After my terrifying ride home from RPM Cycles I stashed the BMW R 1200 GS in the garage and hid from it for a few days. Over Labor Day weekend I found the nerve to saddle up and do some turns in the foothills. I spent ten minutes in a cul-de-sac doing figure eights. I’m…
The BMW GS series bikes (Gelände/Straße, or “off-road”/”road”) are known by their owners as “pigs.”  The term seems to be most often used to describe the R1150 GS, which is aggressively ugly with its bulbous gas tank. Nevertheless R1200 GS is ugly in its own special Transformers sort of way. When you see the bike on the…
Because life is not complicated enough, hasn’t reached the fever-pitch of insanity with too many hobbies, I just bought a used BMW 1200 GS. I guess $4 gas pushed me over the edge. I have to say, it was weird topping off the tank this morning and seeing the pump register 2.7 gallons.
Five guys, five days, a whole lot of poop. The trip was Two Harbors on Santa Catalina, just a lazy week of island living. Subject matter was “a life in exile” from the books of Ezekiel and Daniel. Excellent teacher and guardian of decorum was Miz Nataroonie.Â
Where does one go for enlightenment? The Dude Abides Blog of course.
With the floor open and some critical wiring exposed it was natural to detour our plans and re-wire the ceiling fan in the room below. When that sub-project was done it was time to button up the floor with a fresh sheet of 5/8″ plywood. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to leave some hidden treasure…in…
        Looking at this photo of migrating Golden Rays published in the Telegraph, I can’t help but feel that there is more driving our planet than random happenstance.
Once you commit yourself to a certain level of perfection in a project you find yourself captive to forces beyond your control. This is what happened when I pulled up the carpet in Norah’s room. There was a soft spot between two sheets of plywood. It looked as if someone had dropped an 18 lb.…
I want to be at 24,000 words today with my shitty first draft But of course I have to finish the flooring, molding, touch-up spackle and painting of the writer’s lair. But since we have the dumpster only until Monday morning, what I really need to be doing is pulling up carpet in the entire upper…
How is the novel coming? Thanks for asking. IT SUCKS. Of course the most important part of any good writing is the writer’s lair. Which means that I have to install laminate flooring. On the entire upper floor…because once you’ve done one room you really kind of have to do all the rest of the…
Because there is not enough pain and suffering in my life, I’ve decided to write a novel. It’s turning into a big yak-shaving project. As one might expect. More than anything what I need right now is a set of flat washers. So that I can shim the latch-strike on Norah’s door. I know, I…
Thanks to a freak storm, the Habitat Works Memorial Day Weekend Tamarisk Extirpation Pack & Die trip has been canceled. And I bought an expensive new sweater from Patagonia for the occasion. Then Doug called and asked if I wanted to climb some real rock up near Wheeler Gorge. Sure! Why not? First time for…
Alright kirby, you win this time. I completely wimped out on the DIY ultralight backpacking stove challenge. I sawed a clean hole in the bottom of a Diet Coke can and used my Dremel to drill 24 pinholes around the shoulder using the super-useful templates at Zen Stoves. But then something happened. While I was out…
Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber has a thread about this type of attack. He doesn’t have a solution but it sheds a little bit of light. He seems to believe it was a problem with Dreamhost. This makes me wonder if Bluehost has been hacked, or if the hack was a php exploit. (Not that…
I’ve been blogging sporadically so it took me a while to notice that the Google ads on this blog have been advertising a big breakfast of pharmaceuticals. My first thought was “hallelujah, I’m going to be rich!” Overnight my site became a billboard for SPAM, and any minute the cash should come rolling in. But…
