my pajamas all day. Snow days, off from school now, seem to have that same ambiance and probably because I don't usually need to change out of what I wore to bed the night before just to man the shovel and broom. Today was our fourth snow day at school for this winter, and the thought of making days up in June just adds to that sick day feeling.

To be certain, I won't be winning any best dressed awards for today's snow cleaning outfit.

The scooter is pretty much stuck here under the deck until the roads are a lot cleaner than they are now. Though I was delighted at the beginning of the month when I was able to ride on New Year's Day with relative impunity, the crapiness of real winter is now here with a vengeance, and some days I don't even venture out on four wheels unless there's a pressing reason to do so.

Facebook posts here in Northeastern Pennsylvania are filled with expressions of disgust about the snow that just keeps coming every few days, except from the kids who ski and do those other outdoorsy kinds of things in winter that make me shake my head and wonder what's wrong with them.

It's going to be a while, I fear, till I can see the lawn that I know is under this.

And until then, though you might see me here from time to time, I won't be writing much about my scootering adventures.

Another Auld Lang Syne

2011-01-01T14:20:00.006-05:00

As I greeted my daughter at the table while pouring my first cup of coffee this New Year's Day morning, I glanced at the section of the newspaper she wasn't reading and my eyes landed on a snippet about a list of words that should be banished from the English language. Having proclaimed my disgust for many years about kids (of all ages) inventing new terms for things and phenomena that already have perfectly good names, I had to find said list if for no other reason than to vindicate myself for being an elitist of words. It didn't take more than a few seconds to find that it's Lake Superior State University that maintains an archive of lists of words which should be banned, dating back to 1976, the year in which I graduated from high school. I can't wait to dig through the archive in its entirety to exclaim, "Yes!" time and time again, as indeed I'm sure I will after having looked quickly through some of the lists to find myself in near total agreement with their choices of words to ban.

It was having seen the word, "Fail," in the 2011 list that led me to where I decided to ride today.

It was near this very spot when my phone rang on the morning of September 29, 2007. It was a Saturday. Earlier that morning I had taken the written portion of the Pennsylvania DMV motorcycle test. When my phone had rung, the loving party on the other end had been calling in anticipation of congratulating me for having passed the test and having purchased the BV which I'd been planning to do when I rolled out of bed that morning. I had failed the test which left me without the motorcycle permit I'd have needed to get the BV so when I had pulled over to talk in this very spot in '07 I was still on the 50cc Fly 50. Anyway, it was seeing "Fail" on the list of words which should be banished that led me to North Scranton this morning, to this same place that will always have some personal meaning for me.

My brain was working like a Seinfeld episode while I was riding today. Various thoughts somehow circled back to others in vaguely related ways. It was while I was rolling through the hamlet of Duryea that I saw, "Hydration Station" over the door of a business on Main Street and thought, "Aha!" There was another word which should have made the list. Hydration! It's nothing more than a pretentious term for what one maintains by drinking a glass of water, or in the case of the truly pretentious, a bottle of water for which one paid as much or more as one would have for a can of soda.

Then my thoughts ran to the idea of pretentiousness in general, of which I'm somewhat of a fan. I enjoy pretentiousness when it runs right over the heads of the lowly who are left in its dust unawares. I thought back to a boy in my eighth grade class a few years ago who blurted out in the middle of class one day, "I just can't get Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata out of my head," because he knew me to be a fan of classical music. I grinned when he said it because the rest of the class didn't even "get" the pretentious nature of the statement and just plodded along deep in their little MTV type thoughts while the boy who had spoken, fully aware of his own mock pomposity, and I had our own private chuckle at their expense.

Now to be certain, I fully enjoy as well the opposite of pretentiousness, whatever its name might be. Thus it was that I felt compelled to get this shot where Christmas seemingly projectile vomited all over the front yard.

While riding back through North Scranton I came to the intersection of North Main Street and Market St where a town clock in the middle of a traffic triangle always takes me back to a simpler time when business thrived on Main Street just about anywhere because malls as we know them weren't invented yet - at least not around here. Having wanted for years to take the right turn off that triangle, I decided as I rode past it, that today should be the day. Instead I took the next right turn, then another, and one more to bring me down to the triangle toward the turn I'd missed. As I'd suspected, Market Street was painted with old storefronts, their heydays long past a time when North Scrantonians might have done all of the shopping necessary to the maintenance of a comfortable life right there in their own section of town. I pulled into a parking lot behind the town Christmas tree to get this festive shot of a guy out enjoying his scooter ride.

I made a call while I was there, and in walking around and talking I decided on this next picture which to me sums up the nostalgic appeal that a small town such as North Scranton has for me - a feeling I get whenever I come upon a similarly defunct "Main Street" in some obscure place that was home enough for the people who spent most of their lives right there perhaps a century ago. I can lose myself in a photo such as this one, imagining in only a nebulous way, what life might have been like back then when steam locomotives still rode the nearby rails, thinking that perhaps I'd lived a thoroughly contented, prior lifetime in just such a place once upon a time.

Snapping out of my imagined trip back to some earlier incarnation I said, "Goodbye," at the end of my call and realized that I needed to pee and that my fingertips were still somewhat numb in spite of the rest of me feeling quite warm and cozy under multiple layers of fabric. I rode back to the McDonald's in Old Forge, enjoyed the hospitality of a lone urinal, and then ordered, "The biggest coffee I can get for a buck." I sat at a corner table with my back to the warm sunshine streaming through the window, and wished I could take one of those awesome food on the table shots of Steve Williams fame that make me long to be right there at that very table that he's photographing. All I could manage, though, was a shot of my lonely, closed-cell extruded polystyrene foam* cup with all the ambiance a Mickey D's can muster.

With my fingertips finally warmed, it was time for me to head back to the house for the traditional ham dinner, but not before pausing one more time to call my Honey, to finish the rest of my coffee which managed to stay warm for about ten miles on the back of the scooter, and to take one last picture of myself enjoying my first ride of 2011.

I just poured myself a cup of coffee and after I finish it it'll be time for my first nap of the new year. Yeah, I'd have thrived in the simplicity of daily life back on that Main Street of yesteryore. (I thought I just made that word up to be funny in light of my writing about our not needing more new words to replace tried and true old ones, but nope. It's in Google.)

My most sincere wishes to everyone for a blessed 2011!

* [I was going to use the word Styrofoam™, but after I dug the cup out of the garbage can and could find no actual brand name I grabbed the generic description for such a cup from Wikipedia. I bought a writer's magazine once, back in college, and read numbers of pathetic ads from various companies shamelessly begging writers not to use their trade names generically. What can I say? It wasn't really a Styrofoam™ cup.]

Farewell 2010

2010-12-31T18:58:00.004-05:00

With temperatures in the mid 40's this afternoon, I had the pleasure of ending the year with a scooter ride. It was of usual length and I rolled along familiar roads, but it was a good ride in that I sat atop the saddle with that typical grin I wear when I'm on the BV, God's in His heaven, and all's right with the world.

I had one of my favorite, old cameras with me, having fixed its broken zoom function a couple of weeks ago with a few tiny pieces of electrical tape bridging the gap between the external button and the functional spot on the PC board that needed to be filled. I'd missed using it because I never really came to love the Olympus that had taken its place while it was in dry dock. The Oly tends to shoot dark and, as with all of the brand, has a difficult time focusing in low light. As you can see, the old one still does nice work, subject matter notwithstanding.

Before I took up the pen (i.e., took a sip of soda before starting to type here) I gave my posts here from 2010 a second look, poring over some in their entirety and skimming the others. Most noteworthy right up front was that I wrote just a little more than half of what I wrote last year in terms of the number of posts. I'm not sure why that was though I suspect it's because when I'm most serious I tend to clam up. This year, with only its few hours left, had more than its share of seriousness with which to contend, and the issues that were faced were not the of sort which I chose to share here. I didn't feel disappointed in myself for writing fewer posts. I wrote the ones I felt like writing when I was in the mood to write and in doing so I fulfilled whatever it is in me that gets its due when I crank out something I like. And I knew there wasn't anybody out there pouting over his coffee on the many days when I had nothing to share here. If I felt that anybody was hurting on the days that I didn't or couldn't produce anything, I'd shut this whole pony show right down completely 'cause it would have become work rather than a labor of whimsy.

My life would be much easier if I weren't a hopeless Romantic of sorts. My perception of pathos is painfully remarkable. As I took up the camera this afternoon and caught this scene through the viewfinder, all I could think of was that the scooter looks so sad being at the picnic grounds in the winter to see all the tables bare and alone inside the pavilion. Where are the people and balloons and plastic forks and knives? Where's the laughter, and frivolity, and camaraderie? How easy it was to "blame" the scooter for feeling these things when I knew that I was merely finger pointing, but with my own heart contending with closing another year of my life, it was just better to pretend it was the BV being so darned pathetic.

It was in August, just as school was about to start up again that I wrote, "All too soon Halloween will come and after that things will rush by. Thanksgiving! Christmas!" And here it is! Christmas vacation is almost over and can the telltale signs of Spring be all that far off? By shifting my own position and point of view and moving the scooter just a few feet backward, the view is now one of joyful anticipation.

Once again, the wonder of anthropomorphism paves the way for all sorts of emoting. Now we see the scooter "looking out the window" and thinking ahead to the days of warm sunshine and merriment in abundance.

It looks ahead, into tomorrow, into 2011, with childlike glee. As do I!

Christmas 2010

2010-12-25T13:53:00.000-05:00

To whomever finds himself here and celebrates Christmas, may you have a most blessed, peaceful, love-filled Christmas with those whom you love.

I was dreaming of a dry Christmas and got my wish, so although I had nowhere to go except to Aunt Betty's to cut her ham I just had to take the scooter out on Christmas Day for no other reason than because I could. Anybody noticing those few extra seconds of daylight in the past few days? Me neither, but wait till they start adding up!

Merry Christmas! God bless us, everyone!

Under a Week Till Christmas

2010-12-19T12:21:00.006-05:00

A week from this very minute, Christmas 2010 will be over with a hasty tip of the hat to those folks who believe that it goes on for 12 days. When all the pretty paper is in the garbage and the fun things with which it was wrapped are out in the open, when the turkey is gobbled, when the stars come out and the tree lights are turned off with a heavy heart, it's over. But, for now, take that morose preamble and stuff the turkey with it because Christmas is still nearly a week away and I'm in an unusually festive mood this year. The short days and long nights are nearly at the turning point. I haven't had to miss a day of school because of rotten weather. Most of my shopping is done. Tra-la-la-la~LAAAAAA~la-la-la-la!

It wasn't a good thing when my baby (who'll be 21 in a few weeks) came down this morning and begged off on going to the early Mass in hopes that by the time the later one rolled around her migraine would have passed, but her having done so afforded me the opportunity to think for five minutes about if I wanted to go out in the bitter cold (20 degrees F.) on the scooter, and to ride for the hour or so after pondering it. The air was crisp and clear and the ride itself most invigorating! I knew where I wanted to go for a change, so off I went.

I blame my being Slovak for the somewhat passive/aggressive attitude that at times doesn't allow me to be happy unless I'm to some degree miserable. It seems that we're all that way here on this little piece of the planet where my great grandparents settled after that long ride across the Atlantic. I went to the county park that I often haunt in the summer, knowing full well that the gates would be closed for the winter, simply to pose the bike in front of them like some little dog waiting for the back door to open so it can make a mad dash to the yard. I set the BV on its kickstand and took some pictures. I made a phone call. I sucked in the fresh air. And as I paused there I realized that I wasn't miserable at all about its being winter with its cold, short days and long nights and occasional slop of weather because I was generally wallowing in the omnipresent realization that Christmas is just around the corner!

I'll concede that I don't appear to be smiling in this picture, but I can assure you that on the inside ol' Ebeneezer's heart was beaming to beat the band. Upon further inspection I realize that this is a lousy shot all together. I appear to be storing some nuts in my cheeks and my spider is more than a little off center. So much for composing a shot and posing for it without seeing what the camera's seeing through its viewfinder. On the other hand, if you were trolling the 'net for beauty you wouldn't be here, and if I were seeking to provide you with any more than a brief slice of my life I wouldn't be frolicking in front of my own camera. Frolic? Did I just write that? I don't believe I've ever "frolicked" for a second in any of my 52 years. I don't believe I have the frame for it. But, in any event, did I mention that Christmas is less than a full week away and that I'm taking great delight in knowing it?

Doesn't this just scream CHRISTMAS! somehow? Even without the holly leaves, somehow red berries make me want to break into a chorus of, "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas," every time. The little flakes of frost make the berries look like tiny ornaments. If I were pretentious enough (and not so tight with a penny) to have any of my photos blown up into big prints and hang them on walls, this is one that I'd definitely consider putting on display.

And almost as if Somebody was reading over my shoulder and sprinkling even more Christmas my way... This, just in! I broke writing between that last paragraph and this one to go to the 10:30 Mass rather than the 8:30 I'd have gone to if my daughter hadn't awakened early this morning with that headache. Father Mike was the celebrant. (He's also a biker and an amazingly cool dude.) After Communion I was looking over the church bulletin, in particular the schedule of Masses for Christmas, and felt my dander rising. With my daughter's work schedule I knew that she would want to go to the 4:00 Vigil Mass on Christmas Eve and it's the last Mass I'd have wanted to attend because one has to get there around 3:00 just to get a seat because half of those Catholics who never go to Mass the rest of the year will be there in all their Christmas finery. When Mass this morning was finished Father Mike hit me up on the stairs starting with, "You can say, 'No,' if you want to, but..." I had the, "NO!" already poised on my lips when he continued with, "...would you consider being Santa at the 4:00 Mass on Christmas Eve?" If you could have seen my face you'd have seen the Grinch do that eyebrow thing that tells that he's up to something most devious. My answer to Father was, gesturing to my daughter, "If you guarantee us two seats that we won't have to come early for, you got it!" I'm Santa!

Now then. Where was I? Oh, yeah... After I left the park I headed back to this side of the Susquehanna River with my fingertips nearly so frozen as to make grabbing the brakes and applying sufficient pressure a little iffy. Every other bit of me was warm enough, but even with the thick, leather gloves the tips of my fingers were starting to get more numb by the minute and mile. I needed to stop at the ATM which just happens to be along the river bank itself which afforded me this peaceful scene.

The trestle spanning the river is the very same one that brings the Norfolk Southern freights to the track that runs behind my house and is known as "the gauntlet" to the trainmen who run the trains over it. Imagine being the conductor who has to walk the length of the train should it "go into emergency" and stop. No railings. No footpath between the ties. Think snowstorm. If heights aren't your fancy, as they aren't mine, the mere thought is dizzying, and I, who often digress, have done so again but without apology because I'm pleased to be writing something while full of Christmas glee.

Behind the bank is an access road that leads to the riverside bar of a local watering hole. The bar is jumping in the summer, but now the whole area can do little more than wait for the slow climb of the thermometer. The emptiness of the area afforded me the opportunity to ride the scooter right onto the "dance floor" and get this reflection of your host who's always reflecting here in one way or another.

Finally, this clever shot of the front tire of the bike along with my wish that if you celebrate Christmas but haven't yet been bitten by the spirit of the season, you'll soon feel some big teeth urging your butt to embrace it!

Betty's Lights

2010-12-11T22:08:00.001-05:00

Today was the day for the annual putting up of Aunt Betty's Christmas lights. The job doesn't amount to much work - stringing a set of lights on each of four small bushes and the attaching of a wreath to the front of the house, but it's a tradition just the same. Every year I moan about doing it because whenever I drive past Aunt Betty's house on the days leading up to Christmas the lights aren't usually turned on, but I know that the year is coming when there will be no more decorating of the bushes so ever year with a heart a bit heavier than it was the year before I put my moaning aside and do the lights.

Aunt Betty lives only a few blocks away so in spite of the freezing temperatures the lights were a good excuse to give the scooter a little exercise. It didn't fire right up, but after a few tries it was purring and chomping at the bit to get rolling. When the lights were done I ran downtown to circle the public square and then headed back to the house. I might have stayed out longer, but without the helmet with the face shield - well, I underestimated the cold yet again. I'll hope for a few more scoots in between the nuisance snows and freezing temperatures - maybe even a ride after the sun sets just to admire Aunt Betty's dark bushes.

Broken Tradition

2010-11-26T13:54:00.003-05:00

Though it had been a tradition only a few years old, yesterday the old Thanksgiving ride to the cemetery was cancelled because of the lousy weather here. I still visited the family graves, but in the car, and while I was paying my respects I saw and felt the first snowflakes of the season.

As the day went on the snow got worse, eventually accumulating on the cars and soft surfaces. Though the roads and sidewalks still held sufficient warmth to stave off the build up of the falling flakes I was glad that I remained prudent and didn't take the scooter out. I might have been safe enough, but I'd have been riding scared and wouldn't have enjoyed the ride at all if I'd taken it. The forecast for today, Black Friday, fared better, so all in all I'm glad I waited to ride till this afternoon when the skies cleared and the sun reacquainted itself with Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Well, the sun's light that is; its warmth was a different story. A bit of wind made the mid 40's feel a bit nippier but still pleasant for a much needed escape. I'm glad the TSA guys who feel folks up at the airports don't do random checkpoints on streets and highways or I'd have been a sure candidate for the full body search looking like this.

Not wanting to venture far from the house lest a turkey induced nap suddenly demand my attention, I visited a few of my usual summer haunts. First was the park where I occasionally blogged with the laptop a couple of summers ago. As I walked around looking for a decent picture angle, the BV reminded me of a little kid wistfully longing for admittance to the locked playground when viewed from this vantage point. It wasn't alone in that feeling as I contemplated the cold, dark, relative solitude of the many winter nights to come between now and when we'd be on the other side of the diminishing daylight and the current school year would start winding down.

It was nearly one of those perfect moments when I paused to snap the next shot. I watched the wind induced ripples rush toward and around me as the small stream bent past the spot where I stood and for a few seconds the illusion of apparent motion overtook me so that it seemed as if the water were standing still and I was flying over it. The voice of the one I love kept me warm as we chatted through the headset to which my phone was tethered and I held on to the feeling of flight for as long as I could. It lasted for only a few seconds, but the feeling was exhilarating and made me even more glad that I'd ventured out for the ride in spite of the chill.

Back at the house it was time to peel off the layers. With the hair atop my head clipped short enough for "helmet head" not to be much of a concern, the beard makes up for it. While I was riding I could tell that the beard was being bent at all angles under the face mask part of the hat and I was glad that I didn't need to stop anywhere where I might terrify little children with the resulting grizzled mountain man look.

If I'm lucky and the forecast for the weekend holds up through Tuesday when I have to head back to work I'll manage to get in a few more glorious rides in the golden sunshine. For now, though, here comes that nap...

Not Quite Ready

2010-11-21T16:07:00.003-05:00

In my nearly 30 years of teaching it had been my usual experience that a school year slugged along at a gastropod's pace until Halloween, and after that the speed increased exponentially with each passing week until the end was rushing at me seemingly too fast for me to get done all the things I'd hoped to accomplish. This year, however, has been clipping by at a fast pace from the first day running. I have to hope that somebody won't hit the brakes along the way, particularly in the spring when the days off are sparse.

Except for when there are sound reasons to take the car I've been keeping my pledge to myself to take the scooter to and from work every day. It's getting very brisk in the mornings, but so far the three mile run from the house to the school has been bearable without the visor as long as I keep my ears covered. Another ten degrees and I'll need the helmet with the visor, but still I'll hope to keep running the bike till the slippery stuff comes and sticks around.

I suppose now that mid autumn is here I'm ready for it. I don't like the early dark at all, but I manage to get by one day at a time with that feeling that nearly compels me to stay in the house after the sun sets. I'm still using the grill to get supper ready as often as the choice of meat warrants its use, but it does take something out of the experience when the sun is already down and I'm not sitting beside the grill with a beer while poking at the meat with a long fork or tongs, but rather running back into the house to get warm for a few minutes before seeing if it needs to be turned.

The Halloween Jack o' Lantern is still around for Thanksgiving, but it would seem that some of the little woodland creatures have been enjoying him in bits and pieces. God bless him, though, he's smiling through it all even when I'm grumping around in the house at 5:30 lamenting the cold and dark.

Fall has its occasional perks, I suppose, like this shot of a lone leaf impaled on the rake. I think it's a pretty good photo, suitable for hanging in some professional office where some decorator's pretentiousness leads one to believe that doctors, lawyers, financial advisors, and the like have decently cultured tastes. Not that they don't, necessarily, but do they really buy their own prints for their office walls? What can I say? I'm always the skeptic. I digress, but if you spend any time here other than in this visit, I know you're neither surprised nor disappointed.

And the "not quite ready" part? Christmas!

Oh! I love Christmas, to be certain, but in its own time and not just at the end of the whole Hallowthanksgivingmas season that the retailers have created. I think I could be happy enough with a well placed and properly timed sprig of pine, with a pine cone or two remaining upon it, a red and a green glass ornament, and a big, red bow. A neatly wrapped present or three, a seasonally scented candle*, a few carols on the "Victrola" (iPod docked to the stereo), and I'll be like Tiny Tim chanting, "God bless us, everyone!" all around the town with enough joy in my heart to make the new and improved Ebeneezer Scrooge appear to be still the piker he had been and the Grinch his nasty old self.

Welcome Christmas! Za ho ra moo...

In another month!

* ( I believe whoever invented those "fresh linen" scented candles should be strapped to the exhaust hose of my next door neighbor's clothes dryer for a few good cycles.)

Twilight

2010-11-05T22:14:00.000-04:00

Here we are on the verge of turning the clock back that hour that's going to make night fall much earlier for the next four months or so. Seasonal affective disorder, here we come!

Once the sun sets the day is essentially over for me. It's not that I can't go out in the cold and dark; I just don't feel like - not even in the car. I eat supper and usually climb into my pajamas only to watch the clock crawl down to bedtime.

Oh, I'll fight that inclination to throw the towel in on the day as much and as often as I can, but when all is said and done I'm often vanquished by the proverbial towel and zonked out on the couch during Jeopardy.

Here's hoping for a fast, mild winter!

His Last Scooter Ride

2010-10-25T16:21:00.001-04:00

I'm bummed...

I just read an article on CNN about a girl they're calling, "Hiccup Girl," who it seems gained some fleeting fame with a case of incurable hiccups with which she suffered for an unduly long time. It would appear that she's in a whole heap of trouble now, like facing a first degree murder charge, for luring some poor slob she met online into a trap in which she and two accomplices robbed and then killed the guy.

It was almost laughable until I read that the victim rode to the ambush on a scooter. THAT really upset me. I'll need to be extra careful now when I'm scootering out to get together with strangers I meet on the internet!

Another Autumn Day

2010-10-17T19:40:00.001-04:00

One of my favorite uncles went to school (Public school! Egads! At a time when everybody else went to Catholic School) in a building that in its day housed kindergarten through grade twelve all under the same roof. Now the corporate headquarters for a local company, it sits atop a knoll nary a block from the house in which I spent most of my formative years. I have to have driven past the front of that building tens of thousands of times in my many years of living in this same neighborhood in which I grew up, but until this morning while seeking a quiet place from which to make a call after church, I never ventured into its parking lot nor got a peek at its other side. I was stunned by its simple elegance and tickled in seeing something new, yet so very old, so close to my family home.

After lunch I took off in earnest to enjoy the beautiful day on the scooter. I passed by another old building here in the north end of the city - this one somewhat infamous in being the sweatshop in which I worked during the summer of my sophomore year of high school. I swear, that summer in the shoe factory inspired me to make the most of my high school and college years not only in studying so I'd not have to work in a place like that all my life, but in savoring the freedom of being a student and not having to earn my own living quite yet. No longer a working factory, the building is still home to a local business but its appearance is far removed from being the once proud factory in which many hard working folks earned an honest day's wage that could support a family.

Over the river and through the woods and I found myself at one of my usual haunts, the county sports complex. (Okay, not really through the woods.) Every year as the winter ever so slowly yawns itself into grudgingly showing some hints of the coming spring I look for the usual signs - a few tiny crocus heads peeking up from the sweet smelling soil, the buds aching to pop open on the pussy willow beside the deck in the back yard, and the gate to this park being unlocked and thrown open wide. I often visit on nice winter days, while the gate blocks the road into the park proper, and heave a heavy sigh upon seeing it there with its PARK CLOSED sign telling me that I'm once again being presumptuous in my wishful thinking.

The last leg of my trip took me west where old animal and Indian trails that carved naturally through the mountain that forms the western wall of the valley have become the roads we use today. While meandering up a twisty to where I was headed I noticed another cycle on my tail in the rear view mirrors. Usually I'm the one on the bike riding like a newbie, slowing noticeably where the twists get wicked, so it was with some degree of puzzlement that I noticed that I was out pacing the bike behind me. When I turned onto the side road that would take me to the picturesque setting I was riding to, the other bike followed me, and when I arrived and pulled into the parking lot I was even more surprised to see the other rider still behind me.

I rode to the far end of the lot, dropped the kickstand, and started unzipping the camera pouch when I saw the other rider park about midway through the lot near a stand of colorful trees. Only then did I notice that the other bike carried a passenger too. They both dismounted and took off their helmets and when I finally noticed their shapes and saw their long hair spilling down over their shoulders I realized that they were two young girls. I couldn't help but chuckle when I saw the cyclist take out a camera and shoot a picture of her bike with the pretty trees as a backdrop just as I was getting ready to do the same. The girls walked down to the water's edge and sat on a bench to enjoy the gorgeous view that autumn's paintbrush had created.

It was with regret that I decided not to approach the girls and engage them in conversation about riding, and photography, and whatever else might have come to mind. Had they been middle aged I'd have had no qualms about striking up a pleasant chat and passing some time with folks who seem to enjoy some of the same things that I do. Sadly, though, we live in a time when kids have rightly been taught to be wary and cautiously suspicious of old men with cameras. My own daughters would describe a guy like me as a "creeper" if he just came up to them and started yakking away so I wasn't going to make the day any less than perfectly pleasant for the young ladies who'd ridden in behind me. I kept my distance. I took a few pictures, savored the unique sensation of warm sun and chilly air, thanked our Maker for the scenery, and headed out.

Oh, how I hope I'll remember to look at the pictures I take on days like this one when the worst of winter is upon us and I'm feeling cabin fever to a degree that seems like it might make me hemorrhage!

I realized on today's ride that I write a lot here about the seasons - their unique offerings - their changing from one into the next. I mark and write my life, it seems, by their coming and going. I like it that way. Their coming anew each year keeps me looking forward to something all the time. Well, except for winter, perhaps. After that first dusting of snow on a windy, cold, dark night those crocuses can't bloom soon enough!

Doodle Head

2010-10-16T20:04:00.001-04:00

"Last minute Joe! You have to do everything at the last minute!" I remember my dad growling that at me once when I was burning the midnight oil to get a term paper done. To be sure, he was right; I always waited till I was down to the wire before starting on things I had to submit for a grade. (For the record, I generally got A's.) I can only imagine the choice words he might've had if he'd checked out my college notebooks in which I doodled more than anything else. I'm an auditory learner. As I insisted to more than one professor, it only appeared that I wasn't paying attention.

The current blog header here features a doodle I worked on for a few days, adding to it now and then when I had a few free minutes. The full doodle takes up an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of standard tying paper. I guess I'd better add it here as a picture because when I change the header this post won't make much sense...

My scooter rides are a lot like my doodles. Just as the pencil or pen tip moves toward no seeming particular end, so does my front wheel turn more often than not to take me in a direction in which I'm not necessarily planning to go. And, when I put down the stylus, just as when I park the bike, I can look back with a bit of a smug smile and take delight in what I've done or where I've been.

I took the BV in on Tuesday for its annual inspection plus an oil change, and to have the drive belt replaced 2,000 miles past when it was due. I dropped it off without making an appointment because the weather was supposed to be lousy all week (which it was) and I hoped they'd get it done within a week or so. They called on Wednesday to let me know that the drive belt would have to be ordered and that it should be ready on Friday or Monday. I figured that with my typical luck what would translate into them calling next Wednesday. I was wonderfully surprised when they called today, Saturday, to let me know that I could pick it up. As soon as I finished my lunch I ran down to get it!

Though it would have been a nice day to ride I'd already made plans with others to head to an apple festival at a not too distant orchard.

A paper on which to draw. A crisp apple. A scooter ride. Being loved. My needs are simple and I wallow in their fulfillment whether manifested humbly or with fanfare.

What's So Hard about YIELD?

2010-10-14T17:25:00.000-04:00

My dad - I love him dearly, but he has this pontificating tone of voice that makes me want to smack him sometimes, especially when he's totally wrong about something yet making it loudly known that he's the only one who's right. "I always come to a complete stop at a yield sign!" he barked some time ago in that unmistakable basso profundo that implicitly insists that you do the same. A decent argument ensued between dad and the rest of us about how it's not safe to stop if there's no reason to because the guy behind you, having no logical reason to expect you to stop if there's nothing coming, might plow into the caboose end of your car. But, there's no convincing dad.

That's one wrong action to take around a yield sign - to stop completely when there is no traffic impeding one's entrance onto a road. But there's another practice that drives me even more batty - folks moving from the driving lane into the passing lane to "be nice" and allow the guy coming up to the yield sign free reign.

Now I'm not against being nice while driving. I like it when somebody cuts me a break at a long traffic light and motions for me to turn left while he holds up the oncoming traffic piled up behind him. Likewise, I often do the same for others and am often presented with the opportunity to do so when entering my own street which abuts such a busy intersection.

What I am opposed to is having some dimwit cut in front of me as I'm zipping along in the passing lane to allow somebody to enter from the on ramp while slowing me down in the process. I had that happen to me a number of times in my travels this past weekend which is why I'm bellyaching about it here and now. Sure, the guy who's moving over is being nice to the person coming onto the highway, but it's at my expense! And, it's gotten to the point where folks almost seem to expect everybody to move over for them without their having to observe the spirit of the yield in the first place.

How about from now on we all do what we're supposed to do at a yield? Stop only if the steady flow of traffic on the main road warrants a stop, and go when it's safe to go without expecting everybody already on the road to move over for you. Or would that make too much sense?

Mildly Moist

2010-10-04T19:55:00.000-04:00

I shot this picture last week when I got to work. I'd left the house on the bike not realizing till I'd made it to the street from the back yard that a light drizzle was falling. At that point I wasn't about to trade the cycle for the car so off I went hoping for the best. I didn't get too wet and that was very good 'cause I'd've been miserable all day if I had.

I just remembered now, on Monday evening, that yesterday afternoon while I was out riding just for the fun of it I had a great idea of how to tie this photo into an introspective discourse to share with you here. Unfortunately, that's all of the memory that came back to me and I can't recall what it was about being wet upon which I'd wanted to expound. If it comes back to me I'll rush back here and type it up. For now, though, all you get is the picture and my admitted chagrin.

10,000 Mile Milestone

2010-09-26T17:19:00.004-04:00

When I left the house this morning I thought it would be sometime later this week that I'd see myself crossing the 10,000 mile mark on the BV, not at all thinking that I'd turn it over from all 9's later this afternoon. I headed north toward Scranton along the back roads with no particular destination in mind. I remembered when I got to Pittston that just yesterday I posted here about being out on the bike with short pants and a tee shirt and commenting about how the weather doesn't at all abide by the seasons, and I stopped there to take a contrasting picture of myself today clad in long pants, a flannel shirt, and a jacket.

When I got into West Scranton I headed east on Lackawanna Avenue and headed down into Steamtown. It wasn't until I'd parked the scooter to blab a little on the phone that I noticed that the line of old locomotives that used to grace the parking lot was gone entirely. I sure hope they were moved inside to be worked on and not just to keep all of the good stuff in the fee required area of the park. Why do I so effortlessly suspect the Fed of having moved them inside the complex just to squeeze an extra dime out of us?

At least they had one steam engine up and running complete with the bells and whistles that allow me to close my eyes and remember when an occasional iron horse still ran through downtown Wilkes-Barre, sometimes on a Sunday morning when dad was driving grandpa to the church where he was the organist and I went along for the ride. The very best of those Sundays were the ones when I got to see a train and chomp a still warm slice of rye bread from the bakery on Market Street.

From Steamtown it was back to the house for a lunch of haddock and halušky, and then a cat nap before running over to the school for a short ceremony. It was after that when I glanced at the odometer and realized that the big rollover was well within reach and after I thought about the weather forecast for the next few days I knew that if I didn't do it today it might not be till Thursday or so that I'd be able to reach the milestone. And so I headed for the hills, quite literally running up a road that climbs a mountain and heads out to a section of the boonies not all that far removed from the hustle and bustle of the city. I completed the circuit that brought me back to the foot of the mountain from where I'd made my ascent, glanced at the odometer, and promptly ran right back up the mountain to make the same run again and put me darn near close to the big turnover.

It was with a modicum of calculation and a good degree of luck that I managed to drop the kickstand exactly on the 10,000 mile mark in a place where stopping to get some pictures of the happy occasion would be easy. Not only did I land off the road as the dials turned over to the exact number, but I managed to do it in a pretty spot with some flowers in the background too!

And here it is! At 3:50 PM I completed my first 10,000 miles on the BV! The inset shows the first picture I ever took of the odometer when the scooter was just a kid.

At about 65 miles per gallon, it took around 154 gallons to get me here. In a few weeks I'll celebrate the third anniversary of the BV's homecoming. I don't know if 10,000 miles in three years is a little or a lot of riding compared to the average two wheeling bear's travels, but for me it was just perfect!

First Autumn Ride

2010-09-25T17:59:00.000-04:00

If you saw my last entry about the last ride of summer, there I was last weekend in jeans and a flannel shirt. Ironically, here I am for the first long ride of the fall, but in short pants and a tee shirt. I swear when I was a kid the seasons knew their times and places. Back then it seemed that summer and its oppressive heat ended on that last day of summer vacation, and when school started the next morning, the temperatures were in the 50's where they were supposed to be and I was wearing a jacket. It wasn't too many years ago that I remember taking a picture of a lone rose blooming on the bush at the foot of the back stairs two weeks before Christmas. I'm ready for autumn to get here with the colored leaves and all that, and for it to stick around already!

I set out this morning when the girls, both of whom are here for the weekend, were still in bed. By the time I'd gotten ten miles out of the city that first cup of coffee was ready to escape and it was while tending to that that I decided where I'd head for the remainder of the morning before scooting to mom's and dad's for lunch. I ended up having the breakfast snack I'd picked up on the potty break in a cemetery somewhere between Glen Lyon and Mocanaqua that I visit now and then simply because it's wonderfully peaceful there and a nice stop on my way south.

When I got to Mocanaqua I crossed the river to Shickshinny and retraced part of the route I took last weekend. I'd remembered passing by a boat launch access road last weekend, but I'd been rolling too fast then to stop because the traffic was somewhat heavy and the road kind of appears out of nowhere. Today, though, I had US11 to myself and I noticed the access road with plenty of time to slow down and make the right turn. There were a good number of boat trailers there with it being such a beautiful day and all. The sun was shining, the river was calm with only a breeze stirring the surface gently, and the only thing missing was the color show on the trees which were still mostly green. I plan to head back when the oranges and reds pop out because the setting will be perfect for some delicious autumn pictures.

I was going to make mention of "Indian Summer" up there and then didn't in case there are some who'd lament that I didn't call it "Native American Summer," but then, after writing Mocanaqua and Shickshinny, it doesn't make much of a difference because the Indian heritage of the valley is inescapable with the Susquehanna running its length, punctuated by places bearing the names that its original citizens gave them. Though my ancestors all came from Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s there's a warm connection to the valley's native citizens who forged the trails which are now our main roads. When I'm out in the middle of nowhere on the cycle enjoying the natural beauty of this little piece of the planet I sometimes imagine that it's not all that different than it was a few hundred years ago when the valley's original settlers savored the same sights that grace my own eyes now.

Between then and now, when I'm miles from the house with nothing around except what God Himself made, only my horse is a little different.

Last Ride of Summer

2010-09-19T18:14:00.000-04:00

I know already that this is going to be a brutally busy week and that my riding time is going to be more or less limited to the daily work commute. Autumn will arrive on Thursday. Thus it was that my ride today became the last official long ride of Summer 2010.

I set out heading south on US11 with no particular terminus in mind. The air was cool enough to warrant a flannel shirt over my tee, and nobody with whom I was sharing the road seemed to be in a ridiculous hurry to get anywhere which kept me relaxed and enjoying every turn of the tires. Well, that was until I noticed that I was being followed by a state police car. Even when I'm not doing anything foolish or illegal, those guys unnerve me so when I saw him back there I turned into the riverside park developed by the electric company to make the area around the nuclear power plant less ominous looking. Those flowers hide the twin cooling towers so perfectly!

I gave Mr. State Trooper a bit of a head start and then pointed the front wheel south again to head toward Berwick which would be the next populated place with a name that I know. On my way I caught sight of a long trailer with cartoon characters painted on the side. The blue monkey, Shrek, and the little South American girl wouldn't have stopped me, but Sponge Bob made me double back for some pictures!

Once I hit Berwick I had to decide whether to turn back or keep going. Berwick was as far as I'd gone south on 11 in the past and I knew Bloomsburg was next in line. When I saw a sign indicating that it was a mere 12 more miles I figured I'd go for it. The sky was cloudy, but the clouds weren't dark and it was still early. I got to Bloom, as the college kids call it, in little time and while rolling down their Main Street I noticed a sign indicating that Danville was only another 9 more miles. I'd thought for a few years about taking the scooter there someday. Today would turn out to be that day.

Danville is the home of the order of nuns who taught me in elementary school. The grounds of their mother house are beautifully kept and on a typical day the stillness in the air there hovers about the place like a whispered prayer. It was there to which I'd hoped to take the bike someday, perhaps to visit the few old gals who might remember me, but today wasn't the day to knock on the door and linger in conversation. I'd begun to get tired between Bloomsburg and Danville and didn't want to tarry for long. So it was that I visited the sisters who couldn't strike up some chit-chat - the ones in the cemetery.

I walked the rows and found some of my former teachers, and a few relatives. I remembered my life all those years ago when, "Yes, Sister," and "No, Sister," were the order of the day. How simple life was then, rich in a simplicity that I wish I could have appreciated when it was all around and about me and growing up was just a vision with which I toyed. There are times when I'm in the front of my classroom when I wish I could somehow get my kids to stop and savor where they are instead of being in such a blooming hurry to grow up.

And that, I guess, is what makes riding this scooter the joy to me that it is. Somehow when I'm on that saddle my spirit returns for a time to those days when my biggest worry was that they might be serving "tobacco soup" (tomato soup with rice cooked in it) in the cafeteria and that the nun would make me eat every last drop of it. If I could trade my worries now for a big ol' pot of that gruel I would. I'd chug the whole pot down and not spill a drop of it.

So long, Summer! I'm going to miss you.

Back at It

2010-09-12T12:46:00.003-04:00

With my vacation days dwindling in late August I did a number of short and moderate rides as often as appointments and setting up the classroom would allow, each time wondering if it might be my last ride of Summer '10. I visited the usual old haunts and a few more distant places totally enjoying the freedom of the open road with its abundance of opportunity for introspection and soul searching. Not that I discovered nor encountered anything new in my own head, but it was nice to visit with myself just the same. Soon enough the leaves will put on their color show and then tumble to the ground, but for now I'm still savoring the green with which Spring was heralded and Summer was enrobed, trying to keep Summer's sweetness with me even as I begin to lament the eventual arrival of Winter's gloom and darkness.

School began two weeks ago and I was fortunate enough to have bike weather the whole time although this week isn't promising to be as nice. Not only have I been happy with being able to come and go on the scooter, but so far my days have been blessed with wonderful experiences with a great bunch of new kids and my kids from last year's classes whom I'll teach again this year at the next level. This is my 28th year with junior high school aged kids and call me crazy, but I still love it! Here I am complete with dress shirt and tie in my special half sized scooter parking space.

I greeted the weekend with an evening ride on Friday after a picnic style get-together at the school. The air was cool and crisp after the sun went down and the ride was brisk and refreshing.

And yesterday, Saturday, I took my longest scooter ride ever to visit my baby at college. It was a 174 mile round trip and taking it has me itching now to do one of my typical Somerset trips next summer which is 240 miles one way. I'm still skeptical that a "little" 250cc scooter is designed to be pushed that far and hard, but I was very pleased that it took to the highway yesterday with as much gusto as the Neon does. The cool air was almost intoxicating and the route I took was quite relaxing. Combined with a splendid visit with my little girl and lunch at a Chinese buffet, the day was next to perfect!

A quick stop at Harvey's Lake to snag a pretty picture.

I'm hoping to take the BV to school most days this year unless there's a threat of precipitation, frozen anything on the ground, or temperatures below freezing. I'll let you know how that works out!

Here We Go Again

2010-08-29T15:02:00.002-04:00

It was on the last Sunday of the school year which ended in June when I wrote, "What will I do for the summer? I will live! I will live life richly and fully and deeply. I will love life with a hallowed adoration and praise the Maker of us all for having made me and given me this life I treasure." I lied, though I had no idea that what I was writing then would be so far from the actuality of how the summer would play out.

I remember where I went that day, with the camera hanging from my belt as it always is. I set it up on the tripod just to get pictures of myself sitting inside a colorful gazebo with a Cheshire cat grin on my face. I look back at this picture and the others I shot of myself that day and remember so easily what I was feeling - the depth, the focus, the keen exhilaration of being less than a week from the last day of school.

Now, all of a sudden it seems, today is the last Sunday before I begin the new school year which starts tomorrow. It seemed only fitting that I should return to that place where I'd celebrated the end of the past academic season, this time to bid farewell to the summer - the summer that kind of wasn't at all. To be certain I did have some great times in the past weeks, but they were punctuated with disturbing happenings, and human nature being what it is, it's easy to forget the good when the bad is sitting on your chest and banging you in the face.

The face that will greet my new kids tomorrow morning will not be this one - the one I was wearing when I got a head start on setting up the classroom a few weeks ago. They'll see my Mr. Rogers face all smiley and rich with saccharine that they'll think is certainly sugar. They'll hear a cheerful and happy tone. They'll have no idea that the grown man standing before them will be on the verge of tears in wanting to take back the past 12 weeks or so and to have a major do-over with them.

After a few weeks the saccharine will be gone and real sugar will be there. The happiness will be genuine. There will still be an ache to have the summer again, but the bomb blast of letting go of this one will be replaced with a longing for the one to come. All too soon Halloween will come and after that things will rush by. Thanksgiving! Christmas! Tell-tale signs of Spring! Once again I'll visit the place with the pretty gazebo and take a picture of myself smiling.

For now, though, there's only this one as the countdown of days has become one of mere hours.

There are many good things to be accomplished this school year. God, grant me the grace to do them joyfully especially when joy itself doesn't seem anywhere within reach.

Potpourri

2010-08-25T20:23:00.000-04:00

There is much I could write about these days if I wanted to bare my entire soul here at Scootin' da Valley, but I can't. It's been the worst summer of my adult life, hence my relative absence here in what's traditionally been my most productive writing season, and although on one level I'm lamenting as I always do the return to school next week, on another I'm looking forward to it for the sense of normalcy it gives my days. It was the ultimate irony that on the very last day of school in June bad news hit, and the whole summer was colored by it and the events that followed. I write what I do just to keep the machine oiled lightly. Bits and pieces. Odds and ends. Scraps of thought here and there. Like these...

Every time I visit the drive-up ATM I thank God that I'm not one of those folks who has to half open the door to reach the machine. I think those people should turn in their drivers' licenses and start all over - except for the ones who are notably short of stature.

I couldn't help but wonder if I might have been behind the real Santa today on my way back from the dollar store. Okay, the spelling isn't quite right, but it could be that somebody else, just to be funny, took the old guy's name before he could order his vanity plate and that he was forced to adapt the spelling to be at least phonetic.

It was only because I went to grade school with the head parking honcho at a local business that I was able to score a really juicy parking spot for the scooter last week. With all the other parking spots being of the paid variety in a huge lot a decent walk away from the doors, I was most grateful to be among the elite numbered in the "Authorized Vehicles Only" area!

Finally, just a view from an unusual vantage point overlooking this valley in which I hang my hat. The neighborhood in which I grew up is in the foreground. The mountain range behind forms the eastern wall of the valley.

Unless I have a banner weekend this will likely be my last post of Summer Vacation 2010. Bear with me and soon enough you'll hear me shouting and whooping with joy in anticipation of Summer 2011.

Highway No More

2010-08-23T19:16:00.003-04:00

Last year I penned an article here about a road that the GPS called "Highway 3005" which upon closer inspection could hardly have been respectfully called a trail. It was a scary place that I won't describe again since I did such a fine job before. I visited it again a few weeks ago just for the heck of it, thinking actually of trying to take the BV across its three mile or so gauntlet of ruts and rocks. I couldn't have if I'd wanted to...

Even though I'd considered it formidable and somehow dangerous I was met by some degree of sadness in seeing that the old "highway" is now officially closed to vehicular travel. Yes, I checked both ends and the entire length of it is off limits.

I could have gotten the bike around the gate, but to what end? If I met up with the devil or his brother somewhere along the way no piece of emergency equipment would have had easy access to save my sorry butt. Worse, I think I remember a total drop of my cell signal down there by the tracks.

I'll just keep my scooter on the straight and narrow for now!

Hey, Biker!

2010-08-08T20:37:00.000-04:00

I was rolling down SR92 last week, along an inhabited stretch, when I passed two boys of early grade school age riding along on their bicycles. One of 'em looked up and called cheerfully to me, "Hey, biker!" I tooted the horn, glanced over, called back, "Hi, guys," and rode off into their sunset.

God bless that kid for not knowing the difference between a scooter and a big, Harley cruiser! He made my day!

Biker, indeed! LOL!

Just Another Summer Ride

2010-07-28T16:27:00.000-04:00

I set out at about 10:30 this morning with a route in mind after inventing yet another rigged scooter modification. This one's a clear plastic pouch suspended between the mirror mounts and it's sturdy enough to hold the cell phone, GPS, and iPod Touch. While the displays aren't worth much in full sunlight, the sounds of the phone ringing or the GPS shouting instructions are sufficiently audible even at a decent throttle. For where I was heading I'd be needing the GPS just in case.

The first leg of the trip took me to the butt end of Scranton where I had to stop to return a few calls. While the phone auto-answers with the headset on, I don't do a full conversation on the kinds of roads I was traveling along. While I was stopped my stomach growled like a lion so I checked out the various restaurants nearby. After a quick survey and calculation of the cheapness factor I decided on some pizza at a place with a Vegas theme. It was very good stuff and I regretted that it's not closer to my end of the valley. I figured this might be as close as I'll ever get to Las Vegas so a picture was in order.

Country roads often lead to golf courses out here and it was no surprise to find one on "Country Club Road." The sprinklers made for a good shot so I doubled back to get a snap as I'd been rolling too fast to make a stop the first time by.

Not far from there I came upon a scene that reminded me of an illustration I remember from my third grade geography class when I was about 8 years old. There was something about that print in the book that called to me and I can still see the original scene in my mind's eye in spite of a generally lousy visual memory. So help me, if I ever inherit untold wealth first I'll get me some minions and send them to research and find a copy of the book with that scene. Then I'll dispatch them to all corners of the globe to find a place that best approximates the view in the picture so that I might build a home there.

This shot isn't true to that view, but the general slope down and then up on the other side reminds me of it in a sufficiently pleasurable way.

The descent down the side of the mountain brought me to familiar turf with railroad tracks to my right and the rocky face of the mountain itself on the left. They'd paved the road since I traveled it last, last summer, and gone were the big chunks of warped pavement over which I used to roll very hesitantly while praying that some speed demon wouldn't come up behind me while I was taking baby steps.

I don't slow down in the twisties these days as I used to almost as if by instinct. I can generally keep my pace with the posted speed limit (or better) now, whereas even in the spring I was still rolling back off the throttle automatically before entering a curve. After three years of riding it was time to break that bad habit so for the past few weeks I worked at it remembering especially the sage advice of the Marty, the safety course instructor, when he preached to us that the bike goes where your eyes are leading it. It really does! And it's kind of fun to do that steeper lean than I'd been doing all along while navigating a sweet curve or twist.

The last part of the trip brought me to this idyllic setting along the bank of the Susquehanna. Railroad tracks, a river that doesn't look dirty in the picture, and a cool bridge - why, it's as pretty as a picture!

My days of riding are numbered now that I put the countdown to the first day of school into the iPod. There are 33 of them left. Oh, yes, I'll ride long past that inaugural day of the new school year, but gone will be this totally unique sense of freedom I feel when I know that I don't have to put on that tie and long slacks tomorrow and the next day and the next. I'll savor these days and this feeling. And I'll take a lot of pictures over which to reminisce to get me through the winter days when the scooter's grounded under the deck by ice, snow, and maybe a touch (or a whole helping) of seasonal affective disorder.

Goodbye, Old Friend!

2010-07-26T16:11:00.001-04:00

Sitting on the curb in the official city garbage bag destined for pick-up tomorrow morning is a friend of many years who just this morning gave up the ghost. With a romantic nature that's often as much of a curse as a treasure, I anthropomorphize way too much and no less so in this case than any. Out there waiting to spend eternity in a landfill is "Ham" - the faithful (until overnight sometime) Hamilton Beach coffee maker who brewed that necessary wake-up call every morning for years, only to leave me javaless this very morning.

Ham's service was long and true. He made my cup of joe on the morning that my little girl got married, just as on so many other days, some forever to be remembered as the best days of my life, others which I still can't forget but would love to, and the great many in between that I don't even remember.

For the record, I did take him apart and peer inside where I found no parts I'd be able to fix with a little spit and paper clips. And I did take in the distinct smell of some burnt electronic part, probably on the circuit board which was his brain. Yep. Brain death. The final curtain.

Tonight, with Ham still sitting curbside in his blue bag I'll be off looking for his replacement and will likely bring it back with me, tossing old Ham the further indignity of seeing the new guy's arrival. There will be no crowning of the new by the old. No retirement packages nor sign-on bonuses. No playing of taps nor of anything joyful by way of celebration. Yet, it feels like there should be some sort of noble send-off for the old pot whose regular service always made morning feel like it should even when it came way too early.

On the brighter side of things I finally discovered how to make crispy chicken wings. Past attempts always left me with something rubbery and greasy to which the hot sauce would not cling evenly.

Coat a bunch of wing pieces with peanut oil.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and onion and garlic powders.

Bake at 400 for an hour in a shallow baking pan. Don't turn.

Grill on a medium flame till crispy, turning once.

HOT Wing Sauce

Start with maybe a cup of Louisiana Hot Sauce.

Cut bunches of hot peppers of many varieties into the pot.

Simmer on low for a long time to evaporate most of the water.

When they're soft, mash the peppers up with a potato masher.

If you're brave, slather the whole mess onto the wings and enjoy. If you're less than brave, push the mixture through a sieve and dip the wings in only the mush that comes through.

Easier to See on a Bike

2010-07-25T19:49:00.000-04:00

There are certain things that by virtue of their simple position in the universe are much easier to spot when you're out on two wheels than on four or more. One, for example - the elusive flat squirrel which is all too easily camouflaged against the pavement when you're traveling at a moderate speed and there's a full hood blocking your line of sight to the shoulder of the road.

Another example can be found in just about any sky because there's no roof over your head to obscure the full effect of what the heavens have to offer at any particular moment. I was much more mindful of this when I first started riding the scooter and realized that I didn't have only the panorama before me that could be seen through a relatively small rectangle. I can't claim always to appreciate the amazing view above when I'm on the scooter, but when I'm conscious of it I'm always thankful for the opportunity to savor it as I couldn't in the car.

Finally, there's that view of one's own soul that's uniquely visible when you're out on a cycle. Sometimes it's a joyful sight. Sometimes it's as ugly as sin. But it's stark in being utterly without pretense. Somehow when you're rolling along on two wheels and you're pondering the significance of your existence and evaluating choices you've made, you find it impossible to lie to yourself. Though it's scary, it's also refreshing and relieving to confront yourself in all honesty. Therapy? Confession? Exorcism? Sometimes, all it takes is a good ride.

Highway Tax Dollars at Work

2010-07-24T21:38:00.001-04:00

Hats off to the genius who decided that the sinks, urinals, and toilets in select Pennsylvania rest areas need to be given "names" as it were. Here's our trusty buddy Men's Urinal #3 waving hello with his single silver finger.

And good ol' sink #5 lends his mirror to the production of this jazzy shot of yours truly.

Our governor keeps appealing to the Fed to allow Pennsylvania to make I-80 into a toll road and here we have an apparent surplus of highway funds which allows somebody to earn a living in part by stenciling identifying numbers onto walls above porcelain fixtures. My only guess is that this would allow some plumber, who is barely literate to find the crapper that needs to be fixed. I'm not sure why he wouldn't be able to find it, for example, by looking for the long puddle easing its way to the floor drain, or listening for the one that won't stop flushing. Nope. He'd need to be told, "Go in and fix MT2." I suppose this is to spare us from paying to fix the toilet that isn't broken?

I'd truly like the name of the person who decided that these numbers need to be painted so I can personally thank him for his brilliance. I'll bet he's a good buddy of the same guy who decides that 20 miles of highway need to have barrels blocking a lane so work can be done on 30 feet of the actual roadway.

Requiem æternam

2010-07-16T09:43:00.005-04:00

The phone woke me at 7:42 this morning and I learned of the passing of one of the truest gentlemen it had ever been my pleasure to know. This was his "throne" at home and I took this picture of his empty chair only a week ago, after I visited him at the hospital for the very last time, said my goodbye, and kissed him tenderly.

When I first came to Bill's home two years ago as a house guest I was a total stranger to him. By the time I was leaving he asked when I'd be coming back and told me that I was always welcome, and each time I visited after that he'd ask the same question and extend the very same graciousness.

I lost my first hero, my grandfather, a few days before I turned 12. In many ways, 35 years later, knowing Bill was a little like having him back with me for a while.

Bill was a lawyer and until he was stricken ill two months ago he was still going to the office every day at age 86 with as much of a spring in his step as he could muster. And, oh! Could he tell a story! When he amused us with tales from his past we never knew when the line between reality and bull was crossed and the trained twinkle in his lawyer's eyes never gave him away. It didn't matter if the stories had actually played out as he told them, because it wasn't the words themselves that mattered, but simply that we listened.

In some ways my life is going to change hugely in that after he is laid to rest and his estate is settled I'll never again be a guest in the magnificent home it had been my great pleasure to visit. But more than that, I won't hear ever again about how he once dated the Queen of England, or bailed from a plane without a parachute. I won't again get to deliver to him his morning cup of coffee or help him to put on his shoes on his way out the door to work. I won't get to hear him ever again ask, "What do you know, Joe?" for me to come back with, "I don't know nothing about nothing."

As John Donne knew so well, the passage of any man from this life into the next diminishes those of us who are left behind. I will miss Bill terribly even as I hope his reunion with his beloved wife this morning was one of the most joyful occasions heaven has seen in a while.

May the angels lead you into paradise;
may the martyrs come to welcome you
and take you into the holy city, the new and eternal Jerusalem.
May choirs of angels welcome you
and lead you to the bosom of Abraham;
and where Lazarus is poor no longer may you find eternal rest.

Rest in peace, Bill, and thank you for being a highlight of my life whom I'll never forget.

With Love as Always

2010-07-15T20:39:00.000-04:00

I wrote a few days ago about taking pictures and later figuring out why I took them. Not so today when I came upon this truck and had to double back to where it was being unloaded to get this shot...

BIMBO! I laughed audibly when I saw that emblazoned on the side of the truck. In my first year in the classroom I was warned by the guy who ultimately gave the thumbs up on my hiring that there were a lot of bimbos in the class I'd be teaching. He meant it, I'm sure, affectionately. The girls in that class will be turning 40 within a year and have long outgrown their bimboish ways of wearing make-up like war paint and acting less smart than they actually were, but any time I hear or see "bimbo" I think of them - "with love as always" which is how the other words on the side of the truck translate. It was the gentleman who was unloading the truck who snapped the picture with a chuckle for me at my request.

Another shot was this simple reflection of me on the scooter in the side curve of a car next to which I'd parked to make a call. It just looked kind of neat.

Mocanaqua, Pennsylvania, the turn-around point of today's ride found me beside the same railroad tracks that run right behind my house and connect Canada to many points south on the east coast.

And although I didn't happen to catch the roll over on the odometer, I crossed the 9,000 mile mark on the BV! It's going to be fun to add that next digit, hopefully by the end of the summer if the weather cooperates!

Going Where?

2010-07-12T18:59:00.000-04:00

If you've been here more than once, you know that I like pictures. All kinds of pictures. I take some every day though they're more often of the mundane variety than of the profound. I have no real reason to take most of the photos I shoot. I take them because with digital equipment it doesn't cost as much as traditional photography once you get past the initial outlay. I'd think that most folks shoot pictures because there's something in their heads which would explain why they're shooting what they are. With me, it's often different. I shoot. And I shoot some more. Later, here at the computer, sometimes I get a notion of what it was about a scene that spoke to me in the first place and which led me to make a snapshot of it. More often than not, the pictures simply get filed, usually as "scooter," "people," or "misc" until I fill the picture directory with enough bytes to burn another CD or DVD of them. I burn the disc and archive them all to an external hard drive, and often in the evening, especially in the winter when I'm house bound I'll go through some of them in random fashion and remember the times of my life, most of them, like most of all of ours fairly ordinary.

About a second after I took this shot I realized what it was that compelled me to park the BV right there and capture it. That long view down the top of the dike made me think wistfully about where I am, and where I might have been if I'd taken roads long ago that I rode past. I'm in that stage of life where one can't help but ponder what might have been if other choices had been made, other pursuits had been followed, other dreams had been dreamed. I look at my mom and day in their golden years and wonder if they've felt like this for the past twenty-five or so years, and wonder too, if they did, how they managed to get up day after day to face a new morning.

Change is in the air. Major change. I have a lot of wrestling of self to do. I only half joked as an undergrad that I chose psychology as my first major in order to figure myself out. It was 30 years ago back in May when I walked across the stage to get my degree and I'm really no closer to knowing myself now than I was then. I need to back up. I need to take some roads I was afraid to take as a kid.

Doing that in life is a lot like doing it on a scooter. There's no reverse gear. The only way to back up a long distance is to turn around - to put your back to where you were headed and your face to where you'd gone before till you find where you sort of left yourself on the side of the road. It's not quite time to turn the bike around prudently, but the time is coming and in the mean time I'm gearing up to do that one-eighty.

My time off from school will continue for a few more weeks, but because of various issues my "vacation" is essentially over. The dirty side of being grown up and responsible is about to bite me in the butt. When all that dust settles it will be time for me to take stock and do what I need to do so I won't spend the next chapter in my life thinking about what might have been while I still have the power to make a difference to myself. Who knows? I might even trade in the scooter for a motorcycle at some point.