Welcome to Dullsville

Earthquakes

Living in California comes with certain risks, much like anywhere else I suppose. Lately fires have been plentiful. The dry weather and lots of fuel, in combination with some very sick people who like to play with fire, make for a volatile situation. We have been very fortunate in that the fires have not gotten close enough to us to cause damage. Oh, we have seen them, make no mistake about that. In October of 2003, a huge fire swept through the hills above our house. We have moved since then but have already seen fires in the mountains above our current home. These pictures show the '03 fire and the satellite pictures of the smoke plume. The fires, of course, are bad enough, but the days of thick smoke-filled air afterward are just awful. Believe it or not, but I've actually seen folks out jogging in air so bad that it makes your lungs hurt just sitting still.

After the fires, come the rains and the flooding that takes place where the fires have burned. We are currently in that mode, having had three storms in three weeks.

But while these seasons are predictable, and run their course and finally end, earthquakes are a possibility in any season, weather or time of day. I was reminded of this at about 4 AM today when we got hit with a nice little shaker. I was already awake, pondering whether I wanted to go work outside in the pouring rain, when the rumbling started. The bed shook for a bit and then BANG, a short hard shake, followed by some more rumbling slowly tapering off.  First good quake for this house since it was built. Seems to have survived okay. I was most worried about the concrete tile roof. While this roof provides excellent fire protection, it is very heavy. I need to go outside and slog around in the rain and see if any dislodged. Maybe later.

My kids (no longer little ones at 18 and 19) take the quakes in stride. I remember my daughter being wide eyed at her first one, then smiling and saying, "Make the earth shake again, Daddy." From that day on she referred to them as "earth shakes". It was almost as if it was a ride at Disneyland. On the other hand, during a visit to the northeast (where I grew up), she was quite terrified of the frequent electrical storms.

I have a strange, fatalistic feeling about earthquakes. I mean, with a fire, maybe you could stop it by hosing down your roof, or at the very least loading up your valuables in your car and hightailing it out of there. With an earthquake there just isn't much you can do. It's usually over before you can even get moving to protect yourself. So you just sit there and ride it out and hope for the best.

Very strange.

4th of July

I awoke in the middle of the night, as July 3rd became July 4th, with this in my head:

Barbara Frietchie

 

Up from the meadows rich with corn,

Clear in the cool September morn,

 

The clustered spires of Frederick stand

Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

 

Round about them orchards sweep,

Apple and peach trees fruited deep,

 

Fair as the garden of the Lord

To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,

 

On that pleasant morn of the early fall

When Lee marched o'er the mountain-wall;

 

Over the mountains winding down,

Horse and foot, into Frederick town.

 

Forty flags with their silver stars,

Forty flags with their crimson bars,

 

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun

Of noon looked down, and saw not one.

 

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,

Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;

 

Bravest of all in Frederick town,

She took up the flag the men hauled down;

 

In her attic window the staff she set,

To show that one heart was loyal yet.

 

Up the street came the rebel tread,

Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

 

Under his slouched hat left and right

He glanced; the old flag met his sight.

 

"Halt!" - the dust-brown ranks stood fast.

"Fire!" - out blazed the rifle-blast.

 

It shivered the window, pane and sash;

It rent the banner with seam and gash.

 

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff

Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.

 

She leaned far out on the window-sill,

And shook it forth with a royal will.

 

"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,

But spare your country's flag," she said.

 

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,

Over the face of the leader came;

 

The nobler nature within him stirred

To life at that woman's deed and word;

 

"Who touches a hair of yon gray head

Dies like a dog! March on!" he said.

 

All day long through Frederick street

Sounded the tread of marching feet:

 

All day long that free flag tost

Over the heads of the rebel host.

 

Ever its torn folds rose and fell

On the loyal winds that loved it well;

 

And through the hillgaps sunset light

Shone over it with a warm good-night.

 

Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,

And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

 

Honor to her! and let a tear

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.

 

Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,

Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!

 

Peace and order and beauty draw

Round thy symbol of light and law;

 

And ever the stars above look down

On thy stars below in Frederick town!



John Greenleaf Whittier

Yes, I'm Still Here

I went a whole year without posting! Quite an accomplishment.

The last post was for last years Iris Festival Garden Tour, and this years just took place this past Sunday. We didn't go. We had planned to, but I worked something like 14 hours on Saturday and so had a bunch of chores to do, so it just didn't happen.

Lots of stuff has happened in the last year. In July we went to Cape May for a final vacation with all four of us. Cape May was beautiful, and I got to see two very good old friends that I had not seen in years.

Our daughter went off and joined the Air Force, she made a 6 year commitment. She is currently in training in a classified field that she is not supposed to talk about, and neither are we. I'm proud of her. She turned 19 in February and is making the typical mistakes that 19 year olds make, but there is not much that I can do about that. I am hopeful that the coming 5 years will see many changes and maturing in my little girl.

We went down to Lackland AFB to see her graduate from basic training. It was a moving experience. Seeing all those great young people committing themselves to defending this wonderful country was fantastic.  It made me appreciate how much I love my country, and how lucky I am to live here, and how lucky we all are that there are people willing to put their lives on the line to defend our freedom. She graduated on the weekend of Veteran's Day, so I had thoughts of my father fighting in Normandy going through my head.

We are still working on the new house. The backyard is going very slowly, it will be years in the making. Still love this town, we have made many new friends, and have a social life beyond anything we have ever had before. Makes me wish I hadn't wasted 18 years in the last place.

We threw a New Year's party for a bunch of folks and got invited to a couple of great Christmas parties. In March we hosted a professional bike team that competed in the Redlands Bicycle Classic, a local 4 day stage race. It was the women's Wachovia team. The race organizers ask for local families to provide housing for some of the teams. It was an interesting experience, given my love of cycling. I had never had an inside look at bike racing before, it was intriguing and a bit disillusioning. Perhaps I'll elaborate on that another time.

Went to the Grand Canyon for my birthday a couple of weeks ago and tried out my new camera. I have lived in southern California now for 30 years and never visited the Grand Canyon before. Quite spectacular.

I need to post some of these events with the pictures that accompany them.

Who knows, maybe I'll actually do it.

March of the Penguins

After a couple of days of meeting with real estate agents (an activity I strongly recommend against), we needed an escape.

So my wife and I and George went off to the movies. A nice escape from the heat that has been roasting us with temperatures over 100 every day for the last 3 weeks, and no end in sight. It has also been uncharacteristically humid, just to make the summer really special.

We went to see "The March of the Penguins". As you can probably tell from previous posts, I enjoy nature. Wonderful film, narrated by Morgan Freeman, fantastic photography of some very beautiful creatures. 

Quite a few thoughts bounced around in my head during the film. The first was how lucky I feel to live in these times. That there are people who have the desire, ability and the technology to enable me to see the reproductive cycle of the Emperor penguins is truly wonderful. How many people have ever been able to witness this amazing event.

These animals are great to watch. They look so much like people I know, that it's hard not to attribute human characteristics to them. Their funny walk and the noises they make seem silly and comical. But then the film shows the graceful, dignified and aesthetically beautiful process of their mating and you get a completely different feeling about them. Watching what appears to be tenderness between the male and the female, and the struggles they must endure to produce one offspring, gets me thinking about what put all this here. Seeing the anguish the birds express over the loss of an egg or a chick, makes me wonder if animals really do feel emotions like sadness and love in the same way we do. It sure looks like it.

If there is a God (and nature is the thing that most convinces me that this must be so), I imagine that God put all things here on earth for us to explore, enjoy and learn about. God would have known that it would take us thousands of years to figure many things out, and get to see and understand all the things in creation. I imagine God, upon creating something like Emperor penguins for us to see, chuckling and thinking, "Just wait until man gets a load of these. He's going to love them." The same way we are delighted watching our children discover things for the first time. Really, this is what I don't understand about the fear of science that exists in many organized religions. I believe that God means for us to figure all this stuff out. This is our purpose and our destiny. Hopefully our wonderful curiosity helps us to do this before our hatefulness and greed cause us to self destruct.

The other thought that occurred to me was how lucky the penguins are. Oh, yes, they have predators like the leopard seal and birds of prey, not to mention doing their business in the most hostile environment on the planet. But, fortunately for them, humans have not found them good to eat, or decided that their internal organs bestow special powers, or that a penguin coat would be the height of fashion.  So the biggest predator on earth just wants to enjoy watching them. Lucky birds.

Follow Up to Rant

Jim responded with a comment to my rant, indicating he believed I will not be visiting his blog. He also mentioned Scott in the comment, although I didn't think that Scott was declaring a moratorium on his reading of  Oil is for Sissies.

First, Jim, with the amount of readers you apparently have I hardly think you'll miss me. Second, your blog is one of many that I have started to avoid for all the aforementioned reasons. Of all of them, yours would be the one I'd miss the most. I find your dedication to cycling inspiring, and enjoy many of the topics that you expound on.

In fact, my strong reaction came as a response, not to your blog, but rather to a guy I know locally. I have ridden with this fellow a few times and corresponded with him quite frequently. He was the one who first made me aware of the whole oil issue about a year ago. We recently exchanged a few e-mails after he read my post about the birdsong piece on NPR. I made a comment expressing my dislike for the show "Fresh Air" to which he took exception. He apparently likes Terry and admires her political stance. He particularly mentioned her skewering of Bill O'Reilly, a show which I did not hear. I have no particular feelings about Mr. O'Reilly one way or the other, have never watched his show. I have avoided it the same way I avoid Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore. I believe that all of these individuals have an agenda, and therefore do not present facts in a balanced way. I believe the same thing about Fresh Air. Anyway, in my discussion with this gentleman, the word "liberal" was used, and we were off and running. I disengaged after the second round. It was obvious that neither one of us was going to convince the other. So he had the last word.

Now, I'm willing to accept that it is a flaw in my character that I cannot stand these statements of philosophy that I find disturbing. Some of what I read and hear seems so irrational that I cannot imagine what will follow. The whole oil issue seems to play right into the agenda of those on the liberal (there's that word again) side of things.  After thinking about my feelings about what I've been reading, it seemed best to just stop. Sticking my head in the sand, you say? Yeah, maybe. But I do know that we here in this house are not conspicuous consumers. I look at the amount of trash we produce and see that it is a fraction of my neighbors. I look at our 2 cars (one 10 years old, the other 15) and compare it to the folks across the street (at last count 6, 5 of them new). So I feel that we are doing our best, and I sure can't see what else we can do to improve the situation.

Maybe I'm feeling guilt about the new house. It does seem huge after living in this little place for the last 18 years. But we've worked hard for it. And as far as purchases go, real property seems to make a lot more sense than cars or more geegaws.

So you see, Jim, these are the kinds of directions my thoughts go when contemplating the demise of the society. I just don't need it. I have enough stuff rattling around in this little brain.

I'll leave the link to your blog in place. I think it's a good one.

Angry Rant (you've been warned)

I've been busy. Work has been hectic, preparing for the new house, and following the 3 to 5 hours of the Tour every day has kept me away from the computer. When I can't watch the Tour coverage live, we tape it and watch it in the evening. Of course, this means staying away from radio, television and computer for fear of hearing about the results before I see the tape. This morning, we missed the early morning taping, so I'm not so patiently waiting for the next coverage at 5 PM.

The other reason I've not been posting is that my blog reading lately has gotten me very down. The blogs I read are mostly by other cycling enthusiasts, and I have found a similar theme running through a number of them that has me confused, worried, and a little pissed off.  Let me say this: I'm getting sick and tired about hearing about "Peak Oil" and all this doomsday horse manure. I'm not saying that they are all wrong, I've read the pages that are linked to in these other blogs, and the research seems to be sound. Maybe they are right, maybe the whole society is about to come crashing down. But you know what REALLY pisses me off? It's the fact that all these prophets of doom seem so gleeful about it. They seem to think that their lifestyles and special abilities will somehow enable them to avoid the terrible consequences. Well, think again you morons. If  it comes down, you're coming along for the ride, and so are your kids. So maybe you ought to start spending as much time thinking about a solution as you do patting yourselves on the back for being so enlightened. The worst part is the folks I know who are what I consider wealthy who love to hammer all this stuff ad nauseum. You think you're going to talk all these other folks out of their SUV's? It wouldn't matter now if you did. So SHUT UP!!!!! Or come up with a solution. I don't care if you want to live in a fantasy that the Republicans are responsible for all of this. As if! If there is a problem, we ALL created it, and we are ALL going to have to find a solution.

I remember when I was a teen in the late 60's, growing into adulthood as the 70's started, we were all convinced that the older generation was responsible for ruining the world. Nixon and Agnew and their buddies had mucked it all up and were about to bring it all crashing down. We, the enlightened youth were the only hope, with "peace, love, and understanding". Well guess what? It didn't end. All it did was get weirder. And we were responsible for at least a part of that weirdness.  Yeah, Vietnam finally ground to a halt, as will Iraq, and so what? There's another war just over the horizon. You just can't see it yet.

Welcome to the human race.

So my blog reading has become much more limited, and there are some sites I am no longer visiting.  I just can't stand the self-satisfied smugness I see at these sites any longer. To them I say: See ya at the Apocalypse, baby.

Been Away

Went to Colorado with the family for 5 days. Now I'm trying to catch up to the Tour, watching the 4 days that taped while we were gone.

Here  is something to listen to while you wait for me to edit the pictures and compose my story. If you like that, here  is the live cam feed. The thing that is so cool about the camera is that you can control it for 2 minutes at a time. Beautiful open forest so typical of this country.

I have lots to say about our road trip, but right now I have to go catch up on the Tour. This is the only sporting event I watch, and I am totally hooked. Thank all gods for OLN, even if they do make me watch Bob Roll and that awful Gum woman.

Blog? What Blog?

I think that depression has kept me from posting for the last couple of weeks. The post about my dad reflects that a bit.

But it seems to be passing a little. Depression seems to me to be cyclical. For me, it comes and goes. There is a history of it in my family. My dad's father had it quite badly toward the end of his working life. It being the early 50's, they treated the poor man with electro shock therapy. I don't  know if it "cured" him. I have memories of working with him in his yard when I was very little. I remember him as being very quiet and serious. I suspect the shock therapy just taught him to keep his mouth shut about being depressed.

Recently, the author of another blog that I read was absent for a while and then posted a detailed description of how awful he felt. What I found interesting was the amount of responses he got and the suggestions they made. Folks will suggest everything from avoiding alcohol, to getting your financial house in order, to finding Jesus. While I am sure that all of these suggestions will work in some circumstances, I think that the reasons for depression are as varied as the number of people who experience it. Folks tend to relate to their own personal reasons for sinking into this state. While their intentions are good, my response to most suggestions is to dismiss them as irrelevant.   Sometimes, I can't even figure out what it is that has got me down. I can sit there and count all the great things in my life that should have me as happy as a clam, but it has no effect on my state of mind.

And as far as using the pharmacy for a solution? Well, I tried that once and hated it. The medication gave me horrible nightmares. Besides, I don't want to take a drug that changes who I am. That seems so artificial, so much the easy way out. I'll stick with being me, even if I'm not so happy with it now and then.   

A Question and General Blabbing

I know that I have two or three folks with blogs that read this stuff, so, for them I have a quick question. One of the options in the control panel is to make my blog "public". I assume that the folks who have blogs that I read have opted to do this. I am guessing that the reason to do this is to bring in more readers. Is there another reason? I have hesitated to do this because I'm not sure I want the whole world to read my blathering. I kind of like the idea of just a few folks finding the site by accident and deciding they like it and returning from time to time. I read Scott's  tales of death threats against himself and his family because of his recent interviews with frame builders with some alarm. Who needs that? Anyway, I'd like to hear some opinions about public or not public blogs.

Today was a rough day. My job is frequently quite physical and today was one of those days that turns into a workout. I was reworking a project that was done improperly by another project manager a couple of years ago. The customer complained, ans when I investigated, it was obvious that the mistake was ours. This other guy is the kind who never gets dirty. If the work looks nasty, he gets someone else out to help and has them do it. In this case, when presented with the mistake, he blamed the apprentice.Never mind the fact that he was the foreman and therefore responsible. The customer no longer wants him in the building, so I got elected. I do all my own work, 99% of the time. Also, I have a very good relationship with this customer (the phone company).

So I spent my day climbing ladders and squeezing into small places to rework the equipment. At one point, as I was twisting and turning to get through an opening into the ceiling, I felt a sharp blow to my right hip. It felt like a thump, as if a hammer or something hit me. Really hurt. I looked and could find nothing that could have hit me. I guess I popped a tendon or something.  Hurts like hell when I move it. I finished the day, gimping around. I can't wait to see what it feels like in the morning. Took a Vicodin before dinner, but it doesn't seem to be helping. Plus, now I know I won't sleep well tonight. I know, I know, somebody needs to call a WAAAAAmbulance.

Planning a bike ride with my wife and son this weekend down toward the ocean. That would be cool, my first real bike ride post. The Cinelli is all set to go, and the Frejus is ready for George, all I need to do is a little work on my wife's Holdsworth. There's also a street fair down in Hermosa Beach all weekend. Should be fun.

I've got some freewheels I'm currently working on, cleaning, lubing and rebuilding with new cogs. Big fun.

One of the things I've noticed about blogging is that I think of all kinds of cool stuff to write while I'm driving or lying awake at night, but then can't remember any of it when I sit down at the computer.

I'm reading a great article about Einstein in the current issue of Smithsonian. I highly recommend it. No books going currently, I've stalled out on "The Lobotomist".

Getting Blogged Down

So I started thinking about how to start blogging. I did my tribute to Francisco to get my feet wet and also because I had been wanting to do something like that since I heard of his passing. But I wondered if I should do some kind of  introduction. I decided that if I just started writing about stuff I loved, it would serve the same purpose.

I have also given a lot of thought as to why one starts a blog.  It seems to me that most accounts of peoples lives would be boring (hence the title). I have read some really enjoyable blogs.  A cycling acquaintance of mine, Brandon Ives, did a blog for about 18 months while he was in Belgium. He was there while his wife completed her degree in art history. It was terrific, I checked for new posts whenever I sat down at the computer.

Blogs appear to me to be a combination of journal and diary that anyone can read. While I am sure that this is old news to most folks who have found their way here, it is all new to me. Both of my teenagers have their own blog sites, one uses Xanga, the other MySpace. In fact, my son, George, has been helping me getting this thing figured out and configured. He and his sister sit in the living room casually commenting to one another about cool pieces of html code they have discovered. I know this makes them sound nerdy, but nothing could be farther from the truth.  They are both outgoing, socially active kids. Too much so, as far as I am concerned, but that's a subject for another post.

I guess what I am wondering is whether this is just a huge waste of energy. Who cares about my life and the things I do?