Vague Events In Succession: Part 2

[For unfortunate reasons I’ve been stumbling around like a dazed moron. This is the story of me riding the wave of unawareness.]

A few days later I decided to fix the tractor. Honestly there’s not much to do. My 1944 and 1941 antiques I could bludgeon and swear until they ran, but a modern tractor is too complex. It’s more like a helicopter than a farm implement. Given all the EPA regulations and safety panels and hydraulic lines and fuel injection gadgetry and so forth I can barely operate it, much less service the beast. It’s a miracle the thing ever runs.

I hoped it was just a bad battery. It didn’t have no juice, but it had “just enough juice to make everything act weird” and that could be a battery. I hate vehicular electronics! If the battery was good I had no other ideas. I’d have to call to have it flatbed hauled to a service guy a million miles away! If that happened I’d be lucky to get it back by snowfall!! If you’re going to tell me all about how you get your tractor serviced by Fred who lives 1 mile away and only charges $20 an hour… don’t tell me. Just enjoy your unicorn powered life. I don’t have that and never will.

I pulled the air filter to get at the battery and pulled the battery and put it in my truck. It was time to drive to “the big town” and have the battery tested. Mrs. Curmudgeon came with me, probably reasoning I needed adult supervision, which I did. It was hot and I was feeling dragged out. I was craving a Slurpee like they had when I was a kid. Do they still make those?

I announced I would go sailing the next day regardless of whether the tractor ran or not. The season is fleeting and I’ve neither camped nor sailed!

Not only is the boat ignored, I haven’t even used the truck much. Elections have consequences and tripling the price of diesel matters. On the way I thought “I’ve been neglecting this truck. It’s steering a little weird.” It’s a Dodge and always prone to another bout of “death wobble”. I decided I’d better dump some money on the infernal beast before it implodes.

Sure enough, as we arrived at town Mrs. Curmudgeon said “your truck smells hot”.

“Can’t be,” I glanced at the gauges, “it’s in fine tune… or at least good enough.”

But we’d stopped in traffic and something was not right. I shifted down to increase RPM and thus blow more air. I wondered if my transmission was getting hot. My Dodge will tow a battleship and the engine runs cool but the transmission has never done well with high ambient temps and low speed. Pull a tank out of a field? It’ll do that fine. But if I idle in a hot Walmart parking lot to soak up AC it might melt! By the time I got to the parts store there was no denying something was seriously wrong.

I parked carefully, as if I might be there a few days. I said a little prayer before I shut it down. “Please start up again sometime.”

Smoke was drifting from the hood. I popped the hood and that wasn’t the source. I traced it to the driver’s side front brake. Clearly the caliper had locked. It was hot and smoking! How long had I driven it like that? No idea! I watched it a while in case it was going to catch on fire. (That has happened to me on a different vehicle!)

Then, all out of ideas, I grabbed my tractor battery and went into the store.

To my delight, the tractor’s issue really was a bad battery! I picked a new one and started a conversation with the parts counter person. I’m not going to use her real name because I want to respect her privacy, let’s call her Barb.

I asked Barb if it would be ok if my truck was in the parking lot for a while, possibly overnight. I explained that I had a seized up caliper.

Barb surprised me by marching out the parking lot to check on the situation… personally! She looked at the truck, chatted with Mrs. Curmudgeon, pounded a cigarette, and then… there’s no other way to say it.

Barb adopted me!

She recognized a man who needed help. She decided that I was going to get it. Barb is a fuckin hero!

More to follow…

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Vague Events In Succession: Part 1

[Grief makes you dumb. I’m hopelessly distracted. I lack whatever wit I once had. Hopefully it’ll return of it’s own initiative. Presumably it’ll do so at the appropriate time. Is it not a blessing for keen awareness to vanish precisely when hard edges of life cut too deep? On a lighter note, stumbling around in a fog is a whimsical experience. Is this is what life is always like for stoners and dumbasses?]

I ended my last post with a tractor abandoned at the edge of my lawn. (Don’t think of my “lawn” as the uniform manicured cartesian plain of the suburbs. Think “clearing” or “fire break” or “a place serially managed lest it become a forest”.) My half assed attempt at mowing collapsed at a cognitive/spiritual limit. I’d wandered off looking for butterflies. (Literally!) When that failed I walked away and got my first good night’s sleep in a month. It’s funny when I say it like that, but it is what it is.

When “the thinker ain’t working” I’m a stranger to my own life. Mowing the lawn should be a zombie level occupation. But I do things in a way that assumes I’m “on the ball”. (It has to be that way. My barely-tamed lawn literally killed a “point and ride” lawn tractor.) I run a 6′ finish mower from the 3 point hitch on a 35 HP tractor. It’s not rocket science but you can do a lot of damage if you “zone out”. Beyond the obvious risk (like wrapping yourself around the PTO) there’s plenty of hazard just driving the machine. I’d already “whanged” the garage door frame with the protruding bucket loader. Whoops.

So I elected to stay away from complex machinery. I did the simplest task I could think of; I stacked firewood. It was a wise decision that brought a small measure of peace. All work, no matter how simple, has a quiet dignity; provided it’s actually necessary. Firewood is the very heart of necessary!

Stacking firewood is one thing but processing it is another. I stayed away from my chainsaw! Touch that when you’re half aware and you’ll die. The physics problem of directional control while felling a five ton tree is closer to a chess match than a matter of brawn. “AC,” I lectured myself, “the saw is out of your league for now.” I stacked pre-cut wood and then bravely expanded to splitting it too. My 27 ton hydraulic splitter will rip your arm off as easily as a saw, but it’s not fast or unpredictable. Nothing bad happened.

I ran the splitter until the the tank ran dry. I’d like to say I remembered my plans to service the splitter but that’s not true. I’d tied a bag of parts to the gas can I usually use to fill it. Did past AC know that current AC would be on autopilot? I swapped a broke fuel line valve, put in a new spark plug, changed the oil, and replaced the air filter. As far as I can tell this all happened through muscle memory. I simply don’t remember doing it.

I split and stacked some more wood. Splitting wood creates a pile of “unusable” wood scraps beneath the hydraulic ram. This builds up. You have to manage it somehow (the best way is to split firewood at the stump instead of at the woodshed but I’m not doing that this year).

I drove the tractor to the pile, raked the “split detritus” into the bucket, drove to a random area of my lawn that was actually mowed (thus not a “spreading fire” hazard), dumped the bucket, and touched it off.

I shut down the tractor right there and procured a lawn chair. I sat there watching the fire for hours. What my homestead lacks in creature comforts it makes up for in peace. It was dead quiet and stress free.

Mrs. Curmudgeon, who cares deeply for her currently depressed husband, showed up with the fixings for a kabob. Nice! I positioned a few cement blocks and tossed on a metal grate. The food was good. The company appreciated. Also our dog decided fire grilled chicken was the best thing ever. If you have a dog why would you ever watch TV?

Oddly I missed my chickens. There are no chickens (free range or otherwise) at my homestead this year. Usually I have a couple dozen hens wandering about and if they think you’ve got food they’ll swing by to investigate.

I laugh to myself that I started a little campfire. I was deliberately trying to avoid “dangerous things” yet wound up playing with hydraulic rams and fire. How goofy is that? I suspect rural lives just have more sharp edges than other venues.

As the sun set I put out the fire and packed away the lawn chairs. I went to start the tractor and it was kaput! Dammit! No idea why. Not willing to diagnose it in the dark I left it there.

I’d like to say I got another good night’s sleep but we had a plumbing event at 3:00 am. Another dammit! Have I always handled so many “unexpected events”? It seems so weird.

Luckily I’d prepared for such an event years ago. I turned off valves I’d installed for just such a purpose and without fixing a damn thing went right back to bed.

The story continues…

 

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Seeing, Not Merely Looking

[The following has no particular point. Life doesn’t have to be tidy. Sometimes you don’t know where you’re headed, sometimes you’re not even steering the ship, and today’s post is barely thought out.]

Here are photos from last summer:


Illness (not mine) and grief has gotten inside my OODA loop. It does what sorrow does. I grieve, pull it together, but collapse again. The situation will continue until it doesn’t. This will pass as all things do, but right now I can do naught but ride it out.

Thankfully, I’m back at my beloved homestead. How interesting to discover the deep attachment. Once I was nomadic. Home was not a place so much as a point of view. Familiar surroundings were unnecessary. If you’re content you’ll be equally content in a desert, a suburb, or wherever. Well it was until it wasn’t. I guess it faded with time. I only noticed it in my current stress. I didn’t know my homestead was… essential… but it is. I feel like I never want to leave again.

I landed at home, tossed my shabby luggage in the corner, and started looking at all the things I haven’t done. A summer ignored, a lawn gone feral, daydreams of motorcycle trips discarded. You cannot be two places at once. When you drop everything to attend an emergency, everything will be waiting when you return.

Yet this is my homestead and my connection with the land is good for me. It’s a tool with which I seek to right a weary mind. I have equipment, time (for now), and (barely) the health to work. Honest physical labor is good for you. You gotta’ start somewhere right?

I fired up the tractor and started mowing. The tractor has been idle and my land shows it. My hunting food plots were never tilled and planted. Corn that should be maturing right now lies dormant in a sealed bag of unplanted kernels. Dead trees accumulate instead of finding their way to the wood pile. I start small. I began to mow the fuckin’ lawn!

My heart wasn’t in it. Why would it be?

I found myself glancing at the milkweed adjacent to (and intruding into) my lawn. Surely there was a monarch caterpillar in there?

Lawns are stupid.

I shut down the tractor in mid swath. I stepped away from my ragged lawn and in a few strides was in knee deep weeds. I started methodically searching milkweed. There ought to be monarch caterpillars. Maybe I’d be lucky and find a chrysalis!

[For those of you that don’t know, most (but not all) years I capture a monarch butterfly caterpillar. I keep it in a jar near my desk with all the food and space and water it needs. I watch it mature, form a chrysalis, and emerge as a butterfly. Then I turn the butterfly loose. Try it yourself. It’s not as dumb as it sounds! Nothing on a screen; not Twitter (X), F***book, or TV is as pleasant. Nothing you buy with dollars does you as much good as watching a butterfly come to life. It’s a beautiful, sweet, innocent, childish, happy, pointless, inexpensive, sublime thing. Many times I’ve held a newly emerged butterfly in my hand. Have you? Why not? We all spend too much of our lives thinking about bills, car maintenance, and taxes. It’s a reprieve to see a being come to life right before our eyes.]

I’d seized on the idea of finding a caterpillar. I was happily moving from milkweed to milkweed. I forgot everything else. I was in nature. Not everyone engages with nature as deeply as I (and that’s fine) but for me it’s a big deal.

I “was in the now”. I wasn’t thinking about future or past, only the present. It was a good moment. Animals live in the presnt. Humans are cursed to lose immediacy. Most of us burn away fretting over potential miseries of the future rather than the glory at hand. I was in the “now” and it felt good.

It didn’t last long. My timing was bad. There were no caterpillars. Monarch butterflies had arrived, laid eggs, the eggs had hatched into caterpillars, the caterpillars had grown and then morphed into chrysalis, the chrysalis had matured, and new monarchs had emerged. The monarch’s cycle was over. I’d missed it.

That was it. I was done. I sat in the weeds near a ditch and let emptiness fill me. I think I missed the Perseid meteor shower too. I wonder if the skies were clear that night?

Sitting there in the weeds like an exhausted beast, I was spent. I was no worse off than I’d been when I’d entered but I’d been denying it. Now I wasn’t.

I grabbed a tick that had found its way to my cheek. Little bastards are everywhere! The trick is to catch them before they latch on; which I usually do. I flicked him onto my tick-proof jeans and watched him scramble away. Good test of the jeans. I guess I never stop observing.

The Stoics, such as Marcus Aurelius, instruct us to “get right with nature”. It’s wise counsel. Was it helping me; a ridiculous creature sitting cross legged on the dirt, up to my neck in weeds. I wasn’t feeling it. I’d found one blood sucking parasite and surely there were others. Is it not easier to be plugged into the Matrix? Netflix and chill, shut down the mind, abandon the soul?

The universe knows what to say, you just have to listen. A butterfly came into view. It caught my attention and I stared like I’d never seen one before. It flitted right past me into a bunch of thistles. The thistles are a good 5′ tall! They’ve grown in a shooting lane I planned to clear with my brush-hog. Even when I don’t brush hog the lane I usually drag a tree or two over the area as firewood and that mashes the vegetation down considerably. It wasn’t to be this year! My reward for procrastination was a sea of bright purple flowers. The monarch went from one to the other, methodically, unhurriedly but not missing any flowers either. It was unaware of the human sitting there… nor would it have cared had it known.

I assume it was a butterfly born this very month. It looked shiny and healthy. It didn’t have the tattered look you’ll sometimes see on the earliest butterflies in spring, the look of a being that worked hard to get to a just thawed northern outpost.

“Hello there.” I spoke aloud. Why the hell not? I can talk to critters if I want.

Butterflies notice motion more than sound. It didn’t spook because I didn’t move. I watched it work. It calmed me. I began to notice all the other pollinators. They were  harvesting what to them must have seemed a miraculous bumper crop of tall thistles. Bumble-bees chugged by like aerial dump trucks. Honey bees seemed less interested in the thistle. They were going nuts on the unmowed clover in the front of my tractor. High above me a hummingbird buzzed by.

I waited. Goldfinches like thistle. Would one show up? Sure enough one did; a flashy yellow streak zipping along to an unknown destination. Nice.

Another tick crawled on my forearm. For some reason I deliberately flicked him into the distance rather than submit him o a second experiment with the tick proof pants. Sometimes you’re in the right mood to be kind to all of God’s creatures; even blood sucking bastards.

Nature really does heal but I wasn’t ready yet. “That all you got!?!” I grumbled at the world. This was stupid and definitely tempting fate. If a rattlesnake bit me in the ass at that exact moment I would have deserved it. But I wanted something more. I see monarchs and finches all the time, I needed something that felt special. Not wise to make demands of nature but I’m as flawed as any of us.

Then it happened, a bird of a sort I didn’t recognize popped into view. That doesn’t happen very often. I used to “know birds”. I’ve since forgotten a lot but I’m rarely totally surprised.

WTF was that? An indigo bunting? A mountain bluebird? It wasn’t a jay or anything I’m used to. I could google habitat maps and try to guess what it was but why bother? It was the simple blessing of an unusually pretty blue colored bird that I didn’t recognize. A second one joined it. Then they both fluttered off.

I suppose I’d seen what I was supposed to see. I got up, brushed another tick off my hat, and waded through the weeds back toward home. I left the tractor where it was, clearly I’m not ready for that yet. After a thorough tick check, I fell into bed and slept for many hours.

Is there a point to this story? Maybe not. It’s just what happened.

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Still Temporarily Off Line

We are all mortal.

I am healthy. A loved one is not. The clock ticks loudly. I hear the universe in my ear. I see it in my heart. The power of eternity leans uncomfortably close; crowding me, letting me know what’s coming. It’s gradual but final. I’m thankful it’s not all happening at once.

It would be false to say I’ve been preoccupied and thus unable to blog. Such would imply that pounding out fifty or a hundred essays a year (and my beloved squirrel stories) is the purpose of life, which clearly it is not. I am not preoccupied. I grapple with the very meat of living.

Blogging must wait. How long? I’ve no idea. I’d like to stoically shrug things off but I am human and have human frailty. I’ll need longer. A week? A fortnight? I do not know. I don’t resent the uncertainty. The mystery of life is as beautiful as it is cruel. A new world was created the moment we drew first breath. That world lives in time borrowed but never possessed. It must be returned to the owner. Such knowledge is a heavy weight but we all carry it. I withdraw for now because I can bear no other condition. Withdrawal is no more permanent than anything else.

I have paused from time to time in the last few weeks to ponder what to say. What bit wisdom could I distill? How could I communicate what I experience? Should I broadcast lived wisdom to the aether?

It came clear as I sat by a hospital bed. I cannot share my thoughts. Or rather I will not. At least not yet. We all know the losses that lurk in our future. We all have times of sorrow. Yet, for each agonizing repetition, the process must happen internally.

Despite our current false world of TikTok drivel and navel gazing social media, I am certain I’ve made the right choice. There are times to gather in herds and times to quietly ponder. I write little and none specific. That is my choice.

I want you to know I am alive. I humbly ask for patience. Soon perhaps, though I don’t know when, I’ll write again. I’m not out of stories. In due time I’ll return to conversations with trees and conjured satirical squirrels that scamper about fictional worlds.

If you must wait, at least know it is for good reason.

If I could ask one additional thing, it is this: Step away from politics and hug those who need it. Do it now. Thank you.

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Temporarily Off Line

Real world shit which I won’t discuss at the moment is poised to completely or intermittently preclude blogging. I may be off line several days or weeks or who knows how long. If it takes a while don’t give up on me. Thanks.

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Tiny Dancer Is Not OK! Example 3: Honda Pacific Coast 800

[Continued from earlier post]

I’m calling bullshit on music on motorcycles that breaks the spell woven by the motorcycle itself. I’ve put up some “sprit matching music” to go with each of my three very different motorcycles. This is my last motorcycle and the hardest to pin down.

I can only hope the Harley-geezer who forced us to endure Tiny Dancer has reformed himself and and will NEVER PLAY TINY DANCER AGAIN.


Example 3: Honda Pacific Coast 800

Description: 30 years ago Honda sought to expand the motorcycle market beyond people who enjoy engines and mechanicals. They built the perfect bike to get somewhere without drama. It turns out people love drama. They missed it when it was gone.

Honda’s utterly competent no-bullshit transport was a flop. People who can’t quite define “overhead cam” still want to see the engine anyway. Also they want to see chrome. It’s hard to can’t roll into town to the mental sound of electric guitars and screeching eagles if your bike is mechanically flawless and adequately powered without being ridiculous. The market didn’t want “adequate”, it wanted “overkill”!

Long suffering bastards, the poor Honda’s engineers did a great job of mixing form and function only to realize nobody cares. They soon turned back to the Goldwing which is scaled more like an Imperial Starcruiser than a two wheeled vehicle (and is so successful it’s practically a license to print money).

The PC800 is proof that you can build something awesome and perfect for its intended use, only to get kicked in the balls by the market. It’s the Betamax of a world that has long forgotten VHS.

On the other hand, I get to have one and it was cheap. The universe made a motorcycle just for me! How cool is that?

The Pacific-Coast is quiet, clad in plastic, and looks more modern than most bikes on the road (despite being 34 year old technology). If you know what you’re looking at, it’s slightly unnerving. It makes you question your core beliefs about machinery and the true definition of “motorcycle”. If you don’t know what you’re looking at, you assume it’s a small Goldwing and wonder why I don’t have a stuffed animal strapped to it.

Appropriate Soundtrack: If you’re going to ride a Tupperware clad antique you’ve already proven you don’t give a shit what the crowd thinks. You’re a nerd because you didn’t freak out about the missing chrome. You’re so deeply unconcerned with societal norms it’s amazing that you remembered to wear pants. Are you wearing pants? You’d better check!

The PC800 is massively uncool. Anyone weird enough to buy one probably won’t know what cool would look like even if instructed by the TV (which he doesn’t watch). The soundtrack for an oddity like this should be technological, dated, and odd.

The interesting thing about this bike is that it can pass through the uncanny valley of oddness and emerge into coolness from a different dimension of time and space; but only if you’ve got an open mind. It’s like when you listen to a bitchin guitar riff and then realize it was played by Prince. “The little purple dude played this? Huh!” The Pacific Coast was made when “Silicon Valley” was a new idea, for people who don’t want the cruiser look and have more practical uses than sportbikes. The Pacific Coast 800 won’t get you laid but you knew that the instant you looked at it.

The Pacific Coast is a motorcycle for people who read too many books. Here’s my selections for the PC800:

Whip It, Devo:

Now whip it
Into shape
Shape it up
Get straight
Go forward
Move ahead
Try to detect it
It’s not too late
To whip it
Whip it good!

She Blinded Me With Science, Thomas Dolby:

Ha! It’s poetry in motion
Now she’s making love to me
The spheres are in commotion
The elements in harmony
She blinded me with science
(She blinded me with science!)
And hit me with technology

(Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto – you’re beautiful!)

Bike, Pink Flyod:

I know a mouse, and he hasn’t got a house
I don’t know why I call him Gerald
He’s getting rather old, but he’s a good mouse

Space Oddity, David Bowie:

This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I’m stepping through the door
And I’m floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today

For here am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do

Bonus Classical Track, Dance of the Sugar Plum Faeries, Tchaikovsky. (Don’t worry about what to play while riding with a “club”, you’re a club of one.)

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Tiny Dancer Is Not OK! Example 2: Honda Shadow 1100

[Continued from earlier post]

I’m calling bullshit on all music on motorcycles that wrecks the whole motorcycle’s soul! Either turn off the radio or play something that matches the spirit of your ride!

Here’s my second post where I put up some “sprit matching music” to go with each of my three very different motorcycles. This post is for “cruisers” and cruisers practically come with their own soundtrack so it’s easy to see what I mean.

I can only hope the Harley-geezer who forced us to endure Tiny Dancer is crying in his sleep as his expensive motorcycle mocks him and runs off to party with the hot new sportbike downtown.

TINY DANCER IS NOT OK!


Example 2: Honda Shadow 1100 (applies to all Harley-Davidsons and most “Cruisers”).

Description: Cruisers are contractually obligated to the universe to have styling cues dating to the 1940’s. This is weird because 1940 was a long time ago. It’s not like there was some massive engineering revolution that has remained unchanged the ensuing 80 years but it is what it is.

The form factor is so strongly established that many people don’t even know there are bikes with different characteristics. I’m mystified that people continue to buy bikes modeled aesthetically after a time that passed before they were born; but I have one.

Cruisers all have a v-twin engines, gobs of chrome, and ample displacement. A few cruisers (like the very cool Honda Valkyrie and the unique BMW R 18 Classic) differ slightly from the formula but such exceptions are rare. It is a known fact of the universe that if Harley-Davidson ever makes a 4 cylinder motorcycle, Milwaukee will be burned to the ground by people who weren’t alive in 1940 but spent their Social Security checks on an Electra Glide five years ago.

For all cruisers, styling is key. Chrome is added whenever a spare dollar is detected. This doesn’t mean I hate cruisers. I have one. It’s a Honda Shadow (not the one in the photo). A Shadow has everything to look like a Harley-Davidson while being built entirely differently. Long suffering Honda engineers were beaten with sticks to accomplish this. They carefully disguised every good useful feature like liquid cooling, shaft drive, reliability, and economy.

The arrival of metric cruisers pissed the establishment off royally! Shadows (and others) were subject to the protective “chicken tax”. Shadows were subsequently made in Ohio. Shadows were sued all the way to the supreme court because they sound like a Harley. All of this did nothing to stop them because metric cruisers are built like brick shithouses. They cannot be killed.

Bikes made by Harley-Davidson were once sketchy quality but that’s years ago. Now they’re just as good as anything made by Honda or Suzuki and they cost only twice as much.

I have ridden my cruiser through most of the continental US and many conditions that were pretty extreme (such as Death Valley), but that’s not common. A cruiser’s natural habitat is a bar within five miles of the owner’s house but only on sunny summer weekends.

A photo of a generic metric cruiser is below:

Inventory Unit Detail Sioux City Yamaha/Can-Am, Inc.

Appropriate Soundtrack: If you’re gonna have a bad ass bike… be a bad ass. Every note and sound should be pure testosterone… it should be the kind of music you can play loud enough to drown out the money you spent on those Screaming Eagle pipes.

Look for electric guitars, heavy metal, any song with a powerchord, ideally all three. Music themes should involve riding, fucking, and battle. Yes, we know you’re a dentist from Des Moines but leather up and go with it! Much of the music is dated but that’s ok; the whole scene was obsolete decades ago and nobody cares. (*I don’t mind being obsolete so don’t take this personally.)

It’s important to note that TINY DANCER IS NEVER OK.

Ride With Me, Steppenwolf:

And I, I, I’m so confused
Which way, which way to choose?
Ride with me baby ’til the end of the day

Macho Man, Village People (No power chords but this is clearly a cruiser mating call):

You can tell a macho, he has a funky walk
his western shirts and leather, always look so boss
Funky with his body, he’s a king
call him Mister Ego, dig his chains
You can best believe that, he’s a macho man
likes to be the leader, he never dresses grand

Immigrant Song, Led Zepplin:

The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde, sing and cry
Valhalla, I am coming

Come Out And Play, The Offspring (For the 1%-ers)

If one guy’s colors and the others don’t mix
They’re gonna bash it up, bash it up, bash it up, bash it up
Hey, man you talkin’ back to me?
Take him out
You gotta keep ’em separated

Pretty Fly (For a White Guy), The Offspring (For the dentist who wishes he was a 1%er)

You know, it’s kinda hard just to get along today
Our subject isn’t cool, but he fakes it anyway
He may not have a clue and he may not have style
But everything he lacks, well, he makes up in denial

I’m Too Sexy, Right Said Fred (If your bike is what I call “overchromed” this song is in your head every single mile ridden).

I’m too sexy for my shirt
Too sexy for my shirt
So sexy it hurts

Bonus Classical Track, Flight of the Valkyries, Wagner. (Only to be used when you’re riding with your “club”.)

Part 3 coming up…

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Tiny Dancer Is Not OK! Example 1: Yamaha TW200

I test drove an excellent 5th generation Honda Goldwing (GL1800). Among other irrational complaints, I bitched about the radio; first because it played Tom Petty and then simply because it existed.

I ran screaming from the excellent bike.

Rather than follow the path of normalcy, I purchased (for about half the cost) a weird market failure half-scooter motorcycle in disguise. It’s a Honda Pacific Coast 800 (PC800) and it’s weird and yet perfect for me. The looks are a bit funky but it duplicates the GL1800’s core touring ability with less than half the displacement and a feature that I cannot live without… it has no useless gadgets.

The GL1800 was an engineering marvel but the sea of buttons and dials and screens and software and faffing doodery broke my connection with the ride itself. The gadgets actively pissed me off.

The PC800 has not one single button that isn’t absolutely necessary. It’s a motorcycle “interface” that “gets the hell out of my way”. To my odd outlook one of the best features of the PC800 is that it doesn’t have a radio.

Thinking of music and motorcycles leads to the nest part of this story:


Physics means that a motorcycle radio has to be loud. It must blare from the handlebars, over the roar of wind, penetrate the rumble of the engine, and drive itself through a helmet. When a rider is listening to the radio, everyone else is too. On the open road this is fine. Nobody hears a bike’s radio when it’s blasting at 80 MPH on the interstate in Wyoming.

When you’re in town it’s a different story. The sound is shoved up the ass of everyone nearby! Just like the “thump thump thump” of some ghetto dweeb’s 90 watt pre-amp in an overtuned Honda Civic forces us to digest their shitty rap (and it’s always rap), so to does the stereo on a motorcycle.

I took a vacation near the home planet of the cruisers; Sturgis, South Dakota. One day a chromed out Harley Davidson colossus rumbled past a breakfast joint in the middle of a little mountain town where we had holed up. We were eating on the porch. We heard every note blaring from the radio as some geezer duckwalked past us at 20 mph.

The song? Tiny Dancer, by Elton John.

Ballerina, you must’ve seen her
Dancing in the sand

And now she’s in me, always with me
Tiny dancer in my hand

THIS IS NOT OK!

I’m not anti-radio. I’m anti-bullshit!

If you’re going to rumble your $30,000 chromed bagger through town with the radio blaring, it had better be something better than a fucking gay ass tune about a ballerina!

I’m calling bullshit! Music on motorcycles that breaks the spell of the motorcycle is just fuckin’ wrong. Goddammit people, this isn’t rocket science! Either turn off the radio or play something that matches the spirit of your ride!


I’m not trying to be negative. I’m here to help. Every type of motorcycle has it’s own “essence”. For this and two more posts, I’ll describe the broad outline of a bike or type of bike. Then I’ll put up some “sprit matching music” to go with it. I’ll do it for each of my three very different motorcycles. I’ll add a few snippets of lyrics and a link if I can find one.

I’m doing this because I want the world to be a better place!

I can only hope the Harley-geezer who forced us to endure Tiny Dancer (!!!) puts down his AARP newsletter long enough to read this. EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW THAT TINY DANCER IS NOT OK.


Example 1: Yamaha TW200.

Description: A small, chunky, slow, unstoppable, crude, workhorse meant for dirt trails and cow pastures. Designed as a cheap “farm bike” and “ATV killer” it does anything an ATV does at half the price (but not as effortlessly).

The TW200 will go anywhere and do anything, except the highway… it’s slow. TW200s in their natural habitat are alone in the middle of nowhere; maybe running fence lines, maybe checking deer blinds, sometimes on a trail, sometimes bashing through the brush, sometimes sputtering down a forest service road, sometimes on a log skidder’s path.

Mine is bristling with enough gear to go full Mad Max. All TWs were built at the molecular level to be unkillable. It’ll ramble anywhere from country roads to swamps that make the Darien Gap look like a fun hike.

The plucky TW will never win a race or get you laid. But it’s perfectly normal to ride one with an elk quarter strapped to the back.

A small contingent of fans use them as urban transport. This includes women who took the motorcycle safety foundation (MSF) class on them and liked the little bike because it’s “cute”. TWs are often pictured hauling ridiculous top-heavy loads of agricultural products on winding mountain passes in Southeast Asia.

The TW200 has been in continuous production for 36 years. It has had almost no changes since its inception. Here’s a picture of mine:

Appropriate Soundtrack: Redneck noise! A TW should be accompanied by the sounds of redneck backwoods tomfoolery; shotgun blasts and banjos. TWs are good at being goofy so think of gasoline being thrown on fires, rope swings into lakes, and beer cans crushed into foreheads. They’re also work machines so chainsaws are appropriate (many TWs have a saw mounted somewhere on them). Some people tweak with the muffler but they’re nuts. The engine sounds like a lawnmower so I don’t get the point. Do not follow a TW into the forest any more than you’d follow a grizzly into the brush… it belongs there and you probably don’t.

Country Boy Can Survive, Hank Williams Jr.:

We’re from North California and South Alabama
And little towns all around this land
And we can skin a buck; we can run a trotline
And a country boy can survive

Good Old Boys, Waylon Jennings:

Just’a good ol’ boys
Never meanin’ no harm
Beats all you never saw
Been in trouble with the law
Since the day they was born

Staightnin’ the curves, yeah
Flatnin’ the hills
Someday the mountain might get ’em
But the law never will

Horse With No Name, America:

I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain

Legend of Wooley Swamp, Charlie Daniels Band:

Well, if you ever go back into Wooley Swamp, well, you better not go at night
There’s things out there in the middle of them woods
That’d make a strong man die from fright
Things that crawl and things that fly
Things that creep around on the ground

Amos Moses, Jerry Reed:

Now all the folks around south Louisiana said Amos was a hell of a man
He could trap the biggest the meanest alligator and just use one hand
That’s all he got left cause the alligator bit him ha ha ha
Left arm gone clean up to the elbow
Well the sheriff got wind that Amos was in the swamp trappin’ alligator skins
So he snuck in the swamp gonna get the boy but he never come out again

Part 2 will go live soon…

 

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We Can Skin A Buck And Run A Trot Line / I’ve Seen This Before

History doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme. – Unattributed

The Curmudgeon stands on his soapbox:

Doomed? Maybe for a while. Give up? Impossible!

I’ve been told I’m doomed before. I got used to it. I’m still here.

People who can’t do a damned thing are the doomed ones. They’re crosswise with reality. They refuse to fix themselves. They could become a person who works within reality but they chose pretense over substance. Self-improvement requires acknowledging you aren’t perfect already. Thus, they can’t improve.

They want me to feel hopeless. They think it’ll make me like them. It won’t. I can’t be hopeless because I’m not helpless.

Their mistakes are willful. Their failure is inevitable.

It must be hell.


I observe (from the greatest distance I can muster) a nation writhing in misery. It sweats and curses through the long dark fever dreams of change. Reality refuses to comport with the internally contradicted mindscape of an “elite”. Something has to give.

The “elite” is neither skilled nor honorable nor accomplished; in fact they’re anything but elite. Mere courtiers, our “elite” can do little to help the fevered nation; if indeed they even want to. They can censor or delve into the minutiae of fashion but they can’t deal with debt, inflation, restore the rule of law, or even plant a garden.

They avoid introspection with the brittle anger of the corrupt. Surely, if the rule of law were restored, their network of spiderwebs, intrigue, and corruption would fall at their feet… returning them to their proper status of irrelevant. When you pretend to be elite it’s a hard lesson to find out you’re not even average.

Their fear is poignant. What is a failed human to do? Withered cat-ladies and corrupt paper pushers the world over stare into the abyss. They have built nothing. They’ve torn asunder all they touch. They must cling to their fake beliefs or reality will burn them to the bone.

Through all this I’m uncharacteristically optimistic. I’ve seen incompetent morons screw the nation into the ground. I’ve seen it rise again. Can it do so forever? Probably not. Can it get off the canvas one more time? I think so.

I’m GenX. My lot is the ignored generational rounding error that grew up feral during a childhood of being told we were doomed. Do I sit on my ass bitching about it? Nah, it’s just a thing that happened, no need to let it hold me back. A childhood of impending global thermonuclear war, oil crises, bad music, and worse leadership caused us to be cynical and hard but we’re not beaten.

Like current GenZ, we had society’s original sin laid directly on our shoulders. We too were told we’d eat bugs. We too were told Communism would defeat us all. We too were told the climate was our fault. GenX was told our very existence meant an unavoidable Malthusian death spiral to famine and death. GenZ had an autistic Swedish high-school drop out shrieking at the UN. She said basically the same shit. Of course, the human wastes at the UN gave her an ovation; how could they not?

I remember reports from New York City in 1970s… or any city really. I hear of them today. Eerily similar. It sounds to me like regression to the mean.


When I was a young man, sporting an excellent mullet and dreams I’d somehow own a car during the future oil famine, there was a song. “A Country Boy Can Survive”.

It took my cohort by storm. We were, after all, country boys.

Notice what we wanted? Survive. That’s it! All we wanted to do was survive. Just doing that… surviving… was a goal and a rallying cry.

Ours wasn’t the screaming malice of a purple haired, pierced, tattooed, human slurry of social justice warriors. We weren’t hell bent to change the world. We didn’t want to burn history to the ground. We didn’t want to bring about a Utopia in our image. We wanted only to persist.

Oddly that was a rebellious concept. It was a big shock that we might actually do it… to persist.

I sat by a campfire with similar aged friends and we sang happily “a country boy can survive, because you can’t starve us out and you can’t make us run, because them old boys raised on shotguns”. Then, because we were kids before the safety Nazis, we threw a disposable lighter in the fire to see what would happen.

So, that’s GenX. The cynical ones who persisted. We’re oddly optimistic because we’ve seen waves of bullshit come, crest, and then ebb. Especially this is true of rural GenX; the rounding error of ignored flyover country. When Hank Williams Jr. ranted “you only get mugged if you go downtown” he wasn’t saying he was happy that the cities were a mess. Only acknowledging they were.

That was 1982. We were wading through Fauchi’s first epidemic freakout called AIDS. Right now the nation is still reeling from his second round. (Covid is like Mad Max 2, The Road Warrior. The sequel was far more powerful than the initial movie.)

My young self saw inflation as does the nation today. I knew it was baked in the cake sometime in 2008 but then again so did an entire political movement.

I could go on, with examples from foreign affairs, societal upheaval, corruption in government, etc… but I’m going to cut this short and focus on a silly little song. Hank Williams Jr. did his best to encapsulate a rural people who’s stability, honor, and even survival was threatened… and added to it a war cry “you will not defeat us”.

There’s a new song for our current movie of “Fuckery Part 2, Clownworld Strikes Back”. It’s called “Try That In A Small Town”.

Is it a perfect song? Nah. Is it a small piece of GenZ doing what a small piece of GenX did? I think so.

Incidentally, I can skin a buck but I prefer a crankbait to a trot line. And I have survived.

Take a deep breath and observe the world’s ways. Losers are always doomed. Losers always hate self-reliance. Losers kill hope when they can. This is nothing new.

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This Car Will Outlive You, It Will Outlive Your Children

Read the best car ad ever written: Best of Craigslist 1999 Toyota Corolla.


In case it gets memory holed, I posted some excerpts below:

You want a car that gets the job done? You want a car that’s hassle free? You want a car that literally no one will ever compliment you on? Well look no further.

The 1999 Toyota Corolla.

. . .

Let me tell you a story. One day my Corolla started making a strange sound. I didn’t give a shit and ignored it. It went away. The End.

You could take the engine out of this car, drop it off the Golden Gate Bridge, fish it out of the water a thousand years later, put it in the trunk of the car, fill the gas tank up with Nutella, turn the key, and this puppy would fucking start right up.

This car will outlive you, it will outlive your children.

. . .

When this car was unveiled at the 1998 Detroit Auto Show, it caused all 2,000 attendees to spontaneously yawn.

. . .

The event is chronicled in the documentary “Bored to Death: The Story of the 1999 Toyota Corolla”

. . .

This car is as practical as a Roth IRA. It’s as middle-of-the-road as your grandpa during his last Silver Alert. It’s as utilitarian as a member of a church whose scripture is based entirely on water bills.

When I ran the CarFax for this car, I got back a single piece of paper that said, “It’s a Corolla. It’s fine.”

Let’s face the facts, this car isn’t going to win any beauty contests, but neither are you. Stop lying to yourself and stop lying to your wife. This isn’t the car you want, it’s the car you deserve: The fucking 1999 Toyota Corolla.

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