Be humble

Last evening was the annual ‘road party’.  It is always fun and is a great chance to catch up with people who all have busy lives.  I was sitting in a corner talking with a guy about a motorcycle he is considering and I noticed he kept briefly glancing at his wife.  She is a lovely kind lady who is full of fun and mischief.  I glanced at her and saw we were getting the ‘now what the heck are those two up to’  look.

He saw me glance at her and he leaned over and whispered, “yikes, don’t make eye contact for more than 5 seconds - you will turn to stone!”.

I guess you had to be there, but 12 hours later I am still laughing.

The little guy dun gud!  Periodically the call goes out for a canine blood donor.  Que has type A- which is the universal donor, but he is now retired.  There is a very sick little dog at AVC that desperately needs blood and all of the donor dogs did not present a good match. 

Trek is healthy, a big boy and has gained some of his weight back after being at ‘boot camp’.  At 88 lbs, he is a trim fit example of the male German.

As the other dogs were not a match, Trek went to AVC and his match was perfect. 

There is a little dog that is alive tonight because of him.  He is feeling quite proud of himself.  ..and yes, he is getting some special treats.

While Rob has been fretting about all sorts of financial collapses the end of life as we know it - I have been figuring it out.  May I present the first logical explanation of how the markets work that I actually understand:

Last March I wrote:

The low wind chill was -47 C and this was recorded on February 06, 2007 at 5:33 AM.  I use the pre-2001 formula for calculating wind-chill, which, before conversion from F to C is T(wc) = 0.0817(3.71V**0.5 + 5.81 -0.25V)(T - 91.4) + 91.4

This morning,  at 0947 my little weather station recorded -47 C again.

...and he worries a lot.  Perhaps it is because he gets left home with me, when the other dogs go off to shows.  Regardless, he is a kind and gentle boy and he is getting more mellow as the years go by.  Unfortunately he has an elbow problem and it causes him pain.  He manages with some Canine NSAID as well as acupuncture from Doctor O.  Today was his acupuncture day - and while I know I am humanizing his emotions, it is his day to be the special one.  He gets to go to work with Mom and the other dogs get to stay home.  He generally goes nuts with excitement and this morning was no exception.  Dr O. decided that today we would try a chiropractic adjustment of his spine for the first time.  Gentle spinal manipulations started at his tail and worked up his back to his neck.  The result was unexpected.  Que looked up at Dr O, yawned and fell immediately to sleep.  He was so relaxed that he could not stay awake.  Even while the accupuncture needles were placed, he just opened an eye and then went back to sleep.  Tonight he is romping around the house like a puppy.

Now you have no excuse!

For those of us in love with the ‘motorcycle experience’, it is often hard to explain why we spend so much time (and money) in pursuit of our chosen recreation.  I suspect golfers have a similar frustration - I know many who live in wait for weather to pursue their activity, and I just glaze over when they talk about it.  I came across the following quote, which must be credited to a man known as Dave Karlotski.  He gets it right!

A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time, entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I’m alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than Pana-Vision and than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard. Sometimes I even hear music. It’s like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind’s roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock ‘n roll, dark orchestras, women’s voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed. At 30 miles per hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree- smells and flower- smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it’s as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it. A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane.

Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It’s a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It’s light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it’s a conduit of grace, it’s a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy. I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I’ve had a handful of bikes over half a dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn’t trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride one of the best things I’ve done.

Cars lie to us and tell us we’re safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, “Sleep, sleep.” Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that’s no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.

 A useful way to manage multiple dogs, when they are being boisterous at an inappropriate time, is to teach them the command “place”.  The command word can be anything, as long as it is consistent and the actual place can be anything as long as it is clearly defined.  In our pack the command is ‘place’ and the actual place is an old bathroom scatter rug.  The scatter rug is moved to many places - both for training purposes and for convenience.  As herself was trying to get a cup of coffee this morning, the Canine component of our pack was being mischievous.  I hear the gentle soft command “place”.  When I looked,  this is what I saw:

Dax, who has become quite a little bubble butt in the off-season could not quite figure out a way to squeeze her plump arse on to the carpet.  She starts her diet today.

I am aware of at least one person who has removed all cash from hands of others and is now burying cash in various places.  He is rolling up $20 bills and securing in coffee cans.  He figures $20 is better as when the economy collapses, anything larger will be difficult to exchange.

Merrill Lynch is expected to suffer $15 billion in losses stemming from soured mortgage investments, almost double its original estimate, prompting the firm to raise additional capital from an outside investor.

Source: Giant Write-Down Is Seen for Merrill - New York Times

The next time we consider the Canadian health care system, we might want to consider what 48,000,000 Americans have to deal with.