Halfway Around the World

If there's anything I'll never be accused of being, it's consistent. Yesterday I sighed heavily in watching it rain and not being able to ride. Today the sun's shining with a vengeance, and I've been indoors mostly. I'm just not in the right frame of mind for riding today, and anybody who goes about on two wheels might understand what I mean by that.

I did go out on the BV to the school where I spent a few productive hours. My classroom floors were waxed a few weeks ago so there was nothing standing in the way of setting up my PCs there. In four weeks from today the new academic year will begin officially and I'd rather get ready for it in nibbles than in frantic, giant gulps a few days before it starts.

On the way back to the house I noticed that my odometer had crossed the 7,000 mile mark. I was aware of the new thousand approaching last week, but I forgot about keeping half an eye on it so that I might get a picture of the turn. Using a capture of the splash screen image from Google Earth I was able to create this graphic showing by the white line across the middle the number of miles equivalent to my 7,000 - nearly half the diameter of the earth itself!

There are times when I'm consciously appreciative of having a scooter rather than just taking the warm wind in my face for granted. Spying this poor guy made it all the more fulfilling to have a motorized means of two wheeled conveyance at my disposal. I have to hope that he doesn't need to haul his lawn care equipment in that same little trailer, especially uphill!

Perhaps after dinner I'll find myself in a mental zone more conducive to scootering and enjoying it properly. There's still plenty of sunshine on tap and I hope to soak some of it up. Till then it's time to don my big chef's hat and fire up the grill.

Rainy Sunday Recliner Ride

It's a dreary, rainy, all too humid Sunday here in Northeast Pennsylvania, and I'm thinking that all the riding I do today will be in the recliner in the living room. Thank heaven it's also a rocker because sitting still has never been one of my more admirable abilities; if I'm on my butt I prefer to be moving.

I've been a fan of the funnies since before I started kindergarten. My mom says that I taught myself to read by listening to the stories that my grandma read to me over and over again while I sat on her lap. Come to think of it, Grandma's favorite chair was a glider type. I'll bet I get my love of motion from those very times when she read to me.

My love of the funnies was fueled by a friend of my Grandpa's who worked at the local color press that ran the weekly comics for the Sunday paper as well as comic books. Every few weeks I got a new stash of comic books, minus the covers. Archie, Richie Rich, and Casper were among my favorites.

When I was away last weekend I ended up in a bookstore and was quite pleased to find a copy of Scoot! magazine in the racks. I'd never checked for it anywhere before, but since I was there passing time anyway I decided to see if they had one.

It's your typical magazine dedicated to a specific interest which means it's full of advertising and too many articles written for the kind of person who's still considering an initial purchase. Honestly, there's nothing in it for me as an experienced scooter rider who doesn't do his own maintenance and who isn't planning to buy a new scooter any time soon. It did, however, have a smokin' hot, curvaceous centerfold!

Woe is me even to be receiving AARP's bimonthly rag. When the father-in-law passed away five years ago we had his mail forwarded to our house so final bill paying and such could be accomplished without driving out of state. It took me about two dozen phone calls over the course of about a full year to get AARP to stop sending advertising crap on his name to our address.

I wanted nothing to do with AARP but the wife insisted on signing me up anyway for the occasional discounts. I've taken advantage of a few, and I did take a peek at the Springsteen article in this latest of their magazines. As for the steady stream of junk mail from their third party advertisers, I enjoy sticking the return postage paid envelopes in the mail and making the companies pay for the postage of having them returned without anything inside except for a folded up sheet of newspaper.

I hope the sun's shining where you park your scooter today, and that you're out making tracks. I'm heading back to the chair to see what SyFy's running.

Was It Something I Said?

I was at Paul's Scootin' Fool this morning and followed one of his links that lead to another link to what would have been to me a new scooter forum. I went to register to become a user and got this in response.

Do I have a reputation as some kind of do-badder that precedes me for my e-mail address to be banned? Of course I can't contact any of the board moderators to ask why I appear to be banned from their board because one needs to be logged in to send a private message.* If it's simply a matter of them not accepting Gmail accounts, well, so be it. I'm not giving them (whoever they are) my "real" e-mail address and risk opening it up to spammers. I pride myself on having an ultra clean inbox which I can open at any time to find only letters from friends and family inside, and even they've been "trained" not to send me any forwards no matter how cute, touching, or pathetic the contents might be.

* (I did subsequently find an e-mail address for one of the board moderators through a link to another of his websites and I wrote to ask him about the ban. I'm still waiting for a reply.)

Both girls are home for the weekend and we spent a good chunk of today on the road. The elder, who has my sense of humor in particular, was predictably agreeable to posing for this shot with me while her sister took the picture.

While they shopped at the Steamtown Mall I visited the train yard. I love the trolleys in particular. It was on this very trolley line that my grandfather rode from Dunmore to Wilkes-Barre to court my grandmother almost 90 years ago.

I got in a short ride yesterday after supper when the rain stopped and the sun came out, but I haven't fired the scooter up yet today because we were out since around 10:00, and now it feels like nap time. I wish our culture had a built in siesta time. I know I'll be wishing that even more in a few weeks when I'm back to work.