Restaurant Review - Wingstop

January 6, 2017

Now I have always thought highly of Richard Sherman, ever since he came out of Stanford University to the Seahawks.  Because of our son’s experience there, we know how they prepare students to take their places on the world stage and make something happen, and we’ve seen it over and over.

So when we heard that Richard had joined a partnership in a new restaurant based on various types of chicken wings, we put it on the back burner as something to check out.

Well, be that as it may, my fellow intrepid explorer of the depths of White Center, Marty Etquibal, and I were footloose and fancy free today, and decided the time was ripe for a venture into the wilds of Westwood Village, where the one and only WingStop holds forth on a pedestrian corner between Sleep Country and the 24 hour fitness joint (motto:  Come work out here, then pig out on some wings on the way out!).

We’re here to join forces and tell you, don’t.  Much as it pains me to pan anything with Richard Sherman’s name attached, if invisibly or in any other way, I must in all honestly rain a reality blast down on this particular endeavor, and tell my friends, “Don’t go there.”

Philosophically, I realize that you can not critique the entire menu of any given restaurant  without eating there many times, to allow for hidden gems in the menu.  It’s like, when the nurse asks you, “are you allergic to any medications?” all you can say is, “Well, I haven’t taken them all yet, so I can’t rightly say… got any you want me to try?”

In this case, such hope is soon dashed, and the clues that shout themselves as you walk in the door are undeniable.  First, it’s the middle of rush hour, and the place is empty.  There’s exactly one other person inside, and she’s from the Post Office, so she’s probably on break.

The décor is heavy on fast food chic mixed with IKEA frills, with great views out into the empty parking lot and vacant sidewalks.  The menu is brief, very brief, and really only wants to know one thing:  boneless, or boned?  There are lots of sides available, but it really boils down to what kind of sauce you want on your wings?

I ordered the combo in bone with French fries and smoky barbecue sauce, while Marty asked for the same sauce over boneless wings, with potato salad on the side.  We both got a tall paper cup to fill at the fountain, which surprisingly contained no diet sodas, or even water.   I poured a cup of ice and waited for it to melt, and talked into it to speed up the process.

It took a surprising amount of time to prepare two small orders in an empty restaurant, but my ice was not even half melted when we dug in.  That was where reality set in.

The barbecue sauce was unmistakably none other than Sweet Baby Ray’s, off the shelf at Costco, and I would swear to that on a stack of the wimpy brown paper towels they supply for napkins, which is unfortunate, because they dump enough sauce on the poor wings  for you to eat your lunch three times over and still make chili with the leftovers.  The boneless wings turned out to be the most severely over-breaded Chicken Un-Tenders out of those 47 pound bags of thrice frozen remnants with the Foster Farms label in the Costco bulk foods section.    And Oh, Look, over there the huge tubs of Kirkland potato salad look just like the formless wad served to Marty in an overstuffed paper tub, probably less than a week old.  At least the bony chicken wings had real meat on them, all six of them for $10, I must grant that.  The “boneless” wings could have well included some tofu, if not a lot of beak parts, not that you could tell under all that breading.  My fries were good, until I ate one and discovered they were covered in toxic levels of sodium chloride.  At least they were real potatos.

To sum up, the Wing Stop restaurant is a prime candidate for a new reality show, “Costo Gone Wild”, but not one that we can recommend for our friends or any other discerning palates.  If you feel piqued by this, if your hopes were dashed because you were thinking the same thing as me but hadn’t found the place yet, feel free to check for yourself.  I’d suggest soon, though, restaurants that are empty at lunchtime are soon empty all the time.  Marty and I deserve a medal of some sort for exposing ourselves to this experience, so you don’t have to… urp.  :-{)}

Bread and Roses

People forget in this time of conservatism and division how things used to be, say, back in the Thirties, during the Great Depression.  People learned to get together, and to make do, and to get by.

My mother used to tell how, on a trip to town, they would throw a couple of the best spare tires, along with some tubes with the fewest patches on them, and the patch kit, into the back of the truck before leaving the farm.  With war rationing on and rubber in short supply, a couple of flat tires per trip on the old country roads was typical.

Mom would talk about how, with Dad out in the fields early in the morning, there would be a knock on the back door, and there would stand a starving young man who had just jumped out of a boxcar at the crossing, asking for work.  Grandma would invite the young man in and seat him at the kitchen table, then put a glass of fresh milk in front of him, along with a big ham sandwich on homemade bread, surely the best meal the man had seen in a few days.  After he ate, she would send him out behind the shed, where a pile of unsplit firewood lay in wait, so he could recover a shred of his dignity by splitting a few pieces of it before going on his way.  She always packed a bit of lunch for them also.

If you had a farm, you did not go hungry, in those days, and neither did anyone who crossed your stoop.  You darned your socks over and over, and made new dresses out of old, you did what you had to do, and you got by.

This is why I don’t get too concerned about the real fear that America can disintegrate into the same kind of chaos we lived through then, because we have shown that we will pull together in our communities and realize that we can get things done if we get together and work at them.

Look at what came out of the Thirties and Forties, as we survived war, starvation, and political upheaval, and formed Unions, fought the rich guys for a piece of the action, won that battle, and built the Working Class into the Middle Class.  Over the years, we got too complacent and secure in our positions, then we started feeling threatened by newcomers, forgetting that we were all newcomers once, too.  This led to the tendency to arm up, build fortresses, and man the ramparts against all comers, real or imagined.  This led inevitably to the conservatism that demands walls, and borders, and snoops into the neighbors back yards looking for enemies.  It’s no wonder the middle class is fading back into the workers again, always looking up at a carrot that is pulling away.

The tendency of Capitalism to always search for the lowest operating cost was best summarized by Karl Marx, when he said something like, “the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the maintenance of life." The class struggle is based on the tug-o-war across that line.

But nowadays the product of labor is more often an idea, in the form of a program, or a service generated on and by the Internet.  Furthermore, the increase of robotics in manufacturing and customer service applications has become a geometrical progression, to the point where an article in today’s Seattle Times http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/automation-could-replace-one-out-of-three-us-jobs-within-about-15-years-report-says/  says that 38% of American jobs can disappear due to automation in 15 years.  Now is not the time to consider a career in driving truck, for example.

But maybe now is a good time to start the conversation going on the concept of a guaranteed minimum income for all people.  Imagine, if you will, the potential savings to the companies, which translates into earnings per share, as robots take over.  In trucking, for example, you could program the robots to always stay in the right lane, leave plenty of room in front of them for cars to merge in and out (or even in a separate lane just for them, when we get going on the idea), and drive all day and all night, stopping only for fuel or recharging their batteries.  All the money those robots would make as they drove down the public highway could either go into the pockets of the owners of the companies who bought the robots, or it could be shared evenly with all the displaced truck drivers, so they could go do what they want to do.  Each owner-operator could buy just one truck, send it out to work for him or her, and sit back and manage the operation from the home computer.  Trucking companies as we know them will disappear.

I see no reason beyond technology that we could not ultimately, as a human race, decide to use technology and robotics to make life easier for literally everyone on the planet, starting with the poorest and hungriest and working our way up to the wealthiest, who by that time will be getting hard up for household help and personal servants, so we will let them belly up to the public trough with the rest of us.  If you look closely at anyone who thinks this is a bad idea, you might see a big ol’ hog with his trotters already in the trough up to his hocks, just trying to avoid competition.

Imagine a world where the robots have freed the people to restore the planet to the original pristine condition in which we found it, and build the means to explore outer space, and pull our material needs from the asteroids that are the crumbled remains of a different planet, or the gaseous upper atmosphere of Jupiter, where the countries are so peaceful, because nobody is starving anymore or feeling like they have to steal or kill to get ahead, so you can go anywhere and visit in peace.  Imagine what we could accomplish if we decided collectively to make that world our goal, and work for it determinedly.  Some already have.

But, you say, what about the rich elites who already suck up the vast majority of the income in this world for themselves?  Don’t you think they might have an opinion about such a goal?  And that will lead us right back to the old tug-of-war, and the final question that everyone must answer at some point:  Which side of that line are you on?  :-{)}

Oh, Beautiful

From an article in the Seattle Times, published by the New York Times on October 23, 2017
The song lyrics were added by me.  The concept was introduced by Paul Simon.

Oh, beautiful for spacious skies,

Two unnamed Senior Officials said today that the CIA is expanding its covert operations in Afghanistan,

For amber waves of grain,

sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces

For purple mountain majesties

to hunt and kill Taliban militants across the country.

Above the fruited plain!

Who are these contractors, and how much are they being paid?  Is this the new career path for Army and Marine veterans?  Serve one or two tours in country, then retire, then come back as a member of a kill team?  Do they also hire mercenaries from other countries, like Russia?

America! America!

How do our troops feel about these mercenaries?  What do the Afghan soldiers think about it?  How does their pay compare?

God shed his grace on thee,

Since 2001, at least 18 CIA personnel have died in Afghanistan.  In recent months, 1,662 civilians have died, with 3,581 wounded, as a result of increased violence in Afghanistan.

And crown thy good with brotherhood

The CIA’s expanded role will augment missions carried out by military units, meaning more of the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan will be hidden from public view.

From sea to shining sea.

The CIA declined to comment on its expanded role in Afghanistan… :-{)}

Open Borders

This latest in a series of reports on documents issued by the Government Accountability Office is about Border Patrol agent assignments in the Southwest, and it’s an eye-opener.  The link is: http://www.gao.gov/assets/690/688200.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

I read this stuff so you don’t have to, and most of it is forgotten immediately, but this one is interesting:  As of May 2017, nationwide, Border Patrol had about 1,900 fewer agents than authorized, which officials cited as a key challenge for optimal agent deployment. In recent years, attrition has exceeded hiring (an average of 904 agents compared to 523 agents) according to officials.

It goes on to note that some 42% of individuals apprehended while trying to cross the border were caught within a mile of the border itself in 2016, while in 2012 that figure was 24%.  It also notes that part of the reason for that is the kids who are sent across the border and told to surrender immediately, but it’s pretty obvious that the main reason is the lack of agents.  If you’re running the border, your chances go way up if you make it the first mile.  Anybody want to ask if the people who make money running the border pay attention to these reports?

So what the hell is going on in the ranks of the Border Patrol that damn near double the number of agents they were able to hire quit over the same period of time?  Is this why the idea of a wall is sounding good to some folks?  Is it just the Southwest division, or is this happening all over?

Personally, I think people ought to be able to go anywhere they damn well please any time they want, and that borders are a particularly vicious invention designed to keep the people of the world at each others’ throats, and not those of the ones who really run things, and make all the profit.  But I realize that the concept of Open Borders is a futility until we solve the problem of why some people are so desperate to get the hell away from where they were born at any cost.

That problem has proven to be a thorny one, indeed.  Ah, but when we do solve it, when the entire world is open to our visitation and exploration, when all the people who live there are happy and comfortable and glad to see us, just like we are glad to see them when they come to our town, wouldn’t that be wonderful indeed?  What’s it going to take to make that happen? :-{)}

Travels with Dog

I hope you’ll forgive me if I depart from my usual light-hearted silliness to tell you about our recent trip to Ventura, California, to attend a dog show with our dog, Nash, or, as I refer to him around the kennel, Fuzzbutt.  He’s a Bouvier des Flandres, a herding dog, and the show was the National Specialty for the breed.

We drove down in our pickup, with Nash ensconced in the back of the extended cab and the various crates, cart and gear in the back in two big tubs, all secured with straps and cargo nets.  We got to go over the famous Grapevine for the first time, as we drove I-5 all the way down, where we were reminded once again how much of the food we eat comes from giant operations up and down the central California valleys.  Our destination was a fancy hotel right on the beach, within walking distance from the Ventura County Fairgrounds to the north.  Our room was on the 4^th floor, overlooking a plaza between the hotel and the public parking garage on the south side with the famous Ventura Pier just beyond that.

We spent a lot of time going back and forth from the hotel to the fairgrounds every day to attend and participate in the competitions, where Nash finished his Rally Novice certification and got his title to add to his Grand Champion status, though he got skunked in the conformation events, not too surprising given that the top 100 Bouviers in the country were all there.

But the thing that got to me, both on the way down and back and while we were there, was the obvious reality that, everywhere in our country these days, our society is coming apart, and an increasingly large number of people are falling off the ladder to success with nowhere else to go but in public places, where they fester and take root and cause problems.

You can tell them by their walk.  A homeless, hopeless person takes life one step at a time, there’s no hurry, because there’s nowhere to go, and any place is just as good as any other.  Perhaps it was so jarring because, on the beach in Southern California, at least, the weather is so good that the poor folks are unlikely to freeze to death.  I could look out upon the scene from the safety of my lanai, and watch the well-fed, well-dressed guests enter and exit the side door from the hotel, where their magic plastic card electronically opened all doors for them as they strolled to and from the restaurants on the plaza or their valet-parked cars, past the beggars and the buskers and the young couples lost in the glamour of living on the beach, or out of shopping carts stolen from the local grocery.

I looked out one night, across to the top floor of the parking garage, and witnessed a single individual man, complete with microphone in hand, but lacking any amplification equipment, go through a long, complex rap performance for an audience of none, complete with stage gestures, leaps, and dives into an imaginary mosh pit, which only came to an end when the local drug dealer showed up on the rooftop and handed him something that eased his pain, if only for the night.

Down on the concrete boardwalk that stretches along the beach from the Pier to the Fairgrounds there was a bearded young man in filthy clothing, with his bedroll held loosely over his shoulder, engaged in a furious conversation, with the gestures and facial expressions of one who is ready to explode, with the air around him.  People instinctively gave him a wide berth as they walked by with their expensive dogs, on leashes, in their designer jeans and sunglasses.

I rose early in the morning on one day and watched the police arrest a man who had apparently committed the sin of spending the night on a bench on the boardwalk, where they handcuffed him on the ground as they spread his entire life’s possessions on the bench from which they evicted him before they transported him to whatever lockup awaited.  I noticed that the county employed several full-time security people who patrolled on bicycles with radios on their belts in case they needed the police in a hurry.

And the road past the front of the hotel was often thick with Escalades, and Teslas, and in town the restaurant we favored featured 101 taps with different micro-brews flowing from each on command, while in the morning on a walk through the downtown core I saw people sleeping in doorways of shops that had yet to open.

This is the face of income inequity in this country, and it’s clear that it spreads across the nation, like a blanket of misery that overlays everything, where there are getting to be so many people in dire straits that we don’t have any places left for them to hide.  I have read the words of Steinbeck and others who told stories about the last time we went through this, but back in the ‘30s we were all in the same boat, and nowadays it seems like most of us are doing fine, and then there’s all those people on the beach.

We hear politicians carrying on about immigrants taking our jobs, yet all the people lined up in the cabbage fields behind the tractor-pulled harvesters looked like immigrants to me.  We saw multiple double trailer rigs filled with Roma tomatoes and limes on the highways, and the almond trees were being shaken down for their bounty, which was scooped up with special sweepers that rolled up and down each row.  Somehow, none of that bounty winds up in local food banks, which mostly feed poor people a steady diet of carbohydrates and sugar, leftover pastries from the grocery stores that are past their pull dates but so well preserved they will rot teeth for months afterwards.

There are a few miles of beach to the north of Ventura where you can rent a spot to park your motor home for a nominal fee, and it’s pretty clear that many, if not most of them, have been there unmoved for quite some time.  It’s only the clean ones that belong to tourists.  The others are home for someone, just like the ones you see in downtown Seattle, and anywhere else you want to look.  And when they break down, and get impounded, another family hits the street.

I wish I had a glib, plausible answer for all this, but I don’t.  Maybe, like China has apparently done, part of the solution lies in a guaranteed annual income for all citizens.  Maybe, like in Canada and most other advanced countries, a single-payer health care system for everyone, including mental health care for all the bearded young men with their worldly possessions in a bag on their shoulder who can’t find their way home, would fix some of the problems.

Maybe if we realized, as a nation, that as long as the poorest residents of the favelas of Rio or the slums of New Delhi, not to mention those who live among us already, do not enjoy a minimum of safety and security, then none of us will ultimately be truly safe and secure.  We really are all in this life together, and the sooner we act on that reality the better off we will be.  :-{)}

Crash Report And Afterword

Well, I dumped my bike the other day, on the way home, third time in 17 years, and it’s got me wondering if third time is, indeed, the charm.

It was clear and dry, traffic was light, as I headed home from a nice little ride for lunch at an old dive bar in a town named after a lake nobody has seen.  After passing under the second to the last traffic light before the one that leads to our house, I was following two cages at a reasonable distance when they began to slow down at a point where they should not have needed to, so I grabbed my front brake in preparation for whatever foolishness they might be about to perform on the street, not a panic stop by any means, but a strong pull intended to gain a little distance while the situation developed.  It’s the kind of maneuver an experienced motorcyclist does without thinking, the kind I’ve done many times in many places with no problem.

This time, for some reason that will remain unknown, my front end suddenly washed out from under me with no warning or time to react and dumped me and the bike on our left sides in the middle lane of a four lane road at about 40 miles per hour.  Later, we saw a flap of cardboard that just possibly could have found itself under my front tire just as I hit the brakes, which could explain why, but we’ll never know for sure.

It happened too fast to react at the time, but, looking over the damage later, it was easy to reconstruct.  I landed mostly on my left hip and shoulder, then attempted a shoulder roll on to my helmet, which gave up the faceshield on the left side as we ground to a stop in the turn lane.  Somehow, I badly scuffed the toe of my left boot in the process, wore almost through the left sleeve of my Harley FXRG riding jacket, which did its job and sacrificed material to keep my upper body injuries to some minor scratches along the left elbow, and one inexplicable but nasty little gouge under my right glove along the base of my thumb.  My nice padded riding pants were, unfortunately, rolled up in the right saddlebag because it was such a nice day, so I only had some denim jeans on, which explains the huge technicolor bruise that is forming along that left hip right where the pads are in the riding pants that I was not wearing, as well as a nasty combination road rash and impact bruise delivered to the outside of my left knee inside my jeans, also at the location of the knee pads in the riding pants I was not wearing.  ATGATT means All The Gear All The Time, Goddammit!

Bikers are everywhere, we know, and this incident made that clear.  As I lay on the pavement mouthing bad words and looking up at the sky, a County employee who was mowing the tall grass along the side of the road and saw it happen stopped his tractor and ran over to help me out.  It turns out he has an FXR like mine, that he has owned and loved for years, like mine, and he helped me pick up my poor wounded bike and get it off to the side of the road and up a shady driveway.  The first cop on the scene went sailing on by, followed by three others, two fire trucks, and aid unit, and possibly a Battalion Chief, I disremember all of them.  Somebody must have told them something bad happened when the old guy went ass over teakettle in front of about 40 cars.  The cop who took my information was telling me about his bike, and the nurse in the Urgent Care facility that said I had no broken bones turned out to have a couple of Dynas at home.

My poor Harley, my beautiful 1992 FXRS-Convertible that I’ve had for years and was slowly but surely turning into another FXRT, which I believe is the highest form of the best bike Harley ever made, took a hard knock this time, one that may well be a death blow.  The left side saddlebag is toast, as well as the tour pack, from grinding on the ground, and the front end somehow got twisted and torqued so bad that it caved in the fuel tank in the left front corner as the fork stop sheared off the lower triple clamp, leaving the twisted fork tubes and the bent fender as surety that the ride was over for the day, at least.  Somehow, it even managed to rip the speedo cable out as it bent the mounting bracket and ground away the corner of the housing in the process.  The footboard on that side took a hit, as did my fancy heel-toe shifter and both mirrors, which might explain that gouge in my right thumb.  Every time I look I know I will see more damage, all from falling down on blacktop; it didn’t even hit anything!

My wife came running to rescue me, like she does, every time without fail.  Thank you, Dear, I owe you for life.  We sent the bike on to the local dealer, who won’t be able to even look at it for a month, and called the insurance company, who will probably look at the year and the mileage and write it off with a sniff.  (Edit: it was Safeco, and they did not.  They did well by me.)

So here I am, limping away, glad to survive another crash, but profoundly disturbed by the randomness and inexplicability of the whole thing.  I had that bike set up just the way I wanted it, and running so good with the latest improvements to cam and ignition, that I considered it good enough to be my last bike ever, the one that always has the best spot in the garage as other toys come and go, the one I could always count on to start and run, take me there, and bring me home.  This time, it didn’t quite finish.  I know better than to make rash decisions after a jolt like this, so time will tell if this is a sign for me to hang up the keys or not.  Wish me luck as I find out.  :-{)}

The Rest of the Story

Did you ever lose a bike, either by way of a crash and an insurance company total loss or by selling it, and wonder how it made out once it had left the protective confines of  your garage?

I suspect this question is more relevant to a vintage motorcycle enthusiast such as our illustrious selves than it would be for the typical dilettante who runs out and buys the latest hot stuff only to quickly tire of it, whereupon it languishes in the garage, if not the back yard, until someone comes along to free it from such servitude and bring it back to life under circumstances where it will be cherished, and maintained, and ridden once in a while, if only to the TT.

Still, if you’ve lavished attention and money on a bike over the years, put up with its tendencies, upgraded its weaknesses, even taken it to the limit, that of new paint, you tend to develop some emotional attachment to the machine, such that to let it go is a wrenching experience – less for you, more for them.  This effect is even more pronounced when the loss is due to an accident, where you lose your bike to an insurance company, who does unspeakable things to it, possibly.

I’ve been through this twice now.  Once, in 2000, where, after a long day riding through the desert of eastern Oregon on the way back from Sturgis, my front wheel somehow got hooked up with the left rear corner of my buddy’s trailer and dumped me and my ’89 FXR on the pavement in downtown Bend, Oregon in the middle of rush hour.

After all the dust settled from that unfortunate incident, my insurance company agreed to just send me the check, rather than have the work done at the dealer, which I accepted with glee, since it bought me an upgraded exhaust and front brake system, and I was happy to live with the minor blemishes remaining from the crash.  Then my agent said, “Oh, by the way, all those items listed in the factory repair estimate are no longer covered by your insurance, because you repaired them yourself rather than have the dealer do it.”

So I had to let it go.  When that happens, the best you can hope for is a good owner that will love and take care of your old bike the way you did.  I remember when I took my first Harley, a 1971 FLH, back to work one day to show it to the guy from whom I had bought it, and he looked at it, shook his head and said, “Well, I guess you didn’t fuck it up too badly.”  I felt pretty good about that.  So when the guy who bought my ‘89 FXR showed me how he was going to cut the frame to lower the seat so his wife could ride it, I just sighed, and wished him luck.

In this latest version of the lose-your-bike scenario, with my ’92 FXR on the losing end of it, I was determined to at least find out what happened, since both the insurance claims adjuster and the dealership seemed just as determined to prevent me from finding out what happened next, other than that a salvage company would pick it up from the dealer, whereupon a check would be released to me to compensate for the financial losses, but not the emotional ones.  So I hatched a plan.

I’m one of those guys who keeps all receipts in a file as long as I own a vehicle, so I dug through it and pulled out the most recent Dyno-tune results, as well as any relevant sales receipts, and put them in a manila envelope, along with the following letter:

To whoever winds up with my old bike:

This was a good old bike for me, and never let me down, until this latest incident.  I’ve put a lot of time and money into it over the years, and it should last a long time and be a good bike for you if you get it up and running again.

On the day I crashed, I had taken the detachable windshield off because the weather was so nice.  I will hold on to it for you, and give it to you if you want.  If I don’t hear from you beforehand, I will take it to the Tenino Swap meet and sell it.  Here’s my number, please give me a call if you have any questions or want the windshield.  Signed, me.

Then I took the envelope down to the dealership and put it in the tour pack on back of the bike.  Two days later the salvage company picked it up, and off it went.

Two weeks later, out of the blue, I got a call from the new owner!  As it turns out, he lives in California, near L.A.  A buddy of his is apparently in the habit of coming up to Washington and Oregon to buy up cheap FXRs to resell in California, where they are apparently a hot commodity, thanks to the Sons of Anarchy and the trend adopted by many real motorcycle clubs to turn FXRs into hot rods for the street.  (You entrepreneurial types should have your ears pricking up at this tidbit.)

During a long and pleasant conversation, I got the satisfaction of transferring to the new owner all the history of the bike, the parts I had replaced or upgraded, including the special unique parts I had made myself.  It was especially gratifying to find out that this guy was another enthusiast like myself, and that he had bought the bike to make into his own personal vision of motorcycle perfection, which he intended to keep forever.

The funny thing was, he didn’t want the windshield, but allowed as how he was going to find an FXRT fairing for the front of it.  I laughed at that revelation, and allowed as how I had been collecting fairing bits and pieces for it myself for some years, including a slightly damaged fairing body, and would he like me to put them all in a box and send it to him, for a small fee?  I could hear his smile over the phone at that news, and the deal was quickly done.  He promised to send pictures.

So it feels good to know that my old bike, after a traumatic experience ending in dislocation from its old life, had wound up in a new place where it would be loved and cared for just like it had in my hands.  I don’t think you can ask for much more than that, even if you’re a machine.  :-{)} 

Campaign Funds

My inbox is full of them these days, coming from both Democrats and Republicans, along with many other specific interest groups with whom I have indicated support in the past, not to mention others, of which I have never heard and wonder how they got my name.  Between Facebook and email, I probably get 40 a day, thanks to big data tracking and targeted messages.

They all have one thing in common:  they want money.  Frequently, they want money, and it’s an emergency!

That got me thinking, how much money have they taken in, say, for the 2016 election cycle?  I found a website that produced a scary number, at https://www.opensecrets.org/parties/  Check it out.  I’ll give you a preview:  The Democrats raised a total of $2,045,690,893 in all their respective committees.  The Republicans raised $1,621,175,431 over the same time period.  Yeah, that’s in billions of dollars.  And that’s only the two main parties, and does not include all the so-called Independent Super-PACs and anyone else who felt like they needed to throw money at the problem.

I checked those totals out against other sites, like the Washington Post, and found similar results.  The Democrats, who have long railed against the Citizens United decision and how it allowed “big money” to take over out political discourse, are shown to be liars and con artists, since they raised more than the Republicans did, although from a larger number of people in smaller individual donations.  It becomes obvious that the Democratic-led campaign to reverse the Citizens United decision is a smoke screen to hide the fact that they are worse offenders than the Republicans, and a strategic attempt to limit the Republican access to funds, while leaving them even more in the lead.  What did Elridge Cleaver say about “if you’re not part of the solution”?

Ok, next question:  Where did they spend the money?

Here, for example is a report from NBC on how much out-of-state money was spent in Georgia this year in the 6^th District Congressional Race:  http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/out-state-interests-spent-26-2-million-georgia-special-election-n774366

That’s 26.2 million dollars, mostly from out-of state (all but $100,000 came from outside Georgia).  In the article, it mentions specifically that the money was spent on TV advertising, online ads, text messages.  Beyond that, you have to really dig to find out any useful information.  The first link gives expenditure totals, but does not show who got the money.

As for the big numbers, and the names of the companies who get that money, and what they do to earn it, that information has been swallowed by a black hole.  Feel free to dig as deep as you like, and see if you come up with any more results than I did.

I’ll give you a couple of leads:  Google “campaign services”, and see what comes up.

My contention is that both major political parties in this country have fallen under the influence of professionals:  Fund Raisers, Lawyers, Advisors, Analysts, Researchers, Printers, PR types, Mud-slingers and overseers of all kinds.  The one thing they all have in common is that they are making a good living off the turmoil and the bullshit, and the more it continues the more they have a personal stake in keeping the ball rolling.  It has become an ongoing industry that starts working on the next campaigns right after the end of the last ones.

There is no evidence that any of these professional types give one withered rat’s ass about the best public policy for the American People.  They don’t work for us, even if our donations are paying their wages.  And the so-called representatives, with few exceptions, are more interested in staying in power than they are in doing the right thing for us, which helps explain why nothing seems to get ever actually done in those halls of power.

It would not surprise me to find out that in many cases, the professional companies are working for both sides at the same time.

Information like this is what is causing me to reject making donations to any campaign that does not apply to the locality in which I live.  It boils down to one slogan:

No Out-Of-State Contributions should be allowed for any statewide race!

Not only is it an affront to the residents of any given state, who are tasked with the decision of who shall represent them, and are the only ones allowed to vote, when a bunch of out-of-state interests are allowed to flood them with bullshit to support one side or the other, but it also has had an extremely negative effect on our Congress, where House members and Senators must spend incredible amounts of time raising funds for their next campaign, rather than doing the business that we elected them to do.

How do we fix this?  Start with your own pocketbook.  Feel free to donate money to the national campaign of your choice, be it Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, or the Daughters of the Confederacy.  As far as political campaigns go, it seems legitimate to donate directly to the Presidential Candidate of your choice.  Keep your money out of the neighboring states, and even the legislative districts within your own state.  No matter how much you think that so-and-so in the next district over is a wart on the ass of progress, and needs to be ousted, it’s really none of your business.  It’s for the voters of that district to decide, and they don’t need you shouting in their ear on their way to the voting booth, or paying someone else to do it for you.  And not one nickel to the national parties, unless they can promise and prove that money we donate will only be spent in our local races.

Imagine how elections would go if there were no money to run attack ads, or spew fake news all over Facebook.  Imagine all the sycophants and toadies standing at the exits to the parking lots all over D.C. and our State Capitols bearing signs that say:  “Will bullshit for food”.  :-{)}

The Tale of the Plucky Little Nuthatch

My room is outdoors, in a sense, and when I go there all my secrets come with.  Fortunately, it’s a comfortable room, standing on posts six feet above the patio, with stairs off the back side from a landing.  I built it myself, and was pleased to discover that many of the lessons I had thought did not set in, as my father continually remodeled his house for fifteen years while his family expanded to seven kids, did.  Having two brothers whose carpentry skills greatly exceeded mine was a bonus.

I built it right, too, with a good ledger board well anchored to the wall, and the right kind of concrete supports under the main beams spaced appropriately, so it feels solid, even after fourteen years.  I just replaced the stair treads down to the patio this year after the sun got to them.  The Deckmaster stainless brackets and screws are hidden under the deck boards, which gives it a smooth finish that needs little maintenance.  My brother taught me that one, after he built a similar deck on his house.  Of course, he made his floor out of teak, but he’s just that way, always looking for perfection.

Our deck has an excessively pleasant view, looking out through the five Douglas firs in our back yard to what is now a permanent green belt to the east behind us and our neighbors, crowded with cedars, hemlocks, Doug firs, cottonwood, alders, and the undergrowth featuring a trackless tangle of Himalayan blackberries and Salal, Oregon Grape, ferns and Indian Plum, among others.  There is a trail through there that is kept open by the pounding feet of the Lindbergh Eagles, whose every passage is accompanied by a baying chorus of dogs from all the back yards.  Our yard is filled with impressive green and growing plants, as my wife slowly achieves her gardening vision upon retirement, heavily weighted towards plants that are also edible, as well as enhancing the view.

Among her many interests are the birds that flock to the fuchsia baskets suspended under the rain gutter, not to mention the seed feeder hanging from an ornamental bit of ironwork around the corner where the Doug fir next to the chimney dominates a shady haven created by fencing designed to keep the dogs out.  Hanging from both ends in the center are two hummingbird feeders, which you may remember having heard about in the past.  Nothing to report on that front, but the research continues, and hope dies hard in the faithful breast.  We see flickers, downy woodpeckers, hummingbirds, nuthatches, chickadees, wrens, finches and grosbeaks, and jays, who clamor for peanuts, which she tosses up on the translucent roof over the deck.

Hanging from the extended main roof support beam on the north end is a dragonfly welded out of nuts, bolts and wire by one of her co-workers many years ago, large enough to carry in its arms (feet?) a wire mesh suet cake holder to complete the smorgasbord of attractions for the avian visitors in our back yard.

When I am reclined in one of the Adirondack chairs we got from the kids in the Wood Shop program at Lindbergh, with her shabby chic table finished with a leftover piece of tile from her bathroom project holding up a good microbrew in a glass at my elbow, gazing out over the panorama, a feeling of ineffable peace washes over me.  One of the cottonwoods off in the distance even had a couple of branches that somehow formed a heart shape against the background of the sky last year, which I took to be an omen of sorts.  The noise of the invisible highway is a murmur in the background, as eagles, crows and hawks match the more distant jets in size as they pass overhead.  The clouds paint pictures on my retinae. 

So one day, I’m sitting out on the deck, idly watching the birds peck away at the suet cake while waiting for the hummingbird to strike, and I notice a small bird, a nuthatch, hanging from the bottom of the suet cake basket by his left foot.  His right leg was broken somehow, and projected off to the side.  The poor little guy could barely reach up from his upside-down perch on the bottom of the basket, hanging on for dear life with one foot while he desperately sought another beak full of the concentrated suet/seed mix that was his only hope.  When he fluttered away, I was sure he was a goner.  Mother Nature doesn’t take prisoners.

But, to my surprise, he made it through the night, and was back the next day.  This went on for several weeks, and I began to look forward to the first sighting of the day, as the fledgling somehow continued to gain weight and strength, no doubt largely because of the food supply we provided.  The broken leg bothered him less over time, as the left side got stronger to make up for the loss.

Now, in the middle of the season, he seems to have made it to adulthood.  We’ve started to root for him as a symbol of can-do, our mascot of the underdogs, and hope he makes it through the coming winter.

So, too, he becomes a metaphor for our own struggles against problems large and small, health issues, money problems, accidents, and injuries, with a simple message that says, “Don’t give up!  Keep flying as high as you can, and eat lots of suet cake!”  I’m sure we humans can substitute donuts for the suet cake, if we wish, but the thought remains the same.  :-{)}

Old Man Dewey

Old Man Dewey

Al “Sugar Bear” McKay was a mechanic at the Seattle Fire Garage when I was in the Machine Shop there, and I got to know him in the normal course of work.  He was the motorcycle specialist for Seattle Police Department, assigned to keep the fleet of Harley Davidsons running through the hazards of police work, and he pretty much knew those old Shovelheads inside and out.  He taught me how to assemble transmissions, which he could do blindfolded, and lots of other things over the years.  But he also turned out to be good for a story every now and then, one of which I will relate to you now.

Al started out working for Dewey’s Cycle as the equivalent of a lot boy, running parts on his Cushman scooter (and popping wheelies in the front and out the back when the old man was not looking), general cleanup and whatever else needed doing at the time.  This was probably in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, Al is no longer around to get it any closer than that.

Now, old man Dewey shared a personality trait with many of his competitors and compadres in the motorcycle business in Seattle at the time, like Pat Patereau at Pat’s Top Hat Cycle, in that he tended to be a bit cranky at times, especially when asked for the hundredth time if that Triumph part was ever going to be off Back Order or some such foolishness.  He didn’t necessarily get along with everyone, and didn’t seem to mind much.  It’s an understandable attitude that would be reasonable in a man who spent his entire life in the motorcycle business, with a focus on European brands, only to see everything upended by the relentless onslaught of faster, more dependable and cheaper Japanese bikes, to the point where the idea that a guy could sell the business and retire someday just fell right off the table.  Guys tended to work till they couldn’t work no more, because that was all they had anyway, which explains why we look up to them today.  We just learned when to tiptoe at the time.

I had my old ’60 Thunderbird at Dewey’s once, for example, for a top end job, and the project was hung up because intake valves were suddenly unobtanium in the early ‘70s as Triumph went through one of their many crises at the factory level and couldn’t keep up with parts demand.  One day, as I was walking around the corner from Dewey’s shop on Capitol Hill after checking in for the third time about my bike, and hearing the same story, I got interrupted by one of the mechanics, who popped out of the side door and said, “Hey!”  I stopped to listen.  “That’s your bike waiting on valves, right”, he asked?  “Yeah, they’re still on back order.”  I replied.  “Well, here’s the deal”, he said.  “You can get those valves any time you want from Carmen Tom at Tom’s Cycle down on Empire Way.  The Old Man hates Carmen for some reason, and won’t let us deal with him for anything.  All you gotta do is go down there and buy the valves and bring them back, and I’ll have your bike back on the road tomorrow.  Just don’t say a word about who told you, or my ass is grass!”  “Thanks, Man, I’ll go do that right now!” I replied, and off I went, and that’s how it worked out in that case.

But the story that still makes me shake my head is the one Sugar Bear told me one time.  It seems Dewey’s had also been an Indian dealer back in the day before that company bit the bullet in 1953, and as of sometime in the ‘60s, was still sitting on a pretty good pile of NOS Indian parts in the back room.  As the story goes, a guy came in and made what Dewey considered an insultingly low offer for all the leftover Indian parts, after which the old man ran the guy out of the shop and requested that he never darken his door further.  On the way back to his office he grabbed Al and took him back to the Indian parts section and said, “I want you to take everything that says Indian on it off these shelves and take them out back and throw them in the dumpster!”

So that’s what Al did, supposedly.  I remember when I heard the story many years later, I speculated that a person in the know could have possibly wandered by that dumpster later in the day, after the old man went home, and rescued those bits of unobtanium, but Al didn’t know if that happened or not.

Like so many other urban legends, we’ll probably never know, unless somebody comes up with the rest of the story.  :-{)}

To Ride, or To Trailer... that is the question

Well, funny you should mention that, but it does bring on a story, so I’m glad you did.

It was back in ’03, it was, and a group of us were on the road headed for Milwaukee.  The Harley Davidson Motor Company had somehow stayed in business for a hundred years, and they were promising a big ol’ party for anyone who showed up.  Now this is a company whose customers have a tendency to get the corporate logo tattooed on various parts of their bodies, so that gives you a hint at the depth of their affection for the brand, and at the wildness of the parties that develop when enough of them get together in one place.

I was riding with Rachel and her gang.  She was the escort rider on her cop bike, which gained us some respect from the locals, when she didn’t run off and leave us, which she occasionally did.

I had looked at the map and realized that good old Highway 2 ran right across the top of five states between Seattle and Green Bay, which was just a hop and a skip north of Milwaukee, so that was our route, over the mountains and across the rivers and the wide open spaces with the great big skies.  I wouldn’t recommend that route today, the parts through North Dakota are pretty fracked up. We traveled light, and stayed on the cheap, mostly at KOAs or one of the many little clapped-out resorts that grew up along the highway in the ‘50s that would put up a biker for $10 a night, but the communal shower had floors that sagged under my weight.  It was at one of those where we saw the essence of the old biker question:  “Should I ride, or should I trailer?”

This little resort in upstate Minnesota had been carved out of an old quarry on the riverbank, so you drove down a steep entry to get to the campsites, one of which was enough to fit 4 motorcycles and their tents.  Up top, by the highway, was a strip mall that contained the restaurant and the gas station that completed the roadside oasis.

So we’re down at our site, sitting around the table, when we witness the arrival of a motorhome the size of a Greyhound Bus, which pulled into one of the full-service sites towing the largest Wells Cargo enclosed trailer you can buy.  Two guys get out, wearing biker leather vests and bandannas on their heads.  They’re, ahem, experienced, been around, shall we say, not young bucks anymore, but who among us is, either?  They fold down the ramp that closes off the back of the trailer and proceed to back out two brand new looking Harley Baggers, one a Softail Heritage and the other an Ultra Classic, which they fired up and rode on up the hill to the restaurant for dinner, just like we did.  After dinner, they rode back down to camp and went in the motor home to watch tv or something, while we sat outside and watched the stars come out.

Next morning, while we were packing to leave, they climbed back on their bikes and rode back up to the restaurant for breakfast, just like we did, too.  As we gassed up and hit the road East, they went back to tie their bikes up in the dark inside that trailer before they followed us out of the quarry.  I later saw that same motorhome and trailer parked on a back road outside the Milwaukee Town Center.  There were so many of them there it looked like a convention of Good Sams had hit town with all the bikers.

The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter if you ride or drive, as long as you get there in one piece and have a good time.  And it’s perfectly understandable that everyone gets to a point where the pleasure of the long ride is not enough to make up for not being able to do it with the same attitude you used to have, the knowledge that your skills were at their peak, and you were prepared and ready to handle anything the road put in front of you.  And, of course, if time is a factor it’s better to dash in, drink deep, and dash out again than to have stayed home.

But the ones who drove deserve a certain amount of pity from the ones who rode, and they know it.  Here’s a little experiment you can do on your way back from Sturgis this year that illustrates my point:  As you ride by a pickup with one or two perfectly capable motorcycles tied up in the back, glance over at the driver and give him a nod.  Nine times out of ten, I have observed, he will not meet your glance, but will look away.  He knows he’s depriving himself of the authentic experience of being on the road on a motorcycle by being belted into that cage, for whatever reason, time, health, whatever.  He knows that when you’re out there leaning into that nasty side wind outside of Caspar, Wyoming, or powering into a set of dark clouds forming outside of Bozeman, that’s when you’re fully alive.  Just you and your bike taking on Mother Nature, and winning.  It’s something not everyone can do, and it’s what sets us apart from them.  Ride on.      :-{)}

Hydroplanes

It was the summer of 1970, and the shores of Lake Washington were swarmed, as they were every summer during Seafair.  I had just graduated from high school, and the summer was one long party.

Back in the day, we used to be able to drive our cars around the point in Seward Park, and park in lines that stretched all the way around.  We would show up in the morning and party into the night.  Many a baby was conceived in the bushes along the high banks, and the beer bottles disappeared whenever a Seattle cop car went cruising by on the rare occasions we saw them.

When race day came, we filled our coolers with food and beer and headed out early, knowing which back streets were most likely to still have a few parking spots left, after all the friends and relatives of the folks who lived along the race course filled up the parking lots days early.  We would carry our stuff down to the shore, and stake out our spots with blankets, the advance crew being forced to sit tight and hold the spots till enough bodies showed up to secure the claim.  Then we were free to wander, from one end to the other of the steep banks below the walking trail, now crowded with thousands of families from the log boom to the pits.  The shallow waters swarmed with flotation devices and swimmers ducking the hot sun as the occasional patrol boat cruised by to shoo the adventurous types back from the buoys that marked the race course.  Transistor radios blared their tinny coverage from every blanket as KJR and KOL competed with KOMO for the passing ears.  The smart ones came prepared with foul weather gear and tarps in case it rained, and everyone was down there together, kids, parents, grandmas, neighbors, all smiling and having a good time.

This was towards the end of the era of piston-engine-driven unlimited hydroplanes, and the Pay n Pak was attempting to start a new conversation with a boat powered by twin Chrysler Hemi blown drag race motors against the prevailing Rolls Merlin and Allison aircraft engines left over from WWII that were starting to get hard to find, and harder to get any more power out of without blowing them up in the middle of a race, not an unusual sight.

There was a moment that occurred, in the middle of heat 1B, that was seared into my memory forever.  As the boats came around the third turn, with the Pay n Pak in the lead, and those two American drag race engines at full song together made a noise that brought all of us on the shore to our feet spontaneously, this one girl, seated about 5 rows directly below me, clad in a cute little blue polka-dot bikini, well, when she leaped to her feet, her bikini bottom stayed behind, and all the young men above and behind her went into hysterics.  I forget who won the race.  It was a classic moment in the historical event that was hydroplane race day in Seattle.

So today we hear that the last local television station that had always broadcast the event live was dropping out.  Not enough people watch it anymore, and ain’t that a shame.

I think I know why it happened.  Some years back, somebody decided to monetize the event.  Drunken fools had always been a problem down on the beach, and the neighbors had been complaining for years about parking and traffic hassles, but I think mostly some entrepreneurial types looked at all those people and started wondering how much money could be extracted from an event of this size.  The same thing that happened to the rock festivals happened to large public gatherings all over the country, and always for reasons that boiled down to two things:  money and control.

I think it is another lesson in unintended consequences.  If you look at short term goals only, you may miss out on the long term consequences of decisions made to support those goals.  The police and the neighbors got tired of all the partying and the messes around the Seward Park Loop, and closed off the road to vehicles, so nobody goes there anymore.  The former destination for young people from all over the region has drifted back into being a local park mostly visited by local people, which I’m sure makes them happy.  Just like the locals will be glad to see the inevitable end of hydroplane racing, and the disruption and noise that comes withit.

But if you really want to know why it’s all grinding to a halt, look back at that decision to fence off the shores of the public park, and charge the citizens whose taxes paid for that park to come there.  Look at the beer garden, with their ridiculous prices and their groups of people standing around like dogs in a pen with nowhere to go, while the cops at the gates make sure nobody smuggles in their own.  Look at the executive suites in all the prime viewing locations, where the privileged elite saunter past the guards to eat delicacies and imbibe high class drinks while the hoi polloi shuffle by outside, or line up at the sani-kans.

When the decision was made to cut off the public from their own park, the unintended consequence was to raise a generation of kids for whom that annual party was no longer an important part of their lives.  Why would it be any wonder that that is exactly what happened?  :-{)}

Yakama River Canyon, 2007

With the road on one side

And the train tracks on the other,

This timeless dance

Of slowly falling water

Is captured by the works of Man.

Until the skies open

And the deluge falls

And lays to ruin all we’ve done,

Like Tinker toys and Lincoln logs.

Who will look on us

From the other side

And judge us by our works?

Who will weep,

And who will say

We had it coming?

How to get big money out of politics

Here is another in my series of public policy discussions that I submit to you to stimulate discussion and get people thinking about stuff, maybe in unconventional ways.

Many of us agree that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision was a blow to American Democracy.  It may have somehow stuffed itself into a nook afforded by a group of Founding Fathers for whom $1,000 was a princely sum, and the printing press was the only form of long distance communication available at the time, but the effect in today’s world is obvious:  A small group of oligarchs have assumed their rightful places in control of the world’s economy, and in turn, its political processes.  It so easily explains why pipeline profits are more important than clean water for indigenous tribes, and why the global arms market is approaching the $100 bn mark, with the U.S. leading the way.

Bernie Sanders has been the most effective communicator of this reality, and his approach to fundraising, with extensive online fulfillment of all those $27 donations, made history, and almost pulled off the upset against a Democratic Party leadership whose minds were made up in advance.

More important than the money, though, is the way Bernie could rouse the citizenry in support of his ideas, and use the public airwaves on Facebook, Twitter and the like to raise and continue that support.  This process, the Bernie revolution you could call it, continues today, and is making a huge difference in politics in America.  Everyone realizes now that it is our duty as citizens to get involved in local politics, show our faces and take stands for ideas in which we believe.

But I am here to point out that we have, with the fundraising success of all the online efforts, become our own worst enemy, and perpetuated the problem in so doing.  The proof of this is in your inbox.

Look there, and what do you see?  Email after email, always ending with an opportunity for you to donate a small amount of money.  Check your facebook page, and the process is the same.  Always another chance to put your money where your mouth is, be it Planned Parenthood, Women’s Rights, Immigrants, or, above all, this wonderful person who is running for office somewhere other than where you live.

I filled out a few surveys in the past offered by the Republican Party, and they must not have liked my answers, not to mention the nonexistent donations I included, so I don’t hear from them much these days, but I assume for those who are still on their list the feel is the same, and that is the basis of my concern.

With the exception of the occasional George Soros, there’s no way the Democrats could match the Republicans dollar for big dollar, so Bernie showed them how to go small, and overwhelm them with numbers.

The basic Idea is this:  We should limit our donations, just like we limit our activism, to jurisdictions in which we have a stake in the game.  That is, in our local City government, County administration, State politics, and national races or contests.

We should deny donations to any other than those, no matter how worthy they may be.  Much as I like Elizabeth Warren, she’s not getting any money from me until she runs for President or I move to Massachusetts, whichever comes first.

This idea allows me to donate to the anti-DAPL folks, for example, and any other national issue group like the NRA or Voting rights, but it keeps my money out of places where it doesn’t belong, like other state races.  There’s a basic politeness we extend to our neighbors, an unspoken promise to keep our nose out of their business, as long as they don’t cause problems for us, with an understanding we will be there for them if they need us.  That concept applies across state lines, and helps explain the defensiveness you might experience when you complain to someone in North Carolina about their governor.

What does big money in politics buy?  Well, ad time for one, TV commercials aimed at a particular audience.  But, is anyone listening?  A Facebook post or a tweet is free, and reaches all your friends and followers, so who needs the expensive TV ad? The big money also pays for thousands of political flacks spewing negative garbage that does nothing beyond raising blood pressure on all sides.

My contention is that if you remove anyone who is making a living from politics, on any side of any issue, the content generators, the book writers, the talking heads and bloviators, if you could take down all their stuff, you would quickly realize we don’t need any of it!  Not only that, but you could maybe even clear the board so we could, as a people, have reasoned, rational discourse about decisions that need to be made, ideas that should be shared, and policies that need to be implemented.

So my message to the Democrats is this:  I am going to do what you should also be doing, if you are serious about getting big money out of politics.  You need to keep any money raised on any decision, race or campaign limited to donations only from those who are directly affected by that campaign, and have a legitimate voice in that campaign.  That means you should refuse any donation received from out-of-state on any statewide race.  In fact, you should not be soliciting donations from anyone who does not live in that state, county or city.  No national Democratic Party donations should be used to push any statewide issues, or target any statewide races with out-of-state money. Think of the effect of just one part of this idea.  Suppose no more commercials on TV or radio leading up to the election?  You were just paying the ad agencies, production teams and network staff to do all that work, anyway, only for the audience to change the channel or go take a piss or get another beer.  Save the money.

The Republicans, of course, should also do the same, but that’s a joke, and we all know it.  My point is, Bernie has shown us how to use the Internet to spread the word most effectively without spending all that money, and that people power trumps big bucks every time, so you can beat the big money if you just work with the grass roots of the country, county by county, state by state.

So if anyone tells you the Democrats are forced to raise big money because the Republicans are going to do it anyway, you ask, “So the answer to big ol’ Hogs rooting around in the public trough is to get some Hogs of our own?  I don’t think so.  Why don’t we make bacon out of those Hogs and stop throwing money down that particular rathole?”  Maybe we’d all be better off, and have something to eat as well.  :-{)}

The meaning of Valentine’s Day

We went out this morning,

My wife and I,

To do a little job.

A post in the fence on the greenbelt,

Where the coyotes howl in the moonlight

And nature pushes at our back gate,

Was rotted off at the base.

It was typical of that sort of job –

Cut the nails with a sawzall,

Push the fence out of the way,

Then grunt and sweat the lump of concrete

That failed to protect the treated post

Out of the ground into the light of day.

I could tell her knee was bothering her,

Just not enough to slow her down,

As she matched me, grunt for sweat

To put the new post in the ground,

Then join the sundered sections

That keep the wild world at bay.

We make a good team.

She moved the vegetation

I set out the tools.

I mixed the concrete

And poured it where she said.

She did the finish work

While I screwed the boards back on.

After all the work was done,

I put the tools away,

Then staggered off to take a nap

For the rest of the day; I was done.

While she went on to her next job -

Making an apple tree stand at attention

With the help of a stake, and some rope.

I can’t keep up with this woman.

Honey, I can’t believe my luck,

That joined me to you along the way.

I don’t know what I did to deserve you,

But I’m sure glad I did it.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Shovelheads

Ya gotta love the old shovelheads, and the old guys who ride them.  There’s a direct connection between them and the earliest motorcycles in that they are known for arbitrary breakdowns and vibration-assisted spontaneous disassembly, and the resultant skills and improvisational fixes their riders come up with to keep them on the road.

A case in point is Ron’s ’77 FXE, which he recently resurrected from exile in some garage where it was being used as a clothes hamper.

We decided to take it on the Dave run for a shakedown cruise.  That is an annual run organized by Big Dave that always features a mixed bag of bikes of all types, with skilled experienced riders that tend to go fast.  This year, for example, we had a Victory Vision, a Honda Sabre, a Kawasaki Ninja, three Harleys - my FXR, Ron’s FXE and a Lucky’s chopper that was in theory a 1983 , a BMW, a Vulcan, a Yamaha Super Tenere, that sort of thing.

We gathered at the Black Diamond Bakery on a Saturday morning for the usual pre-ride ritual of coffee, carbohydrates and cholesterol, then launched ourselves in a loose pack down the OK highway towards Mount Ranier.  The eventual destination was the Columbia river via that cool road on the back side of Mt. St. Helens.  We made it all the way to Eatonville before something  fell off the shovelhead, one of the nuts that holds the gas tank in place.  We should have seen that for the omen it was.  So Ron and I sent the rest of the pack on ahead, while we looked for an auto parts store to buy a nut and washer.  We never did catch up with the rest of the guys, but we had a great ride anyway, as it turned out.

After we fixed the gas tank, we headed out the Eatonville cutoff, thinking to jump ahead of the pack that went the long way around on Highway 7 through Alder.  We holed up in Elbe at the tourist trap in the middle of town with all the train cars and such, one of which sold a blackberry smoothie that I recommend highly.  No sign of the boys, so we headed out on the projected route down Skate Creek road to Packwood the back way.  This road is as beautiful a twisting windy country road as you could wish for, but it gets pretty rough up near the top, after you pass the “End County road” sign outside of Elbe.  Somewhere past the top there was a chuckhole with a perfectly square sharp corner that took the spoked steel rim of Ron’s front wheel and put two perfectly matching dents in the rim that peeled the rim edge back from the sidewall neatly and made the wheel into one that was round on three sides and flat on the bottom.  So we thump-thump-thumped into town and stopped at a gas station to figure our next move.  Yay, innertubes!

One thing that has happened to gas stations all over the country is that they have turned into convenience stores, and the concept of a “Service” station with the skills and equipment to keep your car running has fallen by the wayside.  Walk into one of them and ask the clerk behind the counter racks of cigarettes, candy and junk food for a hammer and they look at you like you’re from another planet.  Fortunately, there are a few old time stations left, often in small towns, and you can usually find one if you poke around.  In Packwood, it’s the old Chevron on the west side of town, the one with the fuel pumps that are so old that the numbers physically spin around on the dials while you pump, and the clerk has to come out with a square key and reset the pump manually between each transaction.  This particular clerk was a wizened old guy who had obviously been kicking around town for many a year, so we softened him up by buying some gas, then put the hammer question to him.  He came up with a 20 oz. claw hammer and a 12 oz. ball peen.  Ron took the claw hammer and did the nicest job I’ve seen in a while of beating a steel rim back into shape in the parking lot with precise blows at the correct angle and force while I held the front end steady and offered cogent advice like, “you missed a spot.” “Hit it harder” and  “Ooh, did that hurt?”  Soon the wheel was round enough to hit the road again, and off we went.  Another problem solved.

We decided to go up and over Cayuse pass and stop at the Naches Tavern in Greenwater for lunch.  That’s where the next little problem happened.  This time, as we pulled into the gravel parking lot, Ron’s front exhaust pipe just up and fell off onto the ground.  The engine was still running, and it made that blup-blup-blup sound along with the whistle-chirp-chirp you get when the hot exhaust valve is open to atmosphere.  Ron laughed the laugh of one who knows he can fix it somehow, and picked up the truant pipe and leaned it against the bike to cool while we went in for beer and ideas.

The problem was down at the muffler end of the pipe, where the slotted bracket welded to the muffler fits against the hanger bracket, and the nut and bolt was still tightly fastened, along with the shards of the muffler bracket that had fractured from the heat and vibration, which let the muffler hang down, only connected at the head bolt, which soon vibrated loose and fell out somewhere between Ohannapecosh and Paradise, and left us stranded at a tavern with good beer and food, not even close to the worst case scenario.  So even if we could come up with a 5/16”-18NC cap screw ¾” long somewhere in Greenwater to secure the pipe to the head, we would still have to find a way to secure the muffler to the hanger, given the current state of the shattered bracket on the muffler.  We needed wire, lots of it.

Sitting in the booth at the Naches Tavern I looked around.  The high wainscotting around the great room was full of odds and ends of logging equipment on display, blocks and tackle, peavey and pike poles, along with the occasional buck saw and mule harness.  Directly above my head was a cast iron valve body, held together by a couple of 5/16”-18NC cap screws about 3 inches long, with about ¾” of thread and a nut holding the body together.  I whipped out my trusty Gerber stainless steel multi-tool, don’t leave home without it, removed the nut and pocketed nut and bolt.  We could screw the nut all the way down the threads on the bolt, then screw the bolt into the head until it bottomed, then jam the nut against the head pipe, and voila, one problem solved.  I walked out into the back yard of the tavern and looked around some more while Ron put Plan A into motion.  There was a guy back there taking a break from the kitchen, and I told him my story.  He suggested I look at the burn pile around the corner, where I saw a section of hog wire fence.  Out came the trusty Gerber, complete with wire cutting jaws, and soon part of that fence was rendered back into its original configuration, that of wire.  It fit neatly into the hole and wrapped through the remains of the muffler bracket just right, and twisted tight behind the muffler, so it was invisible.

So it was, and so it worked, and so off we went down the hill to home.  I kinda like the looks of that long bolt in there, and suggested we install another one in the rear head, then drill the heads and safety wire them to each other.  You could hang Christmas lights off the safety wire.

As for the wire on the muffler, why not just leave it there?  At least until it breaks again?

Which we know it will do.  With a Shovelhead Harley, you know it’s only a matter of time.

Nowadays, all the new bikes are computerized and complicated, with trouble codes for everything and Electrical Diagnostic manuals an inch thick to help the mechanics figure it out.  When you break down, you whip out your cell phone and call AAA or MoTow and then you sit and wait.  Hopefully near a beer place.  I guess that’s progress, of a sort.

I can’t help thinking, somehow, that there’s a place in the modern world for the old machines that go blup-blup-blup , and that, when they break, and you fix them, you kinda feel better about yourself.  It’s like the smooth, painless rides are over and soon done, and the memories fade like an old Polaroid, while the adventures that include some challenges, some adversity, those are the ones you remember and talk about.  That’s when you’re really living.  :-{)}

Memo to Donald

To: Donald Trump

From:  Alan Brittenham

Subject: Saving Your Ass

Hey, Boss,

I know you’re busy and all right now, got a lot on your mind, but I thought I would drop you a line to let you know I figured a way out of the little shit-storm I see you sliding into right now.

I know you told us that Obamacare was a total disaster, and that job one when you got elected was to repeal it, and that was a popular thing to say at the time, cuz everyone’s rates were going up faster than the price of liquor on Blue Sunday, and it might have helped get you elected, and they’re kinda on your ass about all those promises, and this looks like an easy one, but wait a second before you make your mind up.

Down here at the trailer court, it turns out darn near all of us went ahead and signed up for that there Obamacare, and it turns out to be a pretty good deal, too.  Of course, most of us got the subsidy, so we don’t pay anything, cuz most of the folks around here are on Social Security, or Disability, the ones that are all busted up, or the single moms who are mostly on welfare, cuz their old man done run off or is in jail, so we get to go to the doctor these days, instead of waiting till there was nothing to it but to go to the emergency room.  Maizie’s grippe is much better now, and old man Hoss got a whole new knee out of the deal, and ain’t he the spring chicken now!

Now the thing is, Boss, these folks are exactly the ones that voted for you, you know.  One of your folks came around one day and signed everyone up to vote and request one of those absentee ballots, and, when they came time to vote, every dang one of them had your name on it with a big x next to it.

So if you turn off Obamacare, you ain’t doing nothing less than throwing all those good folks who listened to you, who believed in you, and who voted for you out in the street, and don’t for one moment think they won’t be pissed!

So you got yourself between a rock and a hard place, and I can help you get out of it.  It’s simple:

You just take the name off of it, and call it Trumpcare!  That’s all you gotta do!

Oh, sure, it has to look a bit harder than that, you have to razzle dazzle them a bit, but that’s nothing for the man who sold Trump University, not to mention Trump steaks.  You can come up with the fancy words, I’m sure.  And that thing you said in your speech about how companies been ripping us off, that will tie right into it.  You can go after the pharmaceutical companies for overcharging, and tell Medicare to start negotiating drug prices like they shoulda been doing, and roll the whole thing in a new ball, without removing anything!  Call it the American Health Care Freedom Act, or some such, and it will sail right through, I’m sure.

Anybody bitches, threaten to switch to Single Payer and they’ll shut right up.  By the way, that single payer system actually looks pretty good if you look at it close, you might want to keep that in the back of your head for now.  Good luck.

You know, I’m a good American citizen, and I’m always ready to help you out.  I got a couple of other ideas if you get in a jam.  Don’t hesitate to call.  I’ll do it for free.

Your pal,

Big Al