The Wayward Home

Oh, By The Way...(Rant Alert)

2012-02-03T10:32:00.000-05:00

I have to unload so bear with me. I'll have my tantrum, stomp and hold my breath and then be over it. Easily offended readers may want to take this opportunity to surf randomly for the duration...

Since I do occasionally read something other than blogs, I really am aware that we're in the midst of the quadrennial political circus/spending spree that somehow elects a President of these semi-United States. After blowing more money than the GDP of a medium-sized country, it's pretty sure that one of the candidates will either stay or move into the White House and we can all get back to arguing over who's at fault for everything. Congress can revert to glaring at each other across the aisle and accomplishing nothing just like the last couple of years and all the bureaucracy will be content. Of this much I'm certain so...

If I might just take a moment out of my usually non-partisan blog time to let all my acquaintances, Facebookers, passersby, email forwarders, spammers, pollsters, unknown phone callers and everyone else who is so wildly determined to influence my vote in said elections know...you're too late.

Sorry to shatter your hopes and dreams, but I already have a decision made regarding who's going to be blessed with my one, solitary little piece of the Democracy pie. Not only do I know, but I'll have an absentee ballot filled out ahead of time to make sure that candidate recieves that vote. Hence, you're only burning up your phone minutes, postage, bandwidth and my inbox space with dire warnings and hyperventilated 'news' of either red or blue tint. Really...I've thought about it a lot and if you're that interested, I might even let you in on the how and the why of it all but since politics makes for awful dinner and locomotive cab conversation, you'll have to come looking and be prepared to not like what you hear.

One thing I know for sure about me (and there aren't that many sure things) is that I'm an opinionated SOB. Just ask Chris about that single-minded streak that drives her so crazy sometimes. For that reason, I'm a tough sell politically and therefore it's highly unlikely that I'll change my mind based on a Facebook or email forward no matter which way it slants. I'm tickled to have an intelligent conversation regarding politics and happy to engage in occasional sparring over things Federal, State and Local but I'm not much interested in conspiracy theories or predictions of our imminent downfall.

You might have surmised by now that I've had an unusually large amount of junk hit me lately. Yep, I've been informed in the last week or so that "only 'True Americans' will forward this"; "the 'mainstream media' won't report that"; and if we don't do something RIGHT NOW...like sign a meaningless email petition, God will punish us and our progeny forever. Right after the aliens land and the Long Count runs down. What? And could someone...anyone please tell me why I should care one whit about what Trump thinks? Frankly, I'm weary and my trash folder runneth over.

Particularly fast-laned into my spam-dumpster is the stuff that comes in with 57 prior email headers still attached and the message body in 6 different fonts, usually all-caps (see above). These are instantly zapped unread. I know that I'm rolling the dice here but in all honesty, I can't see that any national crisis has been precipitated nor has any body part ever fallen off or my luck changed due to my refusal to forward this crap to 'everyone I care about' on my email list. I really love hearing from people I don't see all the time (which is almost everybody these days) but send me something about you, not about a political party.

Likewise, 800 number "polls" with a PAC pitch go to my answering machine unless I feel like entertaining myself by talking nonsense to the the English-as-a-third-language operator as long as possible in order to run up their phone bill. As you can see, I'm easily amused sometimes.

But enough of this. The beauty of owning a blog is you get to say whatever you want when the mood strikes you and then moving on...in that, mission accomplished for today. I'll climb down off the box until the next attack of grouchiness but until then...if we could just take a breather from posting the latest news of Newt's laughable moral standards, Mitt's equally hilarious concern for anyone not listed on Forbes, the laundry list of Barack's latest conspiracies; along with any and all Internet rumors and anything remotely connected to AM radio, I'll be ever so much happier.

We now return to our irregular programming. Thank you for your patience.

On The Road Again...

2012-02-02T17:27:00.000-05:00

So yeah...I'm on a road train once again. A couple of weeks into it and I've already lost track of what day it is. Suddenly I'm watching the train line-ups and going to bed early, trying to grab some sleep before the midnight hour; like I've done so many times before. Almost without fail, Crew Management will jingle the phone at an odd time and away we go again. The dogs look at me like I've lost my mind when I get up and let them out at three in the morning after another early call. They woof to come in about the time the coffee is done and usually re-crash somewhere by the time I get my thermos loaded, give Chris a smooch that she won't remember and roll my little truck out the driveway. Suddenly, time seems a bit scarce when I have to keep one eye on the clock and listen for the phone. The Home suffers.

I was almost getting used to having a regular show-up time and weekends off like most people in the real world. What a concept...knowing when and where you're going to work. It's been a long time since I did anything remotely like that. About 15 years to be exact. There was a little while along the way in the last couple of months when I had my cell phone set to only ring as an alarm clock and I even had my night-stand phone unplugged but I knew it couldn't last. My work-train temporary home was abolished for the winter and so here I am, rolling along behind the headlights and wailing away at the crossings again.

A few months on those local jobs and I just about convinced myself to forget what the long-haul grind was like. Wee-hour phone calls from the little automated voice at CMC; drives to work in the pre-dawn dark; crummy mini-mart food and burning eyeballs from too little sleep. Sometimes it seemed like I'd been doing this all my life and the merry-go-round just kept on spinning. It gets old.

Having said that though, I guess I really am a mileage guy most of the time. After a few trips, I remembered why I tend to like the road. Yes, you run the same track over and over but the scenery is always changing and sometimes dawn through a windshield is absolutely spectacular. Besides, I'm probably lucky in that I still actually like what I do...the nonsense that goes with it I could live without but running a train from A to B and back just seems to suit me. Good thing because I've got a long way to go before I can throw out my rulebook and call it a career. Years of living out of a grip and trudging off to work when everyone else is sleeping seems like some form of normal to me most of the time. I've done this so long that I fell right back into the groove after the work train ended. It'll take a while to get used to not having the same day off from one week to the next but for now, this'll have to do.

It'll make everything a bit of a challenge for a while...till the next regular job comes along anyway. Till then I'll fumble along like always...maybe even a bike ride now and again in between trips and snow flurries. The Wayward Home might get a little neglected but just like the real home, I always find my way back sometime. No matter how far I go or where the rails lead, it's always good to be back.

Angry Man

2012-01-13T10:09:00.002-05:00

It's been one of those weeks. I haven't been around here for a bit but that in itself isn't really unusual. I'm an intermittent kind of blogger anyway, which is why I still have my day job. This time though, it's frustration setting in that's brought about my tardiness. Specifically, I'm not very happy with technology lately. To whit:

First on the technology frustration list, the railroad. They went through a massive system upgrade over the holiday which is probably a good thing since half their stuff still looks like DOS and navigates with the tab key. I have visions of card readers and a long-ago FORTRAN course in high school every time I look at it. It's great to search endless screens when you're on overtime but it gets a little old when it takes 15 screens to tell the mechanical guys that your engine is low on oil. I hoped greatly for a move away from that old 'F5 to update' routine and a move into the point-and-click world that we all know and love. If wishes were fishes...

This process at least was well-known and anticipated but somewhere in the change-over, when they switched all the coding on my direct-deposit and sent my paycheck on a journey to another dimension, the drawbacks became readily apparent. We knew we would be unable to make changes to our personal information for the duration but when they did it for me and the electronic payments started bouncing, things got little dicey.

The real entertainment value of all this began when the bank (evil, greedy, unscrupulous, etc.) decided to ignore the fact that none of the usual transfers had been made and went ahead with automatic payments despite the fairly obvious problem (at least to me) of a zero balance in the account. They made payments with money they didn't have which put us in the negative and to reinforce the error of our ways, charged us an enormous fee. That was really fun so they did it again only this time with a less-than-zero balance and slapped on another fee. It continued to be good for them so they did it again...and again. This merry-go-round continued until Chris got is turned off just as the fees topped a grand. I almost think it would have been fun to just let it keep going until we owed them the national debt on a checking account that rarely has very much in it. I wonder how long the computers would keep bouncing it back and forth before an amount field somewhere ran out of zeros.

I guess that's how you really make money in America these days...charge endless fees for a screwed up service until you bleed your customers to death. What a concept. Banks, branches of government and airlines have elevated this to an art-form. Unfortunately, I also seem to remember a biology class that defined an unsuccessful parasite as one that killed its host. I don't see how this can be a long-term strategy. There's this old saying about getting blood from a turnip that might apply...
But again, I digress.

After lengthy and somewhat heated discussions with a hard-to-find, real-live person, Chris talked the 'full-service' bank into waiving all but the first set of charges. That was good until their computer got involved and slapped most of them right back on again. More calls. I think the dust has finally settled but I'm still not exactly sure what happened to the account codes...

Next on the list...I use a site called MapMyRide to keep tabs on my biking mileage, plot routes and track my gear. If you've been around here long, you've seen the routes in assorted blog posts and links. I've always found it useful and relatively easy to work with; glitchy and loaded with ads sometimes but fairly easy, especially considering it's free. Unless you want to pay to get rid of the advertising, they don't charge to save all those bytes for me and so I was content. So far, so good. I have a zillion miles of rides saved on it and even when they split the thing into two parallel sites, it worked. Right up until New Years Day...

Suddenly, half it's functions ceased and desisted and I couldn't save anything. I tried to use it for a week to do the same old, same old stuff I've been doing for years and eventually found after numerous emails that it now probably will require Chrome or Safari to make it work. Thanks for letting me know.

Yep, I should just roll with it and upgrade. Everything will probably work better anyway if I Chrome it but MMR ticked me off when it just stopped working. I had to go looking for the answer when a simple note on the header would have sufficed to give me a heads-up. Note to IT...it might be good to let somebody know when you make changes that affect millions of users of dirt-common browsers.

OK I admit it, I know I'm a dinosaur and still have Explorer but it's been chugging along just fine. Like me, it's old and creaky but still manages to work every day. Slowly but surely.

This morning, on a whim I tried MMR again and everything worked as intended once more. I never changed anything. Go figure. Now I can shut up and be happy...or at least shut up and quit spamming their Facebook page. I'll probably download another browser anyway but the whole ceremony kind of left me unimpressed. I know sites go through development and things evolve faster than GOP sound bites but it seems like a convoluted process engineered and guaranteed to piss me off.

So, next up on my test of patience list is a site with the catchy name 'Blurb' that promised the ability to vacuum a blog right out of space and into book form. Cool. Alledgedly, you can manipulate text, photos, links and whatever else you have stashed in your blog into a bestseller before lunch. Well, maybe not the bestseller part but you supposedly can turn what exists only in electronic form into a hard-copy that will fit nicely on the coffee table or back of the toilet tank. I had visions of 'The Wayward Home' printed up on glossy paper looking all spiffy and professional. Oh and by the way, you do have to pay for anything that actually prints so this one ain't a freebie. It all sounds easy enough for even the rankest amateur to work with and so I downloaded the software. I watched the slick tutorial video and prepared to launch into publishing.

The fly in the ointment was that I never even got the thing to log on to the 'Home' to start the process, much less do all the other wondrous stuff trumpeted in the 'abouts'. My publishing career is off to a rough start. Two days worth of emails to assorted tech people finally collapsed in frustration when Blogger refused all efforts to open up and say ahhhh. Despite a heroic effort on the part of their tech help people, all was in vain and I came up against my limit when they wanted me to open a new email account just for that site. I know Google wants to rule the universe but requiring a new Gmail address for every different site seems a little much. I wasted half the day trying various fixes (which weren't really fixes because the settings they wanted changed were the defaults anyway) to no avail and finally uninstalled the miserable wretch without any print forthcoming. No sale. Another note to IT...if you say it works with Blogger, it might be helpful for us who will be paying the bills to make sure that it really does.

And so, lacking much progress elsewhere I'm doing what I suspect may actually work...tapping away at the 'Home' and with any luck, the 'Save Now' button actually will and 'Publish Post' won't be just kidding. Note: Other than losing two paragraphs that I had to re-do somewhere between 'Preview' and that 'Publish' button, it did. I'm going to trade my laptop in for a fountain pen.

My kids may eventually lead me kicking and screaming into the future but for now, I'm stuck right here. Hey, it isn't all bad news...I managed to get the disk drawer open on the X-Box without even looking at the start-up guide. There may be hope after all.

Quote of the Day

2011-12-30T04:58:00.002-05:00

Speaking of reading...I had a flashback the other day to a short story I read many years ago. I'd forgotten all about it but something hit the right button and an old quote popped back into my head from wherever I had it tucked away. Like "Fate...", it's not exactly a classic...but it sank it's hooks into the old gray matter somewhere and just stayed for the ride. There's a lot of that rusty junk kicking around behind my baby blues...someday I'll have to have a yard sale and dust out the cobwebs. 'Till then, here's to Helen America and Mr. Grey-no-more...somehow they're a part of how everything turned out and where it's all headed.

"She saw in him a young bachelor, prematurely old. A man whose love had been given to emptiness and horror, not the tangible rewards and disappointments of human life. He had had all space for his mistress, and space had used him harshly. Still young, he was old; already old, he was young."

Cordwainer Smith
-The Lady Who Sailed "The Soul"-

On Fate (is the Hunter)

2011-12-20T10:30:00.000-05:00

After that lengthy hiatus on Office Train posts, it's back to reality and business as usual (or as usual as it ever gets) at the Wayward Home. As I so often say when I ease the throttle out on another trip...here we go again.

Believe it or not...I read more than I write and sometimes I actually have a minute or three to do that very thing. My favorite book is still a less-than-well-known autobiography called " Fate is the Hunter "and my old softcover copy is now very faded and dog-eared from being read over and over. It's the memoir of an airline and transport pilot who flew in the early days of commercial aviation, beginning before World War II and on into the '50s. Ernest K. Gann, I know is not a literary giant in the sense of a Dickens or a Tolstoy but his story suits me just the same. As a much-loved book should, it speaks to me and makes me think. So what if it isn't a 'classic'...

I'm not much of a highbrow type anyway I guess. I chewed my way through "The Inferno" a while back, mostly just to say I had. Talk about a workout. "Moby Dick" was a tough go as well. It turned out I actually liked it but I had to work pretty hard to digest that many chapters and it's not the kind of thing I can just pick it up and read a few paragraphs of before I pull the covers up and call it a day.
I often do exactly that with "Fate"; find it on the nightstand or pick it off the floor where I dropped it last time, open it to a random page and start in. It's like a comfortable old chair where I can spend some time and fall asleep with the light on. There's no famous, epic lines; "To the last, I grapple with thee..."; no deep metaphor; no CliffsNotes...just a story. And a good one. Thunderstorms, crummy landings, the Hump, malaria, ice, the Taj Mahal, DC-2s and C-87s...I won't re-tell it all here but it's a story I can relate to, even though I've never been a pilot. Read it someday and you'll see. You might see something about me in there too as you go along.

One of my favorite passages is in the last chapter:

"Tell me now...since you are older and wiser, by what ends does a man ever partially control his fate? It is obvious from the special history of our kind that favorites are played, but if this is so, then how do you account for those who are ill-treated? The worship of pagan gods, which once answered all this, is no longer fashionable. Modern religions ignore the matter of fate. So we are left confused and without direction.
Let us admit, then, that the complete answer may only be revealed when it can no longer serve those most interested.
Perhaps we should hide in childlike visions of afterlife wherein those pronounced good may play upon harps and those pronounced evil, stoke fires.
...At least let us admit that the pattern of anyone's fate is only partly contrived by the individual."

Ernest K. Gann, "Fate is the Hunter"

There's an idea in there that says something to me. I haven't figured out quite what it is or what it means yet...but if I leave that book on the nightstand long enough, I just might.

The End (of the OCS)

2011-12-11T11:19:00.000-05:00

So down the road we went with our travelling show. After our brush with the detector, there were only minor distractions and I spent the next few hours trying to look cool and collected. My mother told me once that she thought I was like a duck; calm and unruffled on the surface but paddling like crazy underneath. If only she knew how true that was.
Finally, it came down to the last long swoop off the hill into home. By some accident, the set on the brakes was right and we coasted in like we knew what we were doing. And just like that, it was almost over. The plan was to change head-end crews first, then have the fresh guys pull the rear of the train to a crossing to load and unload passengers. Sounded good to me. There suddenly wasn't much energy left in the old guy.
I pulled to a stop and sagged in my seat. Suddenly I was very weary even though it was not yet noon. The outbound crew waited by the ladder as we handed out our grips, still trying to do everything by the book right to the bitter end. The Road Foremen thanked us and smiled. One leg of the trip was over for them and we hadn't gotten them or us dismissed. I thought I might actually kiss the ground when my boots came down off the last step. I refrained however and contented myself with giving the outbound a fare-thee-well rundown and then fading into the background to watch the proceedings.

The last car stopped on the dot and a whirl of passengers came and went. At the last minute, my CEO appeared one more time and shook my hand. Our Chief Operating Officer also swung by and chatted a minute or two before it was time for them to load up and head west. As before, there was more talk of bicycles than trains. Funny thing...bicycles...who ever would have thought? A smile and a wave and they were off to board the coaches. I hung out for a minute to watch the markers go around the corner and out of sight. Suddenly I realized I felt like I'd been hit by a truck and staggered across the track to the office to call it a day. My grip and book bag felt like they weighed as much as the train and I realized my vest was on inside-out. Oh well.
One of my friends was around to take some photos. I thought Lucky was going to have to prop me up for the picture...

At the end of the day, for all the stress and worry, the experience was worth it. Particularly since I managed to keep my job and everybody went away happy. I can say "Been there, done that" and add it to the list of things I might never do again. We'll see...

As a little postscript; I was driving home when my cell rang. Seems the second unit had caught on fire less than three miles from where I handed off the train. Talk about dodging the bullet...but that's another story.

The OCS Third

2011-11-26T15:46:00.000-05:00

Day three of the project started early. Much before dawn, my alarm and the wake-up call I'd set the night before woke me out of an often-interrupted sleep to saddle up and get underway. Even the breakfast buffet in the lobby was still hours away so we made a stop at a convenient store to load up my coffee thermos and grab something to munch. This had a familiar ring to it. If we hadn't been riding in a manager's Jeep, it would have been just like the thousands of other wee-hour expeditions to get on trains over the years. Zero-dark-thirty is well known to train crews.

The sun was a faint smudge over the hills when we got to the yard but the railroad police and a pack of officials were already patrolling up and down the sleeper cars. We got a wave from a well-armed special agent past what looked very much like a checkpoint to get to the train. I was expecting someone to bark, "Papers!" but I guess the hi-viz vests and goofy-looking safety glasses gave us away as T and E. Nobody else in the world would wear the things.
In truth, I actually had a brand new vest for the occasion as my everyday working one is only yellow about halfway up the front from too many brushes against greasy engines. The bosses thought we should at least try to keep up appearances for the big show so a couple of fresh ones suddenly became available and we went well-dressed if not wildly enthusiastic.

With the actual crack of dawn, the System Road Foreman (who would ride the head-end with us) came along to get the party started. This guy is the one I ultimately answer to on all things engineering and so I was somewhat nervous about his presence. Here was another of the reputed evil career-killers who as it turns out, isn't anything like the hype. He's younger than I am and soon proved to be basically a pleasant guy to work with. I have no illusions that he could in fact probably be a hard-ass should the occasion warrant or he wouldn't be wearing the title but for now, he seemed mostly interested in getting the circus on the road with a minimum of uproar and finding more coffee. I voiced a couple of concerns and questions about handling the train but he seemed relatively unconcerned. His advice was to just do what I know and not worry about it. He did mention that we'd undoubtedly be the first to catch hell if anything was unsatisfactory back in the coaches but waved it off as unlikely. He inspected the units for me and signed the daily cards before drifting off to fill his coffee cup while my conductor and I chewed over the bulletins and tried to think positively.

Other official-types were about including my division superintendent who I'd met on other occasions so at least I recognized him when he strolled up and said good morning. His first question for me was to ask how many times I'd run the business train in the past, to which my answer was of course, "Zip" except for the unoccupied deadhead move two days prior. They don't exactly let you borrow their zillion-dollar, pimped-out, rock-star train-set just for practice so the opportunity had never presented itself. You go locked and loaded the first time you step up to the plate and hope for the best. I allowed as how I was pretty familiar with the territory having run it for years but had never actually pulled a passenger gig before.
He looked a little surprised by that revelation and casually mentioned that a little run-in of slack on the head-end translates to taking people off their feet on the rear. Like I needed to know that. He advised caution, wished me well and then was off leaving me to wonder what my next career would possibly be after today. No stress.

Shortly before we launched for the run home, the CEO came by once again with a grin and encouragement. As before, he was easy to chat with and seemed completely at ease. Whatever business they might be pursuing back in those cars is so far beyond my ken that it's unlikely I could comprehend any of it and I'm sure the pressure was up there in his world just as it was in mine. Different scales of pressure I'm sure but for the moment, all of that was put aside and I could have been talking to some guy at the bike shop about my next set of tires. He also wished me luck and went on his way. A day at the office for him I suppose but that camper of his I was going to drive was giving me the jitters. It's probably a stock line since he does this all the time but it was kind of fun to hear him comment, "Don't worry. If anything goes wrong, we just fire the Road Foreman." I know better but as was intended, it took the edge off a little.

With all the formalities finished and everyone aboard, it was finally time to earn my keep. The jump seats were occupied by Road Foremen from two railroads and my conductor and I took up our long-accustomed positions left and right. A final check on the radio to the train to make sure we had all the VIPs and suddenly it was showtime.

Now in full daylight and miraculously on schedule, the signal in front of us turned green for our track and the curtain went up. With a honk of the horn and the bell ringing, I took one last gulp, snipped back the throttle, eased out the slack and tiptoed out of the siding and onto the main. How did I ever get myself into this? Hordes of photographers were festooned on every vantage point until we got out of town. You could almost hear the whir of motor-drives over the racket in the cab. Such dedication.

Determined to give it a good shot or at least go down fighting, I dragged the brakes through the first couple of sags, feeling it out once again. A steep, nasty little dip went by and we were now on an uphill without killing anyone as of yet. As I said, these are freight brakes on passenger equipment so if you release them at all, you have to release them all the way. You can ease off the throttle but not the brakes. This complicates things when also trying to maintain a constant speed and learning it as you go. Think of it as taking your foot all the way off the brake pedal of your car and then having to wait a couple of minutes before you can use it again. It takes a little planning or at least dumb luck to make it work. Luck was with me so far and the RFs looked relieved. I, on the other hand was already sweating in the air-conditioning with a hundred plus miles still to go.

The fact that my side window was riveted shut (which I'd noted the night before but hadn't thought much about) started to make a difference when I realized I couldn't look back and see the train. I have a long-established practice of sticking my head out the window and watching for things like sparks or smoke from the cars and have been rewarded by actually finding them a few times. With the window closed beside me and a full-width locomotive body at my back, I felt like I was half blind. Trying to turn around to look out the non-existent rear window gave me a great view of a blank door and a grin from the RF. He allowed as how everybody does that, the only difference being how many times in one trip. I managed to get the side mirror where I wanted it and promptly swivelled my seat to gaze at the back wall once again. Old habits die hard. It wasn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things but you fall back on what you know when the pressure's on. Like rubbing a rabbits foot, I needed the familiar. Not finding it, I resigned myself to seeing a lot of that wall and soldiered on.

I do know there was some chit-chat among my three cab-mates as the day went along but I really can't remember much of it. I had my eyes constantly jumping between the speedo, air gauges, rear wall and out the windshield looking for the next low spot that would require a stretch to keep the slack tight. I found that the train handled nicely even when loaded but also learned it's reaction time is very fast. It would jump over the speed limit in a second if I looked away from the speed indicator too long or was a tad late getting the air set for a downhill. My boss seemed content to study a track chart and if he was watching the proceedings with a critical eye, he didn't let on. So far so good.

A snag developed when we rolled over our first wayside defect detector. I wondered if it would behave since I was dragging the train against the brakes and had been for a while to keep it slowed down. A hit on the hotbox detector would really be less than ideal so I hoped the wheels were cool enough for the detector to let us slide. It did but it's radio message included "Detector Malfunction". Crap. The CPRR gods couldn't even get us by this thing the one time when it really mattered. A call to the dispatcher couldn't get us an office indication of what was wrong so it was 30 mph until we could get a roll-by inspection of both sides. Our shadowing local Road Foreman caught us at a couple of crossings in the next few miles to give us a twice-over and luckily got us back up to speed.

From there, it's kind of a blur of brakes, throttle, horn and worry. I expected to see nothing but green on the signals for a move like this and that's exactly what we got. I'm sure the CP wanted nothing more than to have this thing off their property and out of their hair as quickly as possible. Every other train went in the hole for us and I got my first taste of running the hottest thing on the railroad. I don't think I've ever been so focused on getting it right. I know there was times when I went too deep on the brakes and had to yank pretty hard but all I cared about was making sure I never felt that little bump the superintendent was talking about. I had visions of vice-presidents plastered against the bulkheads and various department heads draped over the tables with lunch pressed firmly into their ties. It must have worked. The halfway point came and went without a hint of my imminent dismissal. The sun was still shining and I was still employed...miracles never cease.

The Second Bite of OCS

2011-11-19T15:40:00.000-05:00

Day Two

After doing our best to demolish the free breakfast buffet at the hotel, we left on a hike about the neighborhood to settle down the muffins and kill time. We were scheduled to re-assemble the train when it came in from New England late that afternoon so until the appointed hour, we wandered around the streets like mall-rats peering in store windows. Since we were only going to switch around in the yard and not hit the road till the following day, I wasn't worried about getting caught short on sleep for a change. Not that I could have napped after 8 gallons of coffee anyway...

Later on, as I was just rummaging around in the hotel room getting ready to head to the train, I suddenly felt the building moving under my feet. This is most unusual behavior for the majority of buildings I'm familiar with, especially large and substantially built hotels. My first thought was high winds but a glance out at the sunny sky and stationary trees cancelled that. The fancy mirrored closet doors were banging open and closed and the water in the toilet bowl was trying to leap over the rim. I wondered for a moment if it was possible to hallucinate on a coffee overdose. The gyrations went on just long enough for me to wonder what the hell just happened, paused a moment then did it all again. So now I've had my first experience with an honest-to-west-coast earthquake. It was the weirdest sensation I've ever known without a concussion. The shaking was enough to make it hard to walk and I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to experience a really damaging quake. It only lasted a few seconds and I later found out the epicenter was actually several hundred miles away in central Virginia. A long ways away from us to be sure but it was enough to send track patrols out to check for shifted rails and bridges all over the northeast. When I said the earth would move before I'd take a special train I guess I wasn't kidding. The TV was still breathlessly running the story when I left to meet the Road Foreman for a ride to the yard.

As advertised, the now-occupied-with-big-names train showed up and the three railroads involved once again tried to out-order each other on how the moves were going to occur. When everyone is nervous, nothing ever works out. Just as the day before, the orders changed repeatedly and I finally retreated to a locomotive cab where at least no one was actively pacing or waving their arms. Our mission was to get the sleeper cars back on the train and stitch the four units back together for the run home in the morning. Simple and only slightly complicated by the fact that while we were switching, dinner would also be served in the dining car. The RFE repeatedly reminded me (in case I didn't get it the first time) that I had to make the hitch on the cars like they were glass or I'd wipe everything off the tables and into well-tailored VIP laps, thereby lowering my (and likely his) career expectations considerably. No stress.

As these things seem to do somehow, the whole affair eventually sorted itself out and a finished product started taking shape. At one point though, I noticed flashing lights out on the street and looked up long enough to realize that the whole roadside running along the yard was jammed with people. The police had the block closed off and onlookers, photographers, kids and what looked like half the local populace was lined up watching us do what we do. I've seen the rail buffs before but this was over the top. Who'da thunk it? It is a shiny train and all but really? There was camera lenses out there that cost more than my truck. I figured they could see what color eyes I have if they focused on the windshield. I wondered if I'd scratched myself inappropriately in the last hour and if it was already on YouTube.

After some further minor confusion, I wound up heading back to make that all-important hitch on the dining car. We took a momentary pause in there for some reason that I can't even remember and as I sat waiting for the next call on the radio, I was surprised to see a set of hands coming up on the door frame followed by a neatly fitted-out gentleman in over-large safety glasses. This was the CEO of the carrier.

Before I could get out of the seat, he shook my hand and introduced himself. My conductor radioed the next move at the same moment but I called a quick stand-by and had a couple minutes with the boss of the bosses. He was extremely pleasant and chatty but what tickled me the most was his interest in our Tour de Cure team. He knew I was the captain and that was pretty much what we talked about. He rides in the Tour every year in Virginia on the huge home-office team but still wanted to hear about our little show. It was the high note of the day to know he noticed us. Too soon, his phone rang and he took a call but the noise in the engine made it impossible for him to hear so with an apology, he slid out the door and was gone. In the meantime, the conductor told me the RFE (who didn't know about my cab guest) was almost having a seizure because I wasn't moving. Oh well, when the guy that owns the train wants to stop in and say hello, he gets to do just that. Rank hath it's privilege.

Back to work, I tried to make that lousy hitch on the diner so easy that an egg on the knuckle would never jiggle. Repeated efforts however failed to make the pin on the coupler drop. Our intrepid road foreman was beside himself. By now, all the worry about hitting it gently went out the window as it finally took a good old boxcar smack to get a good hook. I hoped nobody needed extra napkins.

With that, the train was built and ready for the ride the following morning. It felt like I'd been running the thing all day even though it was only a couple of hours. The pucker-factor had been a little higher on the scale than I typically like but we managed to get through it with our careers intact.

I was thinking as we headed back to the hotel that evening that I was relieved to have met some of the people who'd be on the trip as we'd been backing and forthing during the afternoon. In between moves, a few of my multi-titled passengers had stopped by and I'd found them to be nothing but courteous. Some of my friends said later that when you have that kind of pull, you can afford to be nice to the peasantry but I prefer to think they were being genuine and let it go at that. The pre-supposition I'd had of hauling a train-load of high-powered people with attitudes faded with the daylight and actually started to think I might survive this. We piled our bags in the back of the manager's truck and went for dinner on the carrier. That adventure will be for another tale.

We'd be on the train again at about dawn for the big show so I set my alarm and put in a wake-up call just to be sure. Like I was going to sleep much anyway....

A Bite Sized Post...The OCS

2011-11-13T09:53:00.001-05:00

I'm still here gang. Really. I've been tapping away at a little memoir from this past summer but it keeps getting longer and longer without coming to a Happily Ever After quite yet. To spare you the tedious slog through a ridiculously long post, I've decided to chop it up into bite-sized chunks that will hopefully be a little more palatable. My first attempt at a serial I guess. It still may take a while but at least it'll look like I'm doing more than getting distracted by YouTube every time I light up my computer. The summer has gone to frost but I promised railroad stories...

I planned on doing this post right after the fact but the fact is, too many other misadventures cropped up around the Wayward Home in the mean (really mean) time. Let's just say it's been an eventful couple of months and get on with it.
The old blog finds itself getting pushed to the back burner more than I like between working all the time and...well, working all the time. That being said, I'm finally putting fingers to keys and getting it done before the facts fade into fiction and this becomes just another well-embellished rail tale.

Here then, after much delay is the story of the OCS.

Day One

In early August, my local Road Foreman of Engines approached me to run the Office Car Special, the infamous OCS train. For those less connected with the railroad world, this train is sort of a hotel/conference center/restaurant on rails. It's used by the carrier to haul officials touring the realm or on other assorted corporate gigs stratospherically above my pay grade. The Kentucky Derby comes to mind... It's actually a rolling resort with its own chefs, stewards, security detail and mechanical forces. They don't call it 'varnish' for nothing as a trip on the thing can hardly be classified as 'roughing it'. On this outing, it would come into my charge equipped with four spiffy "F" engines, sleeper cars, a diner, observation cars etc. but more importantly it would also contain the CEO of our company and a long list of notables viewing the railroad and politicking. No one on the passenger manifest had less than three initials after their name, most beginning with VP of something or Chief Officer of something else. Tacked on the head end is a boxcar loaded to the doors with stress for the crew. No pressure.

Having heard more than a few horror stories about what a nightmare this train can be, I was somewhat reluctant to take the bait even though I was intrigued by the idea of running the old "F" units at least once in my career. Challenge of something new aside, I remembered that it is commonly known as "The Punisher" because almost everyone who runs it gets punished in one form or another. It also has other less-than-inspiring nicknames such as "The CEO"...short for Career Ending Opportunity. What had I gotten myself into?

Adding to my indecision was the fact that I know almost nothing about passenger train operations except what I've picked up from various rumors and hearsay. I'd never pulled anything behind me in 14 years that could outright fire me if it didn't like the ride. Flatcars rarely complain if I run the slack in and out too much. This was another ball game. The train is not equipped with dynamic brakes so everything has to be done the old fashioned way...put on the air and drag it.  At least the brakes are a standard freight setup, not passenger so at least it looked familiar. Something else to think about.

The deal was done when I came to the conclusion that the only way they were going to give me my requested time off for the Tour de Cure was to cave in and take the train. Something about one hand washing the other...

As is my usual mode of operation, I fretted about it and called everybody I could think of for advice or at least a heads-up on possible career moves if I got my silly self fired off the thing. I hoped I could figure it out well enough to avoid the worst but with so many big names aboard, the odds seemed less than ideal. I bought a lottery ticket just in case.

The whole event was scheduled to take three days so I took a midnight call and kissed my wife goodbye until Wednesday. I got a glimpse of coaches and idling engines as I drove in the parking lot, hoping it wouldn't be the last train I ever ran. The first order of business on our arrival was to deadhead the train without the officials aboard to get it in position for the big show. A couple of guys minding the store would be our only passengers for the first leg. Walking out with my grip to load up I found it waiting, looking shiny and intimidating. I fired up another 'B' unit for the climb over the first hill and tried to settle in. It really isn't that much different than any other train from the right seat. Same old familiar EMD control stand, everyday radio and head-end box but that sure is a funny shaped windshield out there. So far, so good.

A fly landed in the ointment about a mile into the trip. The CP dispatcher dropped the bomb on us that one of their freights was stalled on the back side of the hill and it would be 'a while' before they could rescue it. "A while" in railroad parlance could be anything from an hour to a week. The hours indeed started to pass as our time on duty inexorably ticked away. The RFE paced and worked his phone. Eventually, a monstrous bag of junk freight and intermodals in the charge of a relief crew slid past us clearing a path over the hill. Shortly thereafter, we finally got the ok for launch from Minneapolis to leave town. Hurdle number one.

The trip up wasn't actually too bad. I spent some time getting acquainted with how the thing handled and feeling out the brakes. Nothing was smoking much at the bottom of the hill so I guess it was ok. The sun came up in our eyes just like it has a million other times heading up north and I almost relaxed a little. I know the ups and downs pretty well so it was just a matter of getting the timing right.

The real fun began again once we got to our crew-change point to hand off to the Pan Am guys taking it on to Massachussetts. We were scheduled to chop up the train so our new compadres from New England could put their own set of fancy power in the lead along with an office car or two. No big deal except we were now short on time, the dispatcher was on her first day solo and there were officials from three railroads trying to give orders and look official. On top of it all, I was starting to fizzle out from the all nighter. I finally retreated to the cab while the assorted bosses tried to out-boss each other and come up with a workable plan of attack. I was too tired to argue.

After a suitable interval of snorting and hoof-pawing among the leadership, orders reached my radio and the move got underway. Of course, it immediately changed and confusion reigned. I guess the job briefing was a little too brief but my conductor had it figured out anyway.  I had an idea what we were trying to accomplish so I just went slow while the mess sorted itself out. Patience as they say, is a virtue. With time on our hours-of-service now down to almost zip, we set out to turn two of the four engines and all the sleeper cars and get it parked before we blew up. It was almost a photo-finish but as the clock ran out, we shut it down and tied it up where we were supposed to be almost like we planned it. Hurdle number two.

We were dropped off after the festivities at a pretty high-zoot (for a train crew anyway) hotel and then abandoned to fend for ourselves until the following afternoon.  Airline crews would probably consider the place slumming but it was a couple notches above our usual digs. I'm not used to a hotel room with a couch, a coffee table and more than two towels in the bathroom but it was nearby and the carrier was paying so who am I to nitpick? I collapsed for a while but the bright sunshine was too much to allow for any serious sleep so I eventually wandered out to find my conductor and locate some dinner. We hooked up with a band of CP officials that happened to be stationed in the same hotel and wound up having a pretty good time chatting and yukking it up at the expense of our employers (figuratively speaking...we don't rate a corporate credit card). The CP road foreman who would be riding with us on the train was most reassuring in that he figured he'd get fired just as quickly as I would if anything went wrong so at least I'd have company filing for unemployment. I finally realized that I was about running on empty from lack of meaningful sleep so I called it a day. I don't even remember turning out the light. Tomorrow we'd do it again.

It's Getting Late (A Photo Journey)

2011-10-30T15:02:00.000-04:00

So I went for a ride last weekend. Not too unusual for me really. This time though was a little different. The weather is getting pretty cool and I left before the sun found it's way into the valleys so I bundled up a little. Long, thermal riding pants and a couple extra layers of shirt under the windbreaker. I wasn't really in a hurry so I figured I'd go uphill first to get above the low fog and warm up along the way. I picked out a road I haven't been on in a while with about a 2 mile climb to reach the top. The sunshine was waiting when I popped out from between the ridges and the cold misty stuff fell behind.

I remembered doing this same hill on my old Raleigh Record one day when it was about 90 degrees after I got home from work. Why I took on a climb like that when I was already shot escapes me. I think I stood up most of the way but never stopped until I made it. Seems like it was a lot tougher going on the steel 10 speed but maybe it was only the heat. Anyway, since I wasn't out to overachieve on this fall day, I dropped into creeper-low and just spun until the familiar right-hand curve announced that the climb was done. The view was worth it.

I'm usually glad when I remember to stuff a camera in my bag on one of these little forays and this trip was no exception. As they say, sometimes you can see forever if you just look.

My travels led over the next ridge line and after a screaming downhill that reminded me that the ambient temperature was still only in the 40's, I stopped to regain the feeling in my fingers at a small lake shore campground and recreation area known as Park Station. It's a booming place in the summer with a man made beach, ball diamonds and all the other normal warm weather goodies but now, sneaking up on November, it was mostly deserted. I like places like this when it's so still. There's something about that quiet that's good for my soul...

I think this guy probably would understand...

As is the usual way with these things, after I left the lake, I just kept pointing the front wheel wherever the notion led me and changed my mind about a destination maybe ten times per minute until I finally ended up on another back road semi-headed toward home. The sun was up high but still cool and teasing me to peel a layer or two but unzipping the windbreaker was enough to convince me otherwise. I still had to climb back over a ridge line to get looped around so it was middle-ring and spin once again. Going slower on a long, steady uphill and without the wind to drown out everything, I caught the sound of a big red-tail hollering at me from about a mile above and turkeys arguing with the crows two hedges away. I knew who was doing laundry on a Sunday when I'd get a sniff of dryer sheets from houses I passed. For some, it was trash or leaf burning day and then the smell of an angry skunk somewhere followed me for miles. I wound up at a crossroads on top of a hill that I've only seen once in my travels. You'd think I'd have seen them all a couple of times by now but...not quite yet. The downhill sign is not kidding.

The layers were too much after the climb but I knew the descent would be cold again so I grabbed a Clif and a stretch before the drop back down to the valleys and home. As I remembered, the drop off the hill was steep and twisty but I didn't know the local highway guys had sprinkled the corners with loose stone. A couple of tense moments later, I made it down intact and headed out on the last leg for the Wayward Home. I had to take one more look over my shoulder and catch one more shot.

I know the season is winding down and soon it'll be snow and salt again which takes the Trek off the road till spring but I'll take what I can and see what I can see while there's still a little sun. I'm already wishing for May.

So What Else Is New? (Long Delay)

2011-10-11T07:38:00.001-04:00

There really is a reason (or maybe a couple) why I've been going so long between posts these days.

Life around the NWH (New Wayward Home...for the uninitiated) is still and always an adventure. Along about the end of August after a spring littered with tornadoes (in upstate NY for crying out loud), a sideswipe from a hurricane and an earthquake (again...all this in upstate NY?), I made the mistake of asking myself what could possibly be next. Really? Remind me never to ask that again. I thought laughingly of maybe a volcano or perhaps a minor asteroid strike (since I had just watched a re-run of 'Armageddon' in the hotel) but what did I know?

The floods came shortly thereafter. The slogging-wet remains of Tropical Storm Lee plodded up from the Gulf of Mexico, stalled over the northeast and just sat over our heads while all the water drained out of it. It rained like the proverbial cow pissing on a flat rock for days. We were already soaked from Hurricane Irene's near-miss so the inches-per-hour downpour from Lee was more than the ground could handle. The rain fell straight down in sheets and curtains hour after hour until the little creek under my driveway was roaring like a monster. I figured the OWH (Old Wayward Home) would have water in the basement before long and sure enough, our tenant called to say there was suddenly 6 inches and it was climbing fast.
Connor and I saddled up with boots and rain gear to start the pumps and hopefully get ahead of the rush. I had two sumps running and figured we had it when the floor re-appeared about 3 hours later. I was actually thinking about calling it a night when I noticed the slowly-but-steadily dropping water level very suddenly reversed itself and started back across the concrete and up the wall. This is not good.
I called my sister and she brought over another big pump. I even rigged the little one we use to get the water off the pool cover to do it's little bit to help. The water continued to climb regardless of all efforts. My Big Sis made it home but later said the road had disappeared on her way there under a black, fast-moving sheet studded with tree stumps and a possible cow or two.
In the meantime, the basement pool was now back to square one and still rising. We had four pumps running and we were losing. I killed the power to the water heater and furnace but could only watch as the pond got deeper and the rain came on like I've never seen. My tenant and I tried digging diversion ditches to funnel the surface water away from the cellar steps but the rain was coming too fast and too heavy for it to make much difference. In desperation, we decided to call the fire department for a pump-out but they too had surrendered for the night or at least until the deluge slowed down. They had whole towns disappearing and my basement was the least of their worries. The crews were exhausted and most roads impassable anyway so there was no hope of seeing them until daylight at the earliest.
I eventually tried to rig a swimming pool pump as a last resort but couldn't make it work and so finally, for the first time, I gave up.
I had the tenant keep an eye on the rising water and told him to call me when it got near the breaker panel, then headed for home to catch a nap. An hour later, the power went off.

Without pumps running, the flood level came up fast so John waded through the thigh-deep water to reach the panel box and shut off everything before the inevitable wiring disaster when the box went under. Luckily, the juice came back on before the breakers submerged so I stripped to skivvies and waded back in to turn the main on and get the pumps running. Nothing like flipping a 200 amp breaker connected to pumps through a web of extension cords while standing in water up to my...well you get the picture. My procreating days are long over but the idea of getting jazzed to death by that route was worse than the freezing-cold water. Some things I'd just rather not think about.

Finally, dawn came and the rain subsided enough for the pumps to catch up. The floor re-appeared but to stay ahead of the leaking foundation required two pumps all day long. We took a drive around town and found we couldn't get very far because most of the roads were fast-running rivers and a sizable chunk of the valley was a lake. In actuality, we got off easy. It seemed like a crisis doing battle with our one little cellar but almost everything to the east of us was simply demolished. Whole sections of towns along the rivers went under in a matter of hours. When the crest came, it was the worst flooding in this area since 1972 and some said it was close to the 1936 monster that just about wiped out the whole region. That makes two "Floods of the Century" in less than 5 years for us...I think that'll do for now.

The wreckage is slowly disappearing around the area and the mud-lines have finally washed off from halfway up the tree trunks but it'll still be months, if ever before anything resembling normal life comes back for those who really got hammered. It was quite a fight at the OWH but I can't help but thank our lucky stars we got out as lightly as we did.

I'll never again ask..."What's next?"

The Rain

2011-09-07T15:11:00.000-04:00

It's another dark and rainy day at the Wayward Home. And I mean pouring-straight-down, all-day-soaker, enough-is-enough-already rainy. It's the last gasp of tropical storm Lee blowing itself out and dumping half the Gulf of Mexico into my swimming pool. There's flooding all over the area and travel is getting a bit tricky even for vehicles. The first day of school in my district is closing early due to high water and closed roads. There's no bicycle weather in sight. It's a great day for ducks and bloggers.

Looking out the back door at my overflowing pool I've reached a conclusion. Since I'm old and have certain prerogatives befitting a man of my advanced age, I've chosen to stay mostly dry, ignore my good intentions and decline the semi-planned, celebrate-my-birthday-late-Century bike ride that I had in the works for today. As is common in my line of work, I missed the actual day of my birth and noted it's passing from the right-hand seat of a locomotive. I did fully intend to make up for it by putting another hundred miles on the Trek as soon as I got home however. Then along came the rain and washed the spider out...
I had it in my head this morning to go anyway despite the downpour but there's not much incentive to drown myself pedaling through a monsoon just to prove I can. Younger hammerheads who haven't been beaten half to death riding a Harley in the rain are welcome to earn their stripes today but I think I'll take a pass. There's dedicated and then there's lunacy.

And man is it raining hard. This next catastrophe courtesy of the weather will undoubtedly lead to track closures due to washouts and downed trees for days if not weeks. The lines have only been reopened for about a week now after Hurricane Irene took out sizable chunks of roadbed and dropped about a thousand trees across the ROW. I guess I shouldn't have asked after the earthquake and hurricane what was next.

It was pouring the whole way home on my last trip back from Harrisburg so the ground is already saturated and rain rates of inches-per-hour is certain to bring down the hillsides and take out the culverts yet again. I hate working when this kind of crap is going on.

Long stretches of my route are 'dark territory' meaning trains run on paper 'Warrants' that grant authority to occupy the track instead of signals on the wayside. The 'dark' part is means more than just that there's no signal lights along the way. It also means there's no way the dispatcher or a train can tell anything about what's out there until somebody gets eyes on it and reports in. This has led to some pretty awful events in the past and the potential is still there. Moving water is a powerful thing and since most my run follows river grades for miles, I get a little bit uneasy when conditions get like they are today. Mudslides studded with stumps and rocks are a real possibility and fallen trees are almost a certainty. Darkness and fog only make it worse as you can't see far enough ahead to even slow down before you hit something large and leafy or drop into a hole full of fast-flowing water.

My first brush with a washout taught me quite a bit about what heavy rain can do. A homeward trip in flash-flood weather brought us down to Restricted Speed along the river that the track parallelled. Restricted Speed means that you have to run slow enough to be able to stop in half the distance you can clearly see. When it's pitch dark and raining in sheets, that's not very far or very fast. Good thing.

I tiptoed along for many miles until at one point something out in the headlights didn't quite seem right. It almost looked like the track was moving. Track is not normally supposed to move. I stopped and the conductor and I walked ahead to take a peek at what I was pretty sure was an optical illusion brought on by staring intently into the dark too long. Again, good thing.

What we found was water rushing down a steep bank like Niagara, then using the rails as a guide to change direction and shoot along about a hundred yards straight at us before diving under the ties and taking the roadbed with it. While we stood there, the hole got visibly bigger and the washout moved appreciably closer to the front of the engine. This is certainly not a good thing.

I happened to have two brand-spanking new Canadian National engines on the train that night and it was shaping up like they might find them and us in a Pennsylvania river along with half the cars by morning. I was pretty sure the CN would be most unhappy if I destroyed a pair of engines that still smelled of fresh paint by sinking them in a flood. A quick try on the radio found that the relay towers were down which left us unable to contact anyone with our predicament. I started thinking about how much I hate swimming in cold water.

We were out of options so the conductor suited up and started hoofing it for the rear end of the train to protect road crossings behind us so hopefully, I could shove the thing back. He didn't get far before he found more knee-deep, fast-moving water swirling toward the river blocking the way. He resorted to hanging onto the cars and trying to work his way along without getting washed downstream. It was slow going and we really didn't have all that much time. I left the headlights on and watched the hole in front of me eat it's way under the rails, steadily getting larger and closer. I could hear rocks rolling down the newly formed rapids in front of the engine and the rain just kept on coming. Finally, as the ballast stones started dropping away about twenty feet in front of the snowplow, I called my half-drowned CO and told him to get up on a car and stay there while I backed up and away from the abyss. A few more minutes and those shiny units would be in the drink and that new-car smell in the cab would be only a memory. I could only hope the track was still intact behind us or we'd be pushing cars into the river. The rails in front of me were visibly drooping lower as the support under them disappeared so the choices were pretty limited. There's times when you just have to do what you can and hope for the best. I pushed the train slowly back about 50 yards or so until it looked like the ground was solid again and the water wasn't over the top of the railheads. Safe for now.

For some reason, the radio towers came back to life and we were eventually able to reach the dispatcher just about the time the conductor got to the last car. We got permission to back up a mile or so to clear the road crossings of a town and that was all she wrote for that trip except for a van ride home. A MOW foreman came out to assess the damage sometime after we got safely parked. He set his pickup on in front of us and hi-railed to the washout for a peek. He must have made some quick phone calls because while we waited for our taxi, a string of dump trucks loaded with big chunks of rip-rap stone and gravel started to arrive and soon a mountain of fill was growing beside the track. The dispatcher came up on the radio and asked the foreman how long he thought it would be until he could run trains again. You could almost hear the track man shake his head when he answered, "I've been dumping rocks into the hole since I got here and we still can't find the bottom. It's gonna be a while." And so it was.

I found out I should have a bit of respect for high water that night. We kind of get used to thinking of trains as the biggest and baddest things going but something as simple as a couple days of no-kidding rain can bring the tough guys to their knees. Lesson learned.

I already know I'll have burning eyeballs from staring into the rain when I go back out again. Maybe next week I can do that Century unless...I won't even ask this time what could be next.

The Tour of 2011

2011-09-01T12:32:00.000-04:00

Holy Lost Month Batman!

August came and went in a rush of busy days and full-bore craziness. The lead-up to the Tour de Cure, the Office Car Special, an earthquake, a hurricane...where to begin?
I lost track of the Wayward Home somewhere around mid-month as the Tour closed in, sometime after my vacation in July. I guess that's as good a place as any to start picking up the pieces.

I was off for a little over two weeks and blissfully unaware of RR doings as is my wont when I don't have to worry about going to work. I try to forget everything track-related for as long as possible to the point of having to be re-trained when I go back. It's good for the soul.

But this time around I had to keep my mind just a little bit on the railroad...in a non-engineering sort of way. A pretty good chunk of my vacation was spent working on our corporate Tour de Cure bicycle team for this year so I had a different sort of training on my mind. Since I somehow fell into the Captain spot (my wife caught it last year because neither of us knew any better) I was doing a constant running dance trying to make it all happen and make it successful. The closer it got, the busier I was.

Backtracking a little more, sometime last year I agreed to help lay out new routes for the Tour since we had a change of venue for a starting line. This led to much Google Mapping and driving around the countryside checking and re-checking mileages, conditions, hills, hazards, etc. It also entailed doing a bunch of arrow-painting all over about 5 counties during the week before the ride. It used up a lot of my available time off and even more of my wife's patience.

So as the event got near, it was crunch time. We'd done a ton of fundraising, a bunch of riding, a few events, volumes of emails and hundreds of phone calls to get the team to Tour day. I spent Friday packing up all our assorted stuff and putting the final tweaks on my faithful Trek but found I couldn't fall asleep despite the ridiculously early hour I had to be back up. I finally dozed for about 3 hours before the alarm went off for showtime. I slithered out of bed, took one last look for what I might have missed and hit the road long before the sun came up.

It still wasn't even hinting of daybreak when I got to the site but there was a bunch of other early-birds already putting up tents, traffic cones, tables and all the other paraphernalia that such an event requires. I blundered around in the dark for a while but eventually found the spot for our team tent and started unloading. By now I realized that as expected, I'd forgotten stuff and called my still-snoozing wife with panic-stricken requests to bring said stuff with her. The response was predictably unenthusiastic but as always, she found what I had missed and tossed it in the van.

As it got a little brighter in the east, the team started showing up and more hands made things come together a bit faster. The tent and tables were suddenly up, the banners hung and it looked almost like we were ready...

Our dedication family was there soon after and the pace picked up. Before I knew what hit me, it was 7am and time to go. I was still meeting people as the pack rolled out and hit the road on the northbound leg of the Century. How did this happen so fast? I'm not ready yet...I've still got stuff to do...I don't even know some of my team...never mind for now...just pedal.

Our resident hammer-heads took off like a shot not to be seen again until much later while my old riding partner, the Good Dr. Annabel and I took up positions with some of the not-so-fast-and-furious. The tradition we started on our first Tour is that no one on our team gets left behind to ride alone. That's something I'm pretty proud of and work hard at maintaining. I can't see asking someone to ride with us and then blasting off to leave them in the dust so Doc and I formed a cheering section and spun in the little rings. It's worth it to see people conquer that 10 mile climb out of the valley when they doubted they'd ever make it. It's quite an accomplishment for a new teammate to look back and see that long hill behind instead of in front the first time!

From there on out for fifty miles, we just rolled along taking in the scenery with Angie, one of our original team members from last year who was attempting her first Century.

I haven't met too many people more determined than Ang. She walked a few hills, dug in and climbed the rest, gritted her teeth and fought the bonk like a champ for 50 honest-to-God miles before the shakes finally got too bad in Geneva and she had to get off the bike. She never surrendered though, just took a rain check on the 100 and vowed triple digits next time. A lot of people got around the lake faster but not too many can claim they tried harder.

The Doctor and the Captain were now the dead-last pair on the Century. This had certain advantages in that we had our own personal SAG truck and no waiting in lines at the rest stops. We tried to send the sweeper truck ahead in case someone else needed them as Doc and I are pretty good at taking care of our ownselves on the road but they wouldn't leave and so we became a two-bike parade for the second 50 miles. The turn south for home brought a headwind so we pace-lined a while until we hit the hills again and progress slowed considerably. The big guy was in a fix.

Doc and I have ridden together for years and so we know a thing or two about doing distance. We both did our first Century on the 2010 Tour and have thrashed mountain bikes and roadies to exhaustion more often than I can remember. Unfortunately, he hasn't been able to ride much lately and the lack of miles was taking a toll. You have to understand that Doc is quite frankly a huge man who's hands could probably cover my whole head with his fingers locked. He also has legs that routinely snap spokes off the hubs and that have been known to twist high-end frames to destruction. The catch is, being that strong burns a lot of calories and sometimes he can't replace them fast enough to stay ahead of the bonk. The shortage of pre-Century saddle time also had him somewhat at a disadvantage for the fight and so our average speed continued to drop.

I was almost starting to think he'd give up for the first time in our long acquaintance but then he glared at me on a steep uphill, told me to shut the **** up and stopped talking. I knew he was now angry and so all doubt of his eventual success evaporated. We were long overdue off the loop and the Tour was officially closed but I wouldn't have wanted to be the one to tell Doc we couldn't finish. It wouldn't matter if it took till midnight, he was mad and come hell or high water, we were making it back. We put in at the last rest stop and Ang got back on her bike to finish the homestretch 20 miles while I poured ice water over Doc to recharge him for the final leg.

It was kind of a blur from there on until my cell rang at about 10 miles out. Chris wanted to know where we were and if we were going to make it. Since Doc was now a speck in the distance ahead, I allowed as how we'd definitely be along fairly soon. He said his computer topped out at near 50 mph on the last downhill and so with that screaming descent, the tail-enders staggered into town. We turned a corner about 4 miles from the finish and to our delight, there sat a big contingent of Team NS waiting for us and cheering. Doc was near collapse and didn't dare even stop lest he not get started again so the pack fell in behind and we made for the finish line. True to another team tradition, we held up traffic at the last stop light to make way for everybody to get through together. I don't think any vehicle drivers were anxious to debate the short pause with the glaring monster named Doc who was stopped in the middle of the lane with his hand up. Without a hitch, everyone made the turn and so, whooping and laughing like maniacs, Team NS rode for home.

Doc and Ang led us across the line...true to form, dead last but still a team. A bunch of red, white, blue and yellow jerseys wheeling in long after the crowd was gone. The only ones still around were the clean-up crews breaking down tents. We didn't care. We brought in our last riders and no one was left to finish alone. That my friends, makes me proud to be on this team above all else.

I guess that's the reason I decided I'd take it on again for next year. We done good guys!

After loading up the remaining stuff under the tent at Camp NS and discovering that I'd lost my truck keys, a large train of vehicles formed up in a caravan for the Wayward Home. Chris's Mom had the grill going and burgers on when I finally made it in the driveway (Whew...Thanks Ann!). I suddenly realized that I hadn't eaten anything but dry peanut butter sandwich quarters and Clif bars since about 4 am. A mattress was calling like the Sirens but I tied myself to the mast (well, the picnic table anyway) and held off until the few remaining die-hards surrendered to exhaustion and headed for home. I'm not sure I was exactly coherent during any of this but everybody else looked a little glassy-eyed and wind-burned too so I don't think it mattered much. Doc survived it all and in Doc fashion, recovered enough to swing in and yuk it up with us for a while...almost like his legs weren't really on fire and he wasn't looking at driving to Virginia in a few hours. I lasted long enough to make a pass through the shower before succumbing to an earth-shaking collapse into the sheets that brought down the curtain on the 2011 Tour de Cure for well and all. I found my keys a day later.

We wound up at the end of the day with people from 5 states, we raised a lot of money for the American Diabetes Association, made a pack of new friends, rode a bunch of miles and learned a lot of things about being a team. It was stressful, sometimes frustrating, sometimes wonderful, always interesting and a ton of fun to the very end. It was an amazing experience to lead this bunch and so I can't sign off this post without...

Many, many thanks to all of the incredible Team NS...to our long-haul travellers, our monster fundraisers, our distance record-setters, everyone who pitched in when I asked and others who helped even when I didn't, to all of you who did so much just because...

But especially my thanks go to Chris for putting up with it all...

To the Cardone family for our inspiration...

And of course, my behind-the-scenes, couldn't-do-it-without-ya people...

Karin Stamy from the home office in VA...my head cheerleader and sounding board for my craziest ideas...always able to answer, "What do I do now?"

Jess Bottoms, our Energizer Bunny Tour Manager...if ever there was a right girl for the job...

The guys from Kingsbury's Cyclery...Paul, you ain't seen nothing yet...

Tanner's Bar and Grill...Good thing Woodie's around 'cause John never answers his phone...

Big Footes Sporting Goods...Now those are some kinda GREAT shirts...

Thank you all!

Now let's talk about getting you guys signed up for next year...!!

Where The Hell Have You Been Mister?

2011-08-17T07:04:00.000-04:00

I've been a little bit....busy. Somewhere in the last couple of weeks I lost all my extra minutes and for the life of me, I can't figure out where I left them. I'm still here but burning the candle at both ends with a torch.

Do not adjust your set. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming shortly.

100 at 100

2011-07-22T14:52:00.001-04:00

If anyone out in my little corner of the electronic world was watching yesterday, you might have caught my latest adventure in bicycle lunacy...I put on a little experiment in heat exhaustion and sweat production which will go down semi-officially as "The Hot 100". With a nod to the famous Billboard chart, this actually had nothing at all to do with the pop countdown. Although now that I think about it, my iPod did die about 40 miles out for lack of charging so I guess there's a tenuous music connection there somewhere.

The festivities began when I decided I was due for another Century while I was still on vacation. I'd been wanting to go when I didn't really have to worry much about how long it took or when I had to be back but scheduling conflicts meant that Thursday was the only chunk of time available for such an undertaking. I know my long-distance pace is pretty low so it's likely to be an all day thing once I leave the driveway. I can't get underway at noon and have any hope of returning before dark at my less-than-impressive average speed. These things take time.

So to planning...something I do very little of except in the most vague and general way. But having done this distance thing a few times now, I peeked at the National Weather Service site with a wary eye. Mostly this exercise is to check on whether I should figure on getting wet or not, which then determines if I need to pack extra zip-locks to keep electronics dry but this time it was not rain on the radar. The weather guys made it pretty clear it was going to be unabashedly, miserably, viciously and maybe dangerously hot. Yeah, yeah...it's July people, so noted. In my typically cavalier fashion, I was mostly undeterred by the big red EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING headline at the top of the page. It's going to be warm? Surprise, surprise. Pack an ice bag baby...I'm going.

I was actually more interested in the fact that the wind was predicted to be out of the south at first and then swing to the west with gusts up to 25 mph. 25 mph in the face of a 15 mph rider means you're going backwards so there was some changes forthcoming in my planned general direction of travel. I figured if I headed west at the outset, I might be able to make the turn for home with following seas and a boost from the wind instead of a kick in the teeth when I can least afford it. Score one for the Gipper, that part actually worked out but more on it later.

I got up with Chris and the sun, loaded the frames and pockets with liquids, saddled up and was gone while the shadows were still long and deep in the valley. As predicted, the wind was at my tail at first and miles rolled away easily on fresh legs and cool temps. My semi-planned route was to go almost due west to Hammondsport and then up the west shore of Keuka Lake. From there it was a crapshoot depending on how hot it actually got and how much leg I had left. The one detail I forgot was that to get to Hammondsport from home requires a Cat 2 climb over the ridge between the lakes. With the wind on the bow and a hill under the tires, my speed dropped to about zip.

Eventually though I headed down out of the hills, picked up some speed and only had to dodge one idiot passing across the double line into my lane on the way to a rest stop in a park.

I noticed the temperature was getting a little above the comfort zone when a sip of Gatorade went down hot and a Clif bar came out of the wrapper like melted butter. The world was getting hazy and everything looked like it was dancing.

There goes the alarm bells again.

I looped Keuka Lake and started fantasizing almost continuously about a cold vanilla shake. 20 more miles went behind and out of the heat shimmered a mirage-like vision...an ice cream stand! I pulled in and suddenly realized I was probably in over my head again when I almost couldn't unclip before I fell over. I wobbled into the air-conditioned interior and customers parted like the Red Sea. I probably smelled like my junior high gym locker but didn't care. My goal was something cold and no glares from cool, freshly washed vacationers was going to stop me. A uniformed EMT passing me at the door made a comment about her desire to not meet me professionally along the road later in the day. I agreed wholeheartedly and retired to a corner stool to nurse my core temperature back down within human limits.

Things get a little loopy from there on out. I know I hit a mini-mart and reloaded all my bottles before the climb back over the ridge. The ascent was lengthy but I did catch the wind as I'd originally hoped when I left home. The breeze astern helped push me up the hill but unfortunately, it also created a stationary bubble of super-heated air that surrounded me all the way. I put my leg against the top tube once and damn near got a burn. This cannot be good. My hot Gatorade was disappearing to no avail so I finally took a break and stretched out in the shade of an oak tree by an old cemetery. The symbolism seemed fitting.

Barely 15 miles later, I put in again at an Amish roadside farm stand and begged to use the garden hose I'd spotted coiled next to the building. I let it run till it got icy and then just poured it over my head until I stopped steaming. It felt wonderful. Much refreshed, I pushed another 20 or so. The computer was reading about 80 miles gone at 4 pm and even with the sun now past the zenith, the air was still sizzling. The breeze felt like the exhaust of a blast furnace and smelled like hot metal, burning grass and asphalt. A guy out in his yard yelled something about how stupid I was to be out riding as I passed. Yeah well, thanks for the insight buddy but how about handing me a beer instead?

The descent into Watkins Glen should have felt pretty good but knowing I had one more climb to do sort of took the fun out of it. I stopped in the park at the foot of Seneca Lake and stretched out on a shaded picnic table bench to recharge for the last push. I seriously wondered if I'd be able to get off that bench at all. The climb was all I expected it to be...toasty and steep with the end hidden in the haze and heat wiggles. The mileage turned over 100 about three quarters of the way up and the wind went out of my sails just like that. I trudged on up to the top and sort of fell into the lot of another mini-mart to reload the bottles one more time. I know I looked like the wrath of God. I got some really strange looks as I downed a whole bottle of water in three swallows but couldn't have cared less. The worst was over.

I eventually saddled back up and headed east but knew there wasn't much left. Chris had by now announced her intention to come and get me and to be honest, I was glad of it. I probably could have made it the last few miles if push came to shove but I was about out of heroics for one day. I loaded the Trek in the van and collapsed in the seat with the A/C knob turned all the way around. Another one bites the dust.
I'll never learn.

Score for the day:
101.7 miles
108 honest-to-Fahrenheit degrees (at Watkins Glen)
8 or 10 bottles of Gatorade (I lost count)
1 vanilla shake
1 jumbo iced tea
1 orange juice
1 humongous water
1 near-miss
2 hecklings
And 5 lbs. off my body weight.

I promise I'll make the next one about the Tour de Cure. Really. There's even a connection to this post in it. I'm still on vacation you know.
One thing at a time.

Time Off Continues...

2011-07-20T15:25:00.000-04:00

Vacation is rolling along nicely. It's hot, muggy and summer so I'm mostly content. The RR is a distant memory for now and tomorrow I'm planning another long jaunt on the Trek regardless of the predicted heat index above 100. No fear.

Hey, I ride a triple ring anyway so triple digits seem only appropriate. I'll load up the bottle cages and jersey pockets with water and Gatorade and have at it. I've been out in real hot before and have learned to take it in stride. You just have to be aware of the signs you're burning out and not push quite so hard. The Great Dismal Swamp adventure taught me a healthy respect for heat and humidity so I won't be easily caught off-guard again. Besides, not much can scare me after the mountains in Virginia where Doc and I were playing earlier this week...

<p><a href="http://classic.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/va/elkton/578131108362850072">Skyline Drive VA 07/17/2011</a><br/><a href="http://classic.mapmyride.com/find-ride/united-states/va/elkton">Find more Bike Rides in Elkton, Virginia</a></p>

We only did about 15 miles on top of Skyline Drive but it sure went uphill for an awful long way, in percentages us sea-level riders aren't used to all in one shot. Creeper-low was the order of the day. The reward was going back down. I admit it, I cheated and rode ALL the way down the hill and back to Doc's place from our parking spot after he blew a spoke up on Skyline Drive. I know, it's against The Rules to descend a hill unless you've climbed it first but this was a special case and I'm not sure when I'll ever get the chance again. So sue me, I'm not shaving my legs either.

Ten-plus miles of twisty, fast descent was just too much to resist when the opportunity presented itself. The 2.1 got pretty twitchy and my neck cramped up but I was going fast enough coming down that I couldn't bring myself to stop and load the bike on the rack so I just got low in the drops and sprinted until I hit the driveway. It was like icing on the cake.

Riding in VA was certainly an eye-opener in more ways than one for the old guy...the terrain was much different than my accustomed upstate NY haunts and I learned a thing or two about attacking the climbs but more than that, as you might have noticed from my new cover shot, the view from the top was spectacular.

I won't go all Zen on you so let's just say it was worth the admission price in leg-burn and leave it go at that.

We might have been able to go further up the mountains if we hadn't ridden 40 miles of continuous rollers the day before and if somebody would design a spoke that can absorb Docs pedal stroke without snapping. I think we've ridden a couple times without his rear wheel going out of true for lack of spokes but I'm having a hard time remembering when. He popped one on each of our road days so we were left with only his mountain bike still rideable after Skyline.

Never ones to quit while we're ahead, we loaded up the off-roaders again and took in some nice single track until the sun went down. Dark-thirty found us grimy, whipped, sweaty and unfit for human companionship at a KFC trying to buy extra-crispy through exhaustion and hoping we wouldn't get arrested as vagrants. We looked like we'd just parked our shopping carts out by the dumpster. The counter help was happy to see us pack our bird and go.

So at the end of a three day excursion south of the Mason-Dixon, the total was about 30 miles on the mountain bike between a mid-journey detour on the C&O Canal Trail and the dirt adventure somewhere near Ruckersville with maybe 60 horizontal and a couple of vertical miles on the roadie. Not a lot as these things go but it was enough. We got out with no bloodshed or even poison ivy, just some broken parts and blown tires so it was all good. Photos taken, mission accomplished.

Now it's back to my familiar stomping grounds and still I'll be riding. I'm toying with another Century in the morning before the road gets too scorching. We'll see how that goes. And I know I said I was going to post more about the Tour de Cure too...just hang in and you'll see it pretty soon. First things first...miles.

Who said I was crazy?

Vacation Days of Mine

2011-07-12T10:35:00.002-04:00

It's official...I'm on vacation. Hence, there's a ton of stuff happening around the NWH (New Wayward Home) that leaves but little window for blogging. The first couple days of time off are always busy but gradually, the reality that the phone isn't going to ring sinks in and I can slow down. Unwinding takes time.

To get the non-working party started, I parked my last 12"-to-the-foot-scale toy train for two weeks on Saturday morning and promptly dropped off the radar. The railroad and I manage to get along pretty well on most occasions but at some point, I have to step back and completely break from operating trains or I'd probably become somebodies lab rat in a padded room somewhere.  I know a couple of actual lunatics who want to work through their vacations every year and I pray regularly for their eventual recovery or quiet removal from the property before they become a danger to themselves and others.

Old guys like me can only put up with the day to day madness for so long and then something has to give. That something is me because the railroad, like the juggernaut that it is, will blunder it's way along without this particular minion and never even blink. Vacations are really subtle reminders that the carrier can get by just fine without you cleverly camouflaged as a couple weeks of rest. Be that as it may, the time off is mine to burn and burn it I shall. God help them when I get old enough to have four weeks at a crack. If I took all that at once, I'd have to go back to engine school when (if) I came back. That's how seriously I take forgetting all things RR when I'm off.

This go-round I do have to think about my ever-insistent employer to some extent though because I find myself spending a fair amount of time 'captaining' a bike team in their name. Between a long-overdue hack-down of the lawn, assorted to-do list missions around the NWH and environs and some competition deck-lounging, I've been chewing away at a checklist of backlogged priorities on that project. It's turned into something of a monster.

But first, a little background. Anyone who's been around me for more than about two minutes knows that I ride bicycles a lot these days. I took it up a few years ago when I realized that my sit-down profession was turning me into something about the shape of a turnip. My sudden change from outdoor calorie burning activity to sedentary, almost motionless lump with the same appetite cost me about four waist sizes. Photos from those days are most depressing. A change was in order.

A worn out big-box women's hybrid that was laying in disrepair around my shed suddenly found itself being oiled and prepped for abuse by a fat guy. It was the most incredibly ugly greenish-blue ever created, didn't fit, barely shifted and the brakes were pretty iffy but the tires held air and we were off. Breathless, gasping circuits of a block or two soon turned into loops measured in a couple of miles. Combined with a crew hotel that was equipped with a treadmill and a determination to back away from the buffet without taking prisoners to eat later, I started to find my old self beneath the pudge. I discovered off-road riding at some point and thereafter treated my beater like the mountain bike it most certainly was not which only hastened it's demise. I rode in snow, mud, dirt and even back out on the blacktop when I could overcome the embarrasment of being seen on the most hideous, gender confused bicycle in four counties. I figured out that I was pretty much hooked.

The hybrid finally succumbed to an overdose of broken cables, bent rims and a bottom bracket that digested itself into steel filings and square ball bearings. I began searching Craigslist for a suitably cheap replacement but my wife came to the rescue before I could make a move. That Christmas brought a shiny-new Mongoose with suspension and fat tires and suddenly the Murrey was history. The 'goose was real steel and weighed as much as a small car but everything worked and I was rolling again. I rode the thing to destruction in about a year.  Talk about loving something to death. I went everywhere my strengthening legs would take me until the New York road salt dissolved the freewheel and deraileurs into rust powder. I found trails and roads just out of sight around the next corner and saw more countryside in my own backyard than I ever knew existed. My weight and blood pressure continued to decline and there was no turning back.

Things progressed from there as things seem to do and I found myself aboard a much-used but much-loved 80's vintage Trek road bike. I found out what it meant to go really fast with those little tiny rear cogs and skinny tires surrounded by aluminum frame. It felt like flying. Somewhere in there, I turned 50 which was duly reported in this post and a new hardtail mountain bike came to my house to live. I was almost back down to my fighting weight and the miles under pedal-power were starting to scare me.

Then came the new blue and black Trek.  That Father's Day gift changed a lot of things again and the road stretched out much further. Our first Tour de Cure went under the tires as a result of all the prior leg work and Century Rides became something other than fantasy. People around me got used to hearing about 3 digit mileage and some even stopped looking at me like I'd lost my mind...at least sometimes. A few even bought bikes, tagged along and fell into the same trap that caught me so unawares. Frames, clipless pedals, drop bars and gear ratios became common subjects of conversation among us in the peasantry rather than an arcane language spoken only by people with French names and silly looking, short-brimmed caps.

But back to today. As usual, I've wandered off my subject and now there's things to do, people to meet, rides to take. The Team Captain story will have to be part II of this post so stand by and if the stars line up right, I'll hit the keys again before too long.

Or not...that's what a vacation's all about.

The Blog Slacker

2011-07-07T11:04:00.000-04:00

I've been busy. That answers the question about where I've been lately. Talk about nipping things in the bud. Let me see...where to start?

I guess sometime around Sunday the 3rd would be as good as any. In true railroad fashion, there would be no recognition of Independence Day in the form of a shutdown or even a slowdown. On the most picnic-prone, family reunion attending, fireworks shooting, beer drinking and pool diving day of the year, the carriers dig in and want everybody to work. They'll never learn. The layoff list was an epic as everyone jockeyed to get time off for the Fourth. This in spite of an endless and sometimes pathetic barrage of phone calls from Crew Management searching desperately for warm bodies to fill vacant slots on trains. The Fourth of July weekend is one of those times when they might be better off to ask who WILL work rather than who won't and just take it from there.

Me, I'm going on vacation soon anyway so I answered the mechanical voice and went to work Sunday in the wee hours. Turns out it was an EP (extra pay) day for us engineer types so I made some extra cash but I have a hard time figuring out how the carrier thinks that's an incentive when they don't tell anybody about it until the actual day. As I've been told repeatedly, I don't see the BIG PICTURE but in my small picture, it seems it would work out a lot better if everybody knew what was going on a little in further in advance. Oh well...

So a train awaited and off I went through considerably more than the usual tribulations. The whole affair seemed doomed from the start as it took almost six hours just to depart the terminal. I won't go into all the sad details but let's just say it was an exercise in futility that led to our time expiring at a fairly significant distance from our destination. A further lengthy wait for a crew van and the round-about route out of our parking space kept us on duty for close to 16 hours. By the time we made it to the crew warehouse to be stacked and racked until needed, there wasn't much left of the old guy. I think my collision with the pillow was noted on Richter scales in 5 counties. I was pretty much non-functional when I finally peeled back the sheets, turned off the phone and collapsed.

I guess there is such a thing as miracles because for all the insanity of the outbound trip, the return was remarkably uneventful. It still took about three hours of gyrations to get out of the yard as is fairly common but once we got out and running, we sailed. It helped that not much else was out there as most of the usual traffic was sitting somewhere hooked for a crew.

The only fly in the ointment was a stretch through a Pennsylvania town where the tracks looked like a pedestrian mall. The local municipality was putting on their fireworks show and about half the city was using the right-of-way and bridges as a shortcut to the field or just setting up lawn chairs on the banks. We were forewarned by the dispatcher and it's a good thing or we'd have smoked into that mess at a considerably higher rate of speed than we did. We arrived right at prime-time for the event. It was just about dusk and the warm-up shells were going off overhead. People were everywhere and no amount of horn-blowing or bell-ringing seemed to make much of an impression on the populace. They just ambled along like the zillion-ton monster bearing down on them was of no concern. Some were even pretty annoyed that they had to detour out of the gauge to let us pass. I'm always amazed by the capacity of Joe Public to look stunned and angry by the fact that there's a train on train tracks. What were they expecting?

Normally sane citizens seem to just lose their minds around tracks. Not too many cognizant people would stroll casually down an airport runway under normal circumstances because they could reasonably expect a large, heavy, fast moving vehicle with the potential to kill them to arrive unannounced. The fact that railroad tracks are pretty much like that is lost on a sizeable portion of the world. I also don't know too many people still living who would jump out on the interstate and put junk in the road in front of a tractor-trailer "just to see what happens" but they were lined up to put coins and rocks on the rail in front of us. "Hold my beer and watch this" was in full effect. I hope nobody got zinged by the shrapnel.

It took a while but we got by the madness eventually. I dragged the train through with the brakes on both so I could stop quicker and to keep some yo-yo from pulling a cut lever back there and putting us in emergency. It was one of those times where if you slow down too much, the half-drunk idiots will try to climb on but if you go too fast, you risk running down some bonehead who believes with all his heart that you can steer around him. You just have to find an unhappy medium and go with it. My buddy Stosh is fond of saying, "You can't fix stupid" and I agree but I'd rather not kill anyone to prove it.

From there on out, for the next 15 miles or so, it was a continuous fireworks display from all sides. Unlike in grouchy New York, fireworks are legal in PA and the party people take full advantage of it. I dare say I've never seen so much 'rockets red glare' from so many places all at once. The cannons and star-shells shot up in that one hour probably would have made a dent in the national debt. The whole valley reeked of flash powder. At least nobody actually shot at the train this time (which happened to us a couple of years ago when we got peppered by rockets and cherry bombs all the way through town) but a few strategic shots went off just as we passed and rattled the windows. It was all good fun after worrying about that herd on the tracks now far behind us.
Even as we were climbing up the hill out of town, the sky was flashing colors and an occcasional boom made it past engines in Run 8.

It was quite a display and I was duly impressed. I'd rather have been home on the deck with a cool something listening to the neighbors blow up stuff but that's how it works out sometimes. I'll get my time off later just like all the other birthdays, anniversaries and holidays I've missed. The timing is usually wrong but the heart is in the right place.

That Son of Mine

2011-06-23T20:44:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow my eldest (and tallest) son will take a walk up on a stage in a hot gymnasium, step up to the superintendent, take the diploma in his hand and at long last, graduate from high school. I'm sure at least a zillion other parents all over the land are feeling the same wonderment and confusion as I am right about now. I can hear myself asking the same questions as every other stunned and confused father...how did he get so big so fast? How did he become such a fine young man all of a sudden? What happened to the kid who played soccer all the time? How did he end up being able to drive? College? Why are we filling out applications for college? Who's this big lug who calls his mother 'Shamu' and his father 'Dirt' and lives through it? Well, maybe not too many other parents have to wonder about that last part but then, none of them have anything like my ever-hungry offspring either.

Yeah...no one has kids like mine do they? I guess all parents that care one whit about their kids think the same. Everybody's kids are the best kids. How could it be otherwise? They're the be-all and end-all for so many years that you can't help but see them through lenses that filter out all but the best in them. You pour your heart and soul into raising them from the day they're born and hope against hope that you're doing it right. You probably aren't but you can only run with what you have. In our case, that wasn't much. As with all new parents, we didn't have a clue.

We found out early that with children, there never was and never will be an instruction manual, most advice is wrong, experts suck and nothing really matters except what you feel. The only thing anybody ever said that was genuinely true was that it wouldn't be easy. Wonderful yes, easy...no. That should be imprinted in the genetics of our species by now but it isn't. Nobody knows one damn thing when they start down the road. You just rolls the dice and takes your chances that somehow, it'll all work out. Sometimes it does...sometimes you end up in the ER. That's just how it is. You wing it daily and screw it up regularly but somehow at the end of it all, if you love those kids enough and believe in them enough, everything comes together with time. With so much of your own life sewed up in those walking, talking hormonal imbalances that they become, you really have no choice but to believe. How can your children not be just a little better than anyone elses?

Of course, ours really are the BEST and I'll go down swinging if you want to argue.

Tomorrow is the day. I guess it's supposed to be one of those so-called 'chapters' in life when things are suddenly vastly different. Not so much, I think. Big events rarely come with so much preparation and anticipation. Except for your wedding and that 9 month joyride before the kids are born, you just don't see it sneaking up on you. Turns in the road come unannounced and jump out at you when you aren't looking. Like the fact that my boy isn't really a boy anymore. Nope, never saw that one coming.

So After Friday night when the cap is gone and the gown returned, I'll still be goggle-eyed wondering how it all came about. And after the shindig on Saturday to make it official with the rest of the inlaws and outlaws, the Graduate will still need gas money. Life in general won't change very much or very fast but in a way...some things will be different.

He'll be one step closer to being his own man. One step closer to heading out on his own way. Those steps up onto the stage are only the next ones on his long walk. The next steps on his way to being not just a tall man, but a good man. Not a beginning or an end, but a change. A change of the heart, a change for the good.

And I'll be one proud and happy father. Proud that he can still call me 'Dirt' and happy that I still know what he means.

Sleepless in the Saddle

2011-06-21T17:39:00.001-04:00

How does one operate on a near total lack of rest? I'm doing semi-formal research into the possible outcomes of not actually sleeping for a couple of days in a row...not because it's a particularly smart thing to do but mostly because I've got too much going on to stuff it all into the waking 'real world'. This entry is a product of that decidedly non-scientific study.

My latest experiment in sleep deprivation began last evening when I was departing my away-from-home-terminal (which by the way, the railroad abbreviates in the military/industrial fashion as the AFHT). I can't decide if it should be spelled phonetically to be correct or maybe pronounced AFF-HAT, A-FAT or AH-F**K-THAT but the point is, it's a location where I spend a fair amount of time. Sometimes an unfair amount of time as well but that's another story. It's easiest to think of the one I stay at most frequently as a large, industrial storage shed where the carrier shelves the warm bodies it may use someday to crew a train. It's a great place to see in the rear-view mirror.

Remember, I'm really tired so bear with me while I wander...

The usual pre-trip gyrations of a van ride to the office, assorted phone calls, computer and paperwork etc. eventually led us to a waiting train parked just outside the terminal sometime earlier that afternoon. A relatively small and light piece of work as these things go, it idled quietly in the sun tempting me to think of other days when "run it like ya stole it" actually meant something. The old and tattered lead engine got the evil eye of suspicion from both my conductor and myself but unfortunately you don't get to pick 'em, you just get to run 'em. Nothing seemed obviously wrong except the crummy paint job and a strong scent of hot chemicals from the old toilet down in the nose. It would be dark soon so the paint would look better and open windows at track speed would blow the reek of 'eau-de-blue-stuff' out in a mile or two. Bad feelings aside, up go the grips and within minutes, off we go.

A short while later, a call from our seldom-heard but invariably-breathless dispatcher told of an opposing train out of the north with a crew on short-time in danger of running out of working hours at an inconvenient location. He inquired as to our ability to make "a good run" of about 25 miles to a siding to allow the southbound to pass without slowing it down. Do I hear opportunity knocking? This bodes well for our trip because many dispatchers won't take the chance of letting you out in front of a short-timer. It's easier and safer to just hold you were you sit and let the hot one come to you. The bad side of that is that sitting a little too much can and often does lead to yet another crew (mine) running out of time somewhere ugly later on. The fact that we might die on our hours is irrelevant for the moment however because by the time we do, the current button-pusher will be drinking beer on the deck and we'll be the next guy's problem. C'est la vie.

But back to the story..."A good run" as I learned long ago is railroad vernacular for "haul ass" and the implication is that nobody will say much as long as you don't break anything expensive or do anything that involves lawyers. This feat must be accomplished without speeding at any time of course lest much time be spent mowing the lawn and pestering a union rep. to get your job back. It's really not about going fast anyway, it's more about not going slow. Doing it right requires paying close attention to running 'on the numbers' and not spending any excess time taking in the scenery. I allowed to the voice on the radio that if he lit the lights and lined us up, I'd give it the old college try. Before he finished chatting on the radio, the throttle was all the way back and the amp meter on the way up. Let the good times roll.

When handed a rare chance to run hot, it's almost like a flashback to the way I was originally taught way back when. Some of the old-head engineers from whom learned this craft were veterans of passenger service or mail trains and they wanted you on the dot or above all the time. I learned to slide into speed restrictions on the air brakes and yank back out as the marker crossed the line lest I receive a hide-peeling for sloppy train handling. That speedometer hand was always in the corner of my eye because if the man said 50, he meant 50, not 49 and not 51. It was good training.

I also learned a thing or two about stopping as well as going. I found that a planned stop more than half a car-length from a selected target was grounds for humiliation or outright abuse. To make the conductor step sideways to reach the grab irons was characterized as being cruelly negligent to the offended ground-pounder. One guy was embarrassed enough to actually apologize to the waiting outbound crew when I blew a 'station stop' and the handrails failed to come to rest directly in front of the engineer's shoes. Times have changed but I still have nightmares of those days.

Remembering my upbringing, I got my eyes inside the cab and on the gauges to give it a run for the roses. It was actually kind of fun. The train handled like a string of coaches and we were eating up miles. The fly in the ointment came when I kicked off the brakes and got the throttle all the way back coming out of a curve. I saw the amp meter start climbing as it followed the throttle but suddenly it quivered to a stop at about 300. This is bad. It should be nearly 800 or more at this speed and we're not accelerating one bit. Visions of those grouchy old Erie men flashed before my eyes. A glance in the mirror was even less encouraging. The train behind the first two cars was completely obscured by a wall of greasy looking black smoke drooling out of the exhaust stack where there should only be heat-ripples blasting straight up. It's always something but the timing was exceedingly poor on this occasion.

I begin trying to think of what I'll say to the DS while I run through all the options of what-in-the-hell could be wrong now? When everything runs on software, the options are pretty limited. The rat-trap of a leader has betrayed me when I needed it most and was about to make a liar out of me. My vocabulary across the cab degenerated into that of the legendary drunken sailor or worse, a henpecked trainmaster at his fourth derailment of the week.

Fortunately for the remainder of the trip, I had two units but the second was shut down to save fuel and to start it now would require a complete stop and lost time while I get it fired up. Decisions, decisions. Keep going at what now looks like a slow crawl at best or come to a standstill long enough to boot up the computer and light the fires in engine number two? Either one will blow any currency I had with the Second Trick Dispatcher when his southbound outlaws because I stuck a cork in the bottle right in his face. Bad things may come of this.

In the background, questions are racing. Who's idea was it to build engines you have to go outside to start anyway? Why can't I do this from all the gee-whiz computers these things have? Do pilots climb out on the wing to crank up another engine or check the power output? Nooo...they have switches and meters INSIDE for such things. They don't even risk sending the co-pilot out on such a mission once wheels are turning and engines are burning. But not us...we have to chance sending the left-seater on a wobbly dance down the walkway to the other cab to push the buttons. That's if the guy knows how to set up all the breakers and switches in the first place. Some do, some don't, some do but won't. Or, you just hang out the anchor and stop long enough to crank it over yourself. Like I said, it's always something.

By sheerest dumb luck, just as the last poke at the computer screen behind my seat yielded no results and the radio call that would ruin the afternoon for at least five guys and banish me to sidings for months was taking shape in my head, the choice was made for me. The red-hot coal man got whacked by a defect detector, had to slow to 30 mph and that was all she wrote. His fate now sealed no matter what I did or didn't do, the pressure was off. The dispatcher gave me an atta-boy for the effort (without knowing how close it was to working out somewhat differently) and so all was well. We stumbled to a stop as the loads of soon-to-be-outlawed coal passed into the siding next to us to wait for another crew and another try. The second unit of our train dutifully lit off on my request and after a minor tussle with it's Windows Embedded operating system, announced itself ready for the rest of the evening's labors. Sometimes I miss engines with controls that would respond to a tap with a vice-grip or reset with a little prodding from a flag-stick but then I suppose re-booting is really about the same thing. Somehow though, it's less gratifying even when it occasionally works.

Let's leave this little adventure by saying the ride the rest of the way home was something less than a picnic but then, sometimes that's the way of things. Trains are usually tiring even on a good day and this one was only more so. I arrived at the new Wayward Home about daybreak and loaded the coffee machine. This at least did not require a re-boot to accomplish. I had plans for a Tour de Cure scouting expedition in the morning so what do I do? Stay up and keep on pushing.

Thus my experiment is still in full swing. It's now been a tad over 24 hours and my fingers are starting to have a hard time finding the keys on the laptop. Luckily, I'm not on-call and have a couple of days to recover while I get Son the First graduated from high school. That's the Next Big Thing and I'm looking forward to seeing the big lug do the walk. I'll probably have slept by then and with any luck, will be able to function like a human again. Hope so because my inlaws are coming over.

Until then, let the path of science go forward! Nothing is gained without sacrifice! Blah, blah, blah, etc.

The hell with sleeping...I'm going for a ride.

R&R

2011-06-14T16:19:00.002-04:00

I'm in recovery mode. I pulled another 30+ hr. day yesterday between work and home. You'd think I'd learn not to do that...or at least do it less often. Old dog, new tricks...isn't there a saying about that?

The whole thing started when I woke up at my away-from-home terminal Sunday at around 4 pm and packed to come home. This was followed by a twelve hour train ride in the dark with all the normal frustrations and dilemmas of railroading. After my usual hour-long commute, it was full daylight and the second or third wind was kicking in. Also by that time, the real world was up and around so I decided to just roll with it and not bother going to sleep all.  I know I'm not on-call Monday night and I've got stuff to do.

It always goes the same way and I know it's going to hurt before it's over but I don't want to be asleep when I'm home all the time either. All work and no play...
That one decision led to a bike ride, assorted comings and goings, my son's jazz concert and a dose of Red Cat. Let's just say the lights went out really, really fast once I hit the sheets.

But anyway, speaking of riding...My faithful road bike is at the shop getting a once-over by people who actually know what they're doing (unlike me). I'm at a loss to determine the cause of a nasty front-end shake that has made an appearance on my Trek a little too frequently of late. I pretend that I have a small amount of bicycle knowledge and I can sometimes baloney my way around the average technical conversation if I'm lucky or if the other person is an idiot but I'm out of my league with this one. I've done all I can (which isn't much) and so I must defer to the experts.

Here's the scenario: For reasons unknown, my 2.1 has decided that somewhere around 38 mph is damn-all fast enough and to remind me of that arbitrary speed limit, it suddenly goes into that above-mentioned wobble. Just as I pedal out and start letting gravity do the work, I can feel it coming now that I'm expecting it. The bars get twitchy, the road feels like greased marbles and my fingers sneak out toward the brake levers without conscious thought.

Then the fun starts. There's a moment of small vibration and then instantly, I can't steer anymore. A few too many instances of practice have taught me that the only way to break the shimmies is to snap on a little rear brake (a trick I learned from a Harley Sportster way back when) and drag off some speed until things settle down. If I'm quick enough, the wheel starts tracking in a straight line just as the adrenaline rush hits but slightly before the full blown panic attack. I might expect it but I'm never really ready for it. The whole thing is more than a little disconcerting.

An uncontrollable shudder that threatens to toss me over the bars at high speed is a bit more thrill than I typically look for these days.  Half killing yourself for the fun of it is for younger men. Flinging my fragile self through space toward the inevitable crash landing just doesn't do it for me anymore. Especially when I'm usually clad in nothing but cheap bike shorts with all the padding in the wrong place for this event, a flimsy spandex jersey that will only melt itself into the abrasions from the friction, fingerless gloves that will likewise merely burn into my palms on touchdown and a plastic helmet that won't even save my ears. When I ride the SuperGlide at highway speed, I wear leathers and heavy denim. What does that say about my intelligence while riding a bicycle? Hmmm....
I'm absolutely certain that my half-century-old hide is an extremely poor defence against asphalt zooming by at 40 mph and therefore I make every effort not to land my pink skin on that rapidly moving surface.

Thinking about it, I came up with a formula to quickly deduce the outcome of contact between human and highway:

(Skin area / Highway surface) + (Impact force / Time-of-flight) = (Hours of recovery + Unfinished ride) X (Rehabilitation / Time + Speed).

This can be further abbreviated as

THIS: (S/H)+(I/T)=(H+U)(R/T+S).

Laymen and experts alike, if they've ever ventured off the porch and out on the blacktop, know the product of this equation by it's scientific name:
Road Rash.

Road Rash is an injury that by itself is bad enough since it normally requires scrubbing dirt out of the freshly shredded wound with a stiff brush and much gritting of teeth.  Tweezers are sometimes involved for the fine stuff. Hydrogen Peroxide, alcohol or other (very necessary) disinfectants add to the entertainment value. Infection is almost a given unless you take better care of skin leaks than I usually do. Bouts of artistic profanity are the norm during treatment and again later when the bandages stick and the surgical tape rips any remaining body hair out by the roots.

These unpleasant circumstances can be and often are accompanied by concussions, fractures, sutures, a tetanus booster, sizable investments in bike repairs and the occasional hospital stay. It's even less attractive to me now that it takes twice as long to heal and hurts four times as much. There's just never been much to recommend it as far as I can tell.

Even when I had dirt bikes that ran on fossil fuel instead of leg power and contracted the dreaded rash much more often, I never really got used to the raw nerve endings. At one point I, was actually pretty good at removing the gravel, broken glass, dirt and ground-in clothing fibers from whatever was left of the skin but my interest in self-mutilation has faded some over the years.  Nope, don't want or need any new scars over the old ones and a wheel-wobble-of-death is a good way to collect some. Hence, a visit to the guys with the fancy tools was in order. I'll probably live longer.

In the interim, I took my mountain bike out for a little romp in the woods and back roads yesterday and quite frankly, got my ass handed to me. Note to self: quit being a roadie wannabe and go back out to play in the mud more often. Everything hurts this morning from horsing around with the heavier bike but I've re-discovered that riding off-pavement is still a ball. The mileage doesn't look like much but my shoulders are screaming discontent and my lungs are burning so it was a good day. Without my old riding pal Doc around, I might bleed less but I still manage to have a good time. Old dog...old tricks.

Which leads me back to recovery...I'm sort of taking it easy today while a line of drizzly showers pass through.  Letting the aches subside a little, catching up on the Wayward Home, odds and ends around the house, you know the drill. The crummy weather is supposed to clear out tonight and leave near-perfect conditions tomorrow. Could be a road day to test the 2.1 for shimmies. I'm thinking it'll likely take at least 70 or 80 miles to do a complete evaluation.

You'd think I'd learn...

The Lost Day

2011-06-05T11:42:00.000-04:00

Waiting for the phone again. Sunday is always my 'lost day' on the job I'm holding right now. I usually get home sometime Saturday and my call window starts again at midnight so I can't get too far from the flagpole or I run the risk of getting caught short on sleep. The train line-up on the computer is about as reliable as a horoscope or reading tea leaves so I gave up trying to out-fox the crew callers years ago. The safest plan to avoid eyelids-of-steel is to just figure on going to bed early and hope for the best. It's much like the NY Lottery; "Hey, you never know..."

I conked pretty early anyway. I managed to grab a couple hours of sleep after I got home Saturday morning then scooted out to run a vendor booth for our Tour de Cure team at a home-town 5K run. Got it set up next to the local lake/pond/waterfowl LZ and all was well until, in typical fashion for this spring, the sky opened up. Traffic by the booth dropped pretty substantially to say the least once the rain settled in. Eventually, even the goose patrol holding forth on the pond couldn't take it and formed up in line astern to make for shore.

All was not completely lost as we got some folks interested and sold some raffle tickets before the deluge got serious and the wind started driving water sideways under the pop-up. Wet and cold, we finally surrendered to the elements, folded the tents and vowed to fight again another day. That led to an early crash into bed and a fitful rest wondering if and when I'll get called.

But back to this morning...

My younger son's birthday is today and as usual, I'll probably miss most of it. As is so often the way, I'll just get settled into the day and the phone will go off with the a train to run. My brood says they're used to it and it's all OK but I'm not and it's not. I try to roll with the fable they tell me because it's the only way to get through it but it doesn't make me miss them less. I was gone for my wife's birthday again this year and that one too is a hurt. It comes down to the choices we make and these are awful hard. Nobody ever said it would be an easy go when I signed up for this gig but knowing about it and living it are oftentimes different things.

There'll be better days I know but in the meantime...I'll make the best of what we have and hope it's all worth it at the end of the line.

The Summer of Storms

2011-05-27T10:06:00.000-04:00

Once again the railroad threw me a curve and like always, it was strike three and I'm out. I was supposed to go to work on my regular run last night but due to that ever-invisible (to me anyway) "Big Picture", there was no train to be had. No deadhead either so here I sit. They do this stuff occasionally and it's always annoying.
I have a 24 hour call 'window' during which I have to be available at any time to go to work. That's sometimes a problem in itself in that anywhere from midnight to midnight, the phone can ring and off we go. Ever tried to be awake and rested for 24 hours straight? It's great if the call comes in the morning or even mid-afternoon but when it drags on into the late evening, it gets a little more challenging. Usually I've slept all night like a real human, got up with the brood, fooled around most of the day waiting and watching the train lineup, then about the time a normal person is thinking about slowing down and settling in...that evil electronic voice rings my cell and it's time to go. Now I've been up all day and even if I had tried to take a snooze in the afternoon, that's usually a complete waste. I can't unwind the old biological clock so true to my evolution, I'm awake during the day. It's always a dance trying to stay one step ahead of the call office and I'm certainly no Fred Astaire.

It all worked out in the end though. After I'd pretty much determined for sure that there wasn't going to be anything outbound for me, I settled down with a sandwich and watched the sky get dark and ugly off in the west. The TV started flashing thunderstorm warnings about six o'clock and kept it up every five minutes for the next two hours. I looked at the weather site and sure enough...tornado warnings to go along with the t-storms. Tornados, hail, dangerous lightning. For crying out loud, this is New York, not Kansas. We aren't supposed to be the northeast extension of Tornado Alley. I started thinking maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that I'd be home this night.

Along about eight, I decided there was nothing doing so I'd read a while and try to sleep on the odd chance that something would pop up and I'd get a call after midnight. I took one more look out the window and realized it was a lot darker out there than it should have been. I hadn't heard any thunder yet but our chubby-chicken of a dog was cowering under the table and and shivering so I knew something was going on. I decided I'd stay up a little longer and see what was coming over the hill.

In short order, the sky to the south and west started looking like it was falling in on top of us. There was a perfectly straight line between dirty white and pitch black above the southern hills, lit with lightning. A few tatters in the cloud layers almost reached the ground and were moving east faster than I thought possible. The whole sky in the south was one continuous chain of brilliant flashes and I knew that somewhere off in that direction, somebody was getting a pounding.

Odd thing was, there was almost no thunder. A few distant rumbles and bangs but not the explosions I would have expected out of such a display. That dividing line tore off out of sight but I could see a blank wall of gray rain following right behind. Before I could pull down the glass, a waterfall materialized in my lawn and instantly soaked the carpet. Through the downpour, I could see the trees whipping and bending in the suddenly violent wind. I scooted around to make sure all the windows were closed and was halfway out of my son's room when the power went off. This is not a good sign.

We scrounged up flashlights and made the rounds to be sure the house was battened down. Somewhere in there, our ever-watchful escape-artist of a cat saw a chance for a clean break when elder son went out the breezeway door to check the car windows. Opportunity knocked so the furball made a run for it. The blue-eyed feline shot down the steps and made his usual beeline to get around the corner or under a vehicle before anyone can catch him. He almost made it when he realized he'd run into a solid wall of water and wind that would either drown him, blow him into the next county or both. Suddenly the house didn't look that bad after all. It's the only time I've ever seen him rocket back in as fast as he went out. He'd probably say he meant to do that but I know he got suckered.

With no juice and no light, I perched next to a window to watch the storm. The wind was still fierce but eventually the rain slowed down and I could see beyond the end of the driveway. It was an awesome show. The entire southern horizon was lit from end to end with constant chains of lightning. It looked like strings of burning lace high up in the night. The bolts jumped from one anvil-top to another in intricate, white hot patterns and at times it looked like the whole sky was on fire. Webs of light chased back and forth from unkown origins to mysterious destinations. It might have been road maps to heaven flashing among the mountains of clouds if anyone was quick enough to read them. I've rarely seen anything like it.

Even so, it was still strangely quiet. Except for a few strikes relatively nearby, there was only distant rumbling. The heart of the storm must have been many, many miles away to be so muffled but the power of the thing to be felt and heard from so far must have been unbelievable. When nature decides to really bring it on, she doesn't fool around. After our serving of humble pie at the hands of a thunderhead, the line of storms marched off to the east and left only the peepers singing in the dark and a few encore booms of thunder to remind us who's really in charge. The electricity finally came back sometime in the early morning after we sweated all night without a fan and through the whole affair, the railroad never called. All in all, a wild and strange night.

I tend to think of the seasons in terms of the way they behave and if this is any indication...this will go down at the Wayward Home as the Summer of Storms. I think I'll keep my eye on the sky.

The Saddle Tramp

2011-05-25T09:04:00.001-04:00

I admit it...I'm a bicycle mileage hound. I don't care much about going fast but going far makes me want to hit the road again. Nothing too complicated. A few hours on the blacktop or chewing up fire roads gives me about the easiest de-stress I can find. Planning ahead makes it too complicated so the only thing I ever look at much is the weather. If only to find out how soon it's going to rain again and which way the wind is going to blow so I can tailwind for home.

I guess I'm sort of simple-minded because I can't comprehend all the nutrition planning, workout strategies, power meters etc. that 'real' roadies are supposed to be thinking about. For me, my forethought consists of get on, click in and see where the next turn leads.

Having said that...in truth, there really is one other main reason I spend so much time pounding the pedals around the countryside. Sometimes when the rain stops and the sun finally peeks out, it's worth the price of admission.

I've seen more of my own little corner of the world since I took up biking than I ever thought existed. It's always right around the next curve or over the next hill. And you never know when the next rest stop will lead to something amazing...

I've missed a goodly chunk of what's right in my own backyard zooming by it at 55 behind the wheel or twisting the wrist. Maybe it's my ever-advancing status as 'middle-aged' that slows me down to around 20...or maybe it's just the view.

Winter (Story) in Spring

2011-05-24T08:18:00.001-04:00

In keeping with my semi-serious commitment to tickle the keyboard with tales of railroading on occasion, I bring you a winter night/day/night. Names and train symbols changed to protect anybody who might still get fired over it:
(Trailer Park...are you listening? )

The weather turned to near-blizzard on the way out of the old home terminal one wintry Friday. The whole world seemed to be shutting down as the snow piled up and the wind turned from howling to out-and-out screaming but we eventually made it to our temporary home and settled in. We were figuring on being trapped up north for the weekend but lo and behold...the phone rings at 2:45 am with a call to deadhead home by train (no long-haul crew taxis allowed in bad weather...not safe you know). The caller said we'd be riding on a foreign carrier train instead of our own which is unusual but not unheard of so I didn't think much of it. She gave us a symbol of 270 and I know I heard it right because the conductor asked her to repeat it twice to him. A local taxi was supposed to pick us up at 4:15 am to take us to the yard by 4:45 and then out to the train. Well, the cab was late because of the horrible weather so we wound up getting to the yard a little past 5. I see a train (170) pulling out but didn't know at the time that that was supposed to be our ride. The yardmaster knows nothing about us deadheading on one of his trains but says that the 270 originates at another yard considerably further south so we have to taxi another hour south to catch the thing...oh and by the way...the crew's not on duty till 7:40 am. Off we go in the cab (remember, we're deadheading by train because it's not safe to be on the road in taxis) to parts unknown. I've never even seen this other yard so we have to go with the cabby's say-so that we're in the right place. We found some engines and climbed aboard with our bags to get comfy while we waited for the crew. A warm, dry haven in the storm. As advertised, they showed up about quarter to 8 and started getting ready to head out. By now, lots of people are starting to figure out that we were supposed to be on that long-gone 170, not the 270 and that the crew caller had messed up the call by giving us the wrong train symbol. We were becoming a hot property as the conductor told us that everybody in the world had called to make sure we really were with them.

After about an hour, we left town with 2 engines running light and us perched aboard the second unit watching a lot of unfamiliar scenery go by. I pretty much knew we were in for it when the dispatcher called and told the head-end crew that their connection would be late so it'd be OK to stop and grab a coffee. UH-OH. The late connection went from 10 to 11 to noon to highball the whole thing and come on down after AMTRAK goes by for Plan B.

The new twist is that we're going to wait for an empty unit train to come in with a nearly outlawed crew, tie our 2 units to his 3 and run south with the whole 99 empty salt hoppers he's got plus the 5 units. Unfortunately, he's still 35 miles away, AMTRAK is in between him and us, there's a broken joint bar behind AMTRAK, the signals are out part of the way, and the marker on the unit train is dead. These and a couple of other little complications with north bounds needing to get by and track men fixing the rail led to it being 4:10 pm before we ever left. The switches were frozen, they had to arm and hang a new marker, tie the engines together etc. and now it's looking like it's gonna be impossible for the only crew with time left to ever make it home. The 270 crew will go dead at 7:40 and us poor slobs are still only about 15 miles from where this whole fiasco started. Oops, I forgot, there was not one, but two crews on the salt train so now there's 8 men riding this freight/passenger train hoping to make port sometime before we all retire.

At long last the whole shebang launches and all's well for about 25 miles...right up until we hit the snowmobile stuck on the track. I was riding on the second unit with my semi-awake conductor when I heard the horn going non-stop and then I heard the brakes come on. I couldn't see anything because of the snow dust and the way we were bending around a curve but sure enough, the head end crew tones up the dispatcher to tell him the news. Luckily, the sled's rider had the smarts to bail off before we vaporized his machine but the ensuing interviews with the police, fire depts. etc. led to another hour delay before they released us to head south again.

Now we KNOW we're not making it in so it becomes a quiz as to where we'll end up and get in the taxi (again). Well, we made it to a siding about 40 miles short of home. In the meantime, another local crew has outlawed right next to us with three men aboard. Now we've got 11 guys dead in the water along with a truck load of grips and the assorted winter junk we have to carry. A fleet of vans is supposed to pick us up at 7:30 but because of the weather (again), they didn't get there until almost 9. Everybody piles into the 2 vans they sent out and off we go to again toward home plate. Better than an hour later, we pull into our office and bail out. By the time we finish with our tie up screens in the computer, 17 hours and 20 minutes have elapsed since we went on duty. We've spent almost 4 hours in cabs (remember, we did all this because it wasn't safe to be riding in cabs), hit a trespasser, outlasted 5 dispatchers on 2 different railroads and the crew caller that started the whole mess has now rested and will be back on duty before we ever get home.

The train master called me the next day wanting to know how we ever got a deadhead like that and asking all kinds of questions. I think he thought we made the whole thing up and just hung around stealing time. Sorry, but I couldn't lie enough to make up something like this. I guess we made the morning conference call. I sometimes wonder if somebody got their lower regions chewed for coming up with an idea like this but I doubt it. Just another day in paradise.

I keep telling myself that it's not just a job....

No News is Good News

2011-05-22T18:22:00.000-04:00

That will be all the comment I'll make on the continuation of life on Earth despite recent prognostications to the contrary. Guess we'll still have to mow the lawn...

Working On Commission

2011-05-17T14:31:00.000-04:00

I'm a little bit in awe this morning. Somebody out in blog-land (someone I didn't actually bribe or shamelessly beg) showed up on the stoop of the Wayward Home and left a trail of comment-crumbs to prove they'd been here. Yes, another sort of wayward-sounding soul from America's official retirement center, theme park and hurricane magnet (Florida) slid a note under the door with compliments and an easy request. Trailer Park Cyclist (AKA Tim Joe); I'm most encouraged and happy to oblige...

As anyone even vaguely acquainted with me knows (and how could they not since I complain about it all the time?), I'm a locomotive engineer; by accident at first and profession a while later. Yes kids, I'm a card carrying, horn tooting, sleep-challenged, freight hauler for a large eastern carrier whose initials incidentally coincide with Not Sure. This is significant mostly in that I'm Not Sure exactly when the phone will ring to call me in for another adventure in Class One railroading. It's a crap-shoot when all the planets will line up, the managers on two seperate railroads will actually speak to each other, Frodo will destroy the One Ring and Crew Management will remember to unleash the automated pet Harpy of theirs that calls my bedside phone. This was illustrated nicely on the last go-round where the best-layed plans so stereotypically went awry.

Even so, with all it's well-known vagaries and tribulations...the job "suits me" as my wife so generously puts it and I plan to make an attempt at finishing out a full tour in the right seat of a locomotive. The pay is good, there's a retirement plan that hasn't been looted yet, I happen to like what I do and on top of that, it's almost the only thing in a somewhat mis-spent life that could even remotely be thought of as a career. Unless that wrinkly MegaMillions ticket in my pocket comes in with all six numbers and I'm forced to relocate "where the weather suits my clothes" like the song or everyone suddenly decides that all their 'stuff' looks pretty good right where it is and quits paying us to move it somewhere else, the carrier is stuck with me. Or I'm stuck with them depending on how you look at it. The jury is still out...

Anyway, as my esteemed commenter observed; my railroad life is filled with an interesting and 'colorful' group of people to put it mildy. It's a remarkably small terminal where I work and as with any such community, everybody knows everything about everybody else...or at least thinks they do. We have two basic subjects of cab discussion; bitching about the railroad and raw, unadulterated, vicious gossip. When you're trapped in a tiny steel box with one or two other people for many long dark hours, conversation is the only thing that keeps you going and of course the popular topic is...everybody else. I've often said that character assassination is our specialty and my wife reports that we sound like a pack of old hens in a sewing circle whenever more than two railroaders are in a room together. Who am I to argue? The good news is that for the most part, like Vegas 'what's said in the cab, stays in the cab' and while we may shred each other mercilessly, few incidents of open warfare seem to erupt. Like the true adolescents we are, we get mad and then a few minutes later get over it.

Some of that is just practicality...it's tough to not be at least civil with someone when out of necessity you're forced to work with them for extended periods in tight quarters. Then there's the realization that at times, you literally have the other guy's life in your hands. It's sobering to know that some mistakes on my part can easily kill or maim someone and that reality kind of puts the minor personality conflicts in perspective. It pays to not sweat the small, unimportant stuff when you work with such unforgiving monstrosities (the trains...I said, not the crews).

Over the long haul though, the people I've worked with and for have been a good bunch of folks. There's been the usual assortment of 'tools' but on the main, we look out for each other. The way to get through the madness is with other madness and quite often, a laugh or two. Case in point...

My first week on the property as a trainee was with a local switcher crew in a small yard that handled some industries and put together a train or two 5 days a week. The engineer and conductor were both old-heads (a not-entirely-clear designation that could mean they know what they're doing and will help you or they're obstinate pricks and hate you) who'd been at this game for about 80 years between them. The CO was a veteran of long-gone passenger service and since I was his problem to deal with, he eyed me with some distrust and informed me that my job would be limited to staying where he could see me and trying not to get killed on his watch. He was matter-of-fact in that the paperwork on a fatality was extensive and it was his night to play cards so my death would be most inconvenient. Touching.
My own initial assessment of this guy was likewise jaded by the fact that he looked like a Salvation Army thrift store had exploded and he'd been severely wounded by the clothes racks. He was an apparition in pastel polyesters and gaudy stripes that by all laws of nature should have annihilated each other in a fireball on contact. I lived through the '70s once and hoped that I'd seen the last of bell bottom stretch slacks but here they were again 20 years later; in full color...surrounded by cigarette smoke and gray hair, only partially obscured by a beat-up fishing vest festooned with pens, radio, assorted papers and other unidentifiable paraphernalia trying to escape the pockets. He was the wardrobe statement of the year but fortunately his railroad skill and patience far exceeded his fashion sense...and he turned out to be pretty pleasant to be around.

I was so new that I didn't even have a radio or switch keys so I was basically useless and couldn't do much but follow around the yard like a lost puppy. They casually spoke a language I didn't understand and worked away at accomplishing what to me looked like nothing. All the while, my keeper kept up a running commentary which might as well have been aimed at the rails. It was too much at once and I couldn't make heads or tails out of any of it. Cars moved back and forth on tracks, the engine came and went and all the while, my new mentor chattered on the radio, smoked continuously and made sure I didn't interfere with his card game. I was fascinated...baffled but fascinated. Eventually, the CO tired of holding my leash so he suggested I ride on the engine for a while.

This was the realm of another aristocracy who at least didn't have to worry about where I was standing as long as I didn't fall out the door. He was just as concerned for my safety as the conductor but instead of cards, by the fact that this was his bowling night and the loss of a trainee would probably mean a late start on his first frame. The sentimentality of these guys was overwhelming.
He allowed me to watch his incomprehensible doings and also turned out to be pretty personable. No one previously had mentioned the fact that sooner or later, I'd be required to become an engineer but he dropped that bomb on me about mid-morning and just grinned when I told him I'd likely be 100 years old before I could run an engine.
"You'll be fine", he said. "Just keep your eyes open and your lips shut and you can have this seat when I take my pension."
As it turns out, I was and did on the first through third counts and didn't on the last. I still can't touch his old job but wound up sooner-than-later making the trek to Engine School and ended up holding the same title, if not the daylight, Mon. through Fri. switcher.

Those first few days became a lot of days and a lot of nights for the next dozen years but I still laugh about the wardrobe disaster that led me through my blind walks on the yard lead and will always be grateful he didn't let me mess up his card game. We became good friends and worked together many times after those early days. He's retired now but I still catch up with him now and again...and the really funny thing is...I haven't noticed if he wears polyester anymore or not.

Dark to Light...The Missing Call

2011-05-15T06:36:00.001-04:00

Time flies when you're having fun...so the saying goes. Unless you're waiting for the phone to ring to call you to work.
Looking out from my perch in the kitchen, dawn is just cracking over in the east and I've been up since 4 am to see it. Why would anyone be up at 4 in the morning if they didn't really have to? Well, I took a look at the train lineup yesterday afternoon and saw what looked like my usual gig planned for the wee-hours of Sunday. Uh-oh. Quick run through the shower and pack up the grip for an early start, then hit the sheets to grab what looked like a couple hours of shut-eye before the call. I even woke up around 1 and hit the automated line to check on it...sure enough...ordered for 0440. Back to sleep for a little more snooze time. The next squint at the clock showed 3 o'clock and the phone should have chirped at 0240. No call and no messages. Now what? Check in with CMC to find out why the train went but I didn't. Turns out they're 'saving' my pool to use at some point later today on something else. Great. So, now I've slept almost eight hours, it's still zero-dark-thirty, I'm wide awake and the birds aren't even stirring yet. A futile attempt to close the lids back down ended in frustration and soon had my feet hitting the floor. Dogs out, coffee on. Browse email and surf a little. Watch day break rainy and cool. That's how it's gone so far.

I should be used to this after all these years but sometimes I still get fooled and wind up sleeping on the wrong end of the day. I'll pay for it later after I've been up for hours.

Oh well, the birds are singing now even though it's raining and the dogs shrugged and went back to sleep. I guess I'll take the quiet in the kitchen and be glad I got to watch the day creep in from home instead of work. I've seen enough daybreaks through a windshield.

The Why of it All

2011-04-21T10:59:00.000-04:00

I used to wonder sometimes about the string of co-incidences that led me to the Tour de Cure. At first glance, it looked like an easy, low pressure local ride and not much else. The cause was secondary to the attraction of the chance to ride my first Century and entering my first organized event since I took up biking again. I hadn’t really thought about the implications of diabetes and what the Tour meant much beyond that 100-mile goal of mine.

As happens, one thing led to another and a glance at the Tour website found that my employer had corporate teams riding in Virginia and Georgia. A spur-of-the-moment Sunday email to the COO soon had us off and running as the northern-most branch of Team NS Thoroughbreds and suddenly there was more to this than I originally bargained for.

We fumbled our way through the first year without much of a clue as to what we were doing but wound up having a ball and actually raising enough in donations to come in third in fundraising. A week later, I was planning for the next team.

Still, the real reason for it all remained a little hazy. I knew what we were doing was important in a distant sort of way but the ride and the team were the big focus. The disease and the goals stayed in the background of my thinking. Now it’s another year and now at last, it’s all starting to fall together, the how and more importantly, the why of Team Thoroughbreds and the Tour de Cure. I owe it to Leanne and Donnie.

Leanne is the daughter of my good friends Donnie and Sandy Cardone. ‘Cardie’ as I soon came to know him, was the first real live railroader I ever met when I was first kicking around the idea of taking up the profession. He pretty much talked me into it and has been my sounding board and advisor in a pinch for almost 14 years ever since. Luck had it that at one point, I could even hold an engineer spot on his job for a while. I learned more working with him than anywhere else since engine school and amazingly, we managed to have a good time doing it. Even after he retired and left ‘The Lakeshore Express’ for good, we kept in touch and got together once in a while to do what railroaders do best; drink coffee, gripe about the railroad and catch up on who’s doing what and where.

I knew Donnie had diabetes from watching his struggles when we worked that all-night local together and I knew Leanne had had it since she was young as well. I only actually met her once but felt like I knew her through her Dad. You find out just about everything when you spend 12 hours in a locomotive cab with someone night after night for months.

He told me in bits and pieces about Leanne’s long battle with diabetes; the hospital stays, endless tests, medications, late-night crisis’, setbacks and victories. All the while, he managed his own illness and worked a demanding job to maintain the medical coverage they both needed. I looked up to Donnie and often wondered if I could do as well.

A few days ago, I heard the sad news that Leanne had lost her fight and passed away suddenly at the young age of 41. The day before her memorial, I saddled up and rode over to see Cardie and Sandy. I can’t imagine losing one of my kids so I really didn’t know what I was going to say. I shouldn’t have worried. Donnie was just coming out the door when I rolled up and in his usual way; he smiled and shook my hand. He looked tired as well he should but through it all, he still had that smile. I knew right then why I’m doing this. It took a while but now I know.

It’s for Leanne, for Donnie and Sandy, for everyone who fights this thing every day and still manages somehow to smile. For everyone who’s had to say goodbye too soon. For everyone who’s said to me, “Hey, I have diabetes too” or “I know someone who has diabetes.”

For all of them and all of us.

I knew without a doubt right then that the Finger Lakes NS Thoroughbreds would be riding in memory of Leanne Cardone. When Donnie shook my hand, I knew that her struggle against diabetes would be our motivation.

Something good will come of this. When we head out as Team NS Thoroughbreds on the Tour de Cure this August, we’ll carry another name with us. When we ride, we’ll ride for someone we lost along the way. A friend most of us never knew and a family whose fight against diabetes is an inspiration. Cardie and Sandy are coming to see us off and I know he’ll still have that smile. When we ride, we’ll ride

For Leanne

100

2011-04-03T22:01:00.000-04:00

Well, I popped open my dashboard (on the blog...not my truck) and noticed that this will be my 100th post...if I ever finish it. Sometimes these things take days to get off my keyboard and out into blog-space. This one is shaping up that way but in time, it will become my Century Post. Big deal? Not really but it's a landmark of sorts and hence worth at least a passing nod.

100 of anything is one of those milestones that everybody strives for or at least notes when it sails by. 100 years old is worth shooting for isn't it? Hell, speaking of sailing by, I'd settle for 100 bucks in spending cash right about now after the only 10 I had left flew from my clip, spent on coffee and crummy diner food to get me through my last 'round trip. Face it...100 is a magic number.

I should know. Just for example, my first Century bicycle ride was a pretty major event. 100 miles is a stiff investment in effort and time for an old guy like me so I was ecstatic when I finally cranked off enough practice rides to go the whole way. If I live long enough, like over 100...I might make 100 100's and that would be a real Guinness moment (the record book...not the beer). One Zero Zero was the benchmark I spent years building up to and now that I made it, it's on to bigger and better things but that first one will always be THE FIRST.

Then just by chance, I swung by my Book of Face page and found that the last person who be-friended my ethereal self brought my tally of electronic acquaintances to an even 100. What are the odds? More to the point, what are the odds that 100 people actually have enough interest in what I'm about that they drop in? Keep this up and I'll have 100 questions.

Maybe I should have played all 100s on the Mega ticket I so foolishly wasted 100 cents on. Then again...7 was the lucky number for the people who bought into that office pool in Albany. They now have the tough decision of whether it's worth it to work another day or maybe thinking it's better to just shack up with their post-tax millions and call it a career. Me, I'd keep working. You never know when 19 million might run out. That's too many hundreds to even think about.

Anyway, 100 just seems like a cool number for some reason. So I'll finally finish my Century Post and call it a day like any other except that a milestone has passed and there'll never be another one like it. Important? Not really, just a note and a nod on the Wayward Home.

The Way Back

2011-03-15T00:06:00.000-04:00

Today I'm going back about as far as I can go.

Have you ever had a flash of the past hit you out of nowhere? A picture from some otherwhen that just pops into your head? Maybe some gray and fuzzy old pages out of a mental album? Everybody probably has at one time or another. You have a deja-vu moment from way back when and it feels like it might have been important somehow. But then as fast as it came, it's gone; swept back into dusty corners by bright sunlight and busy days. Whatever it was, you don't have time to fool with it and it was so long ago, it doesn't matter anyway.
But then again, maybe by some chance sometime, the old, faded photo sticks for a moment and you pay attention for a while.  That happened the other day and as things do...one led to another.

I was just kind of idling at the table with my coffee, ticking over easy before the usual rush to get out the door. From wherever it was buried and for whatever reason, out of the blue I remembered a memory. I have no idea what brought it on and I guess it doesn't really matter. It was suddenly there out of the fog and just like that, I was somewhere I hadn't been in a very long time.  Before I knew it, there were more dimly recalled places and people out the past and for a little while that morning, I was thinking of things I hadn't thought of in decades.

The trigger was a gauzy picture in my head that seems kind of like a worn out newspaper photo. It was of me watching my Mom working on an old dresser. She was getting it ready for my baby brother, painting and fussing with it. I can even see the room she was in. I was only about two years old when he was born, is it even possible to remember that far back?

That quick flash made me dig a bit more until I came across a very faded, dim memory of my long-gone Grandma Thorton. It's an impression more than a memory but I can feel her in a rocking chair in a living room somewhere. It's dark and I can't see her face but I remember her and I know it's her. Somehow, it's comforting to know that I know.

From there, I poked around in the cracks and found another old picture of me running home from the neighbors house across the road, scared and confused because Mrs. Brown was crying and I didn't know why. My mother told me that the president was dead and I think she cried too. I remember the television was on and everyone was afraid. I couldn't understand it but I remember it. John F. Kennedy was killed in 1963 when I was four. How can I still have that stashed away?

I went on down the alley and found more than I can believe. Where did I keep the pictures of my Grandfathers house and the feeling of how it frightened me? How do I still remember the big clock and box of wooden blocks. How did I know he didn't like us much even when I was so small?

I tripped over the Sunday jaunts in the station wagon to 'check the store' when Dad was a grocery man. Not much was open on Sunday then and he had to make sure the coolers stayed on until Monday morning. We rode cardboard boxes on the rollers and conveyors that ran around the storeroom and chased each other on pallet carts up and down the aisles. Dad would let us read the comics on the rack as long as we put them back when we were done. Sometimes there was an ice cream cone afterwards but I mostly remembered the cool, dark grocery store with the big curved windows and rows of deserted cash registers. It was like another world.

Somewhere too there's visions of a cottage on the St. Lawrence that was our vacations for a while. I can picture a big back porch and an ancient record player that cranked out "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" over and over. I can see the river and the path down to the dock through the weeds but not much else. Another summer hideout was a place on Seneca Lake that had a big dock and a million steps down to the water. Seems like it rained a lot but it's so faded that I can't be sure.

I found the the worn out memories of hand-me-down bikes, old hand-pushed reel lawn mowers, the two-wheeled garden tractor with a Radio Flyer full of kids wired to the drawbar, my oldest brother coming home from the Navy with stitches from a car crash, my sister going out on Friday with a pack of girlfriends, another brother in leather riding out on a chopper and that same younger brother with the now-old-again dresser who helped build a plywood fort and who fought epic battles with arsenals of crab apples from the backyard tree. Tucked away among the cobwebs was pictures of snowdrifts higher than our heads and a parade of much-loved but long-forgotten dogs. There's parts of me almost completely lost. Small things like being terrified of thunderstorms and airplanes. Laying in bed watching car headlights move across my wall at night and having nightmares from watching scary movies with the big kids; and larger things too, like a long line of friends now gone and a string of places now long unseen. Names like Hally, Tim, Laura, Lallie, Ronnie, Clara, Donnie, Carl, Frank, Susan, Ginny and all the rest...what became of them and how do I still remember them? How much more and how many others are hidden in old desk drawers in the back of my head? Sitting there at the table, I knew I'd never know.

Much as I'd like to, I doubt I'll ever be able to sit still long enough to sort out all that stuff I've got stashed away in back of my eyes and between my ears. That's a luxury for when I can park on the porch swing and watch the world go by, not today. I'll bore my grandkids with reminiscing someday because that's what grandfathers do when they're not spoiling them. For now, it's enough to spend a few minutes remembering and tapping it out.

Someday, I'll just have to walk back gently and knock quietly at the door to the old times and peek a little more. There's a danger in hanging around and spending too much of the right-now in the back-then so I'll wait for the opportune time.  I know there's a whole pack of old hurts lurking about somewhere that are better off left undisturbed. You bury some things because you need to and there's no good to come of opening up scars that have healed or dancing again with demons that you put down years ago. But every once in a while, I don't think it does any harm to take a couple of breaths, turn off the world and look all the way back. What you are comes from there after all.

If you're careful and tread lightly, it's like digging in any old attic or musty garage. There's treasures to be found among the boxes and in the far corners. You just have to close your eyes and look.

18

2011-03-06T14:21:00.000-05:00

A milestone of sorts this week. Elder Son turned 18 a few days ago and I'm left wondering how and when all that happened. He's suddenly ridiculously tall, wears sneakers big enough to chock the wheels on an airliner and occasionally shaves the patchy fuzz on his lip. It looks like the real deal no matter how much I try to deny it, his days of little-boy stuff are pretty well over.

I guess it's a common thing among parents as their offspring get older. You get used to thinking of them as...well, children. They're small, high-maintenance packages that you can't let out of your sight for a while then with startling abruptness, you've got a near-grownup in residence across the hall. A living, breathing semi-adult that you occasionally have to ask for technical advice on Skype or your iPod but who still needs your cash card to go to the movies. The 6'2" adolescent tower sprawled out in front of a flat-screen with a computer on his lap and a cell phone in his hand can now vote, drive all night (with my gas of course), enlist in the military, buy his own 'M' rated video games and work full time (eventually) but in some ways, I still see him as my kid. A much larger package to be sure but kid nevertheless. Some things don't leave behind too easily. I should know.

It's an odd combination of child and adult that just breezed by me at the computer, tormented the cat in passing and wiped out the 'fridge again. He's dating a sweet girl who's already in college and acting above his age about it but at the same time, he's still hooked on X-Box and continuously has to be reminded to let the dogs out. His room stays in much better shape these days (now that there's a girl in the picture) but smelly t-shirts are an ongoing issue and the Malibu may blow up before he remembers to check the oil. God help him if he has to change a tire. The big lug stuck to his guns and got in at a community college even after the disappointment of not being accepted into the same school as his girlfriend but gives me grief about loading the dishwasher. All things in their own time I guess. He still surprises me at times with conversation of a caliber that I don't get from many of my of-age acquaintances so I know he's a thinking creature, reluctant maybe but thinking nonetheless. That in itself is a victory for us; to bring up a young man who can and will use his head for more than a place to hold sunglasses. The ability to consider and question is a good trait to have and it looks like he found it.

I told Older-Son and his brother once upon a time that the only thing I wanted of them was to grow up not just men, but good men. Good men before and above all else. I think the both of them are headed in the right direction.

They're the best guys I know (parents are allowed to say that), even when the dishes aren't done and all the lights are on in the house. But no matter how many birthdays and milestones pass, they'll always be kids to me...our kids, my sons. The best part of us.

Now get off your butt and go pick up your socks...

Just A Cold Day At The Office

2011-02-27T09:57:00.000-05:00

It's always something. I got a call a while ago to do a re-crew job instead of my regular point A to point B gig. Sort of unusual but not unheard of and I didn't particularly mind. Hey, a little variety once in a while is ok sometimes.

Turns out, a southbound crew had had a pack of trouble with their train along the way and had run out of time right on the main track. They effectively become a cork in the bottle until somebody got there to take over and get the thing moving again. We were nominated to hop in a van, chase them down and take the train on south. Since we got about three different versions of where the train was parked, it took quite a while to actually find the crossing where they ended up but eventually, the cavalry came riding out of the sunset to the rescue.

Turns out there was a couple of railfans equipped with video already there waiting for something to move. I've seen these same photogs out and about many times chasing us around the area but this time they got us starting out from a standstill instead of just rollling by.
Here's the results...

Thanks for the video guys...to me it's just a cold day at the 'office' but it's kinda nice to put on a show while we're at it.

Desperation Ride

2011-02-17T11:17:00.000-05:00

I couldn't resist. The thermometer cracked 40 yesterday and I went out on the mountain bike. Yeah, I remember I groused a whole blog post about the cold and hating it so much but I'm also about done with being a houseplant. So sue me...

The plan was to drag out one of my old battleships...a two-wheeled, double-sprung, much-abused steel monstrosity from a big-box that weighs almost as much as my truck. Heavy, slow, expendable, this is the tool most suitable for a ride in the salt and slush; I knew I kept it around the shed for some reason.

In another winter, I destroyed a similar big lug (actually, dissolved is a better word) cruising on salty winter roads. Everything on it rusted solid in one season and no amount of WD-40 could bring it back. Even the freewheel developed a nasty little suprise once the rust reached inside the cogs...it became common for it to lock up at random moments; a pesky inconvenience which made the bike into the worlds most dangerously unpredictable fixie. You never knew when the ratchet would catch while coasting and at the very least, fling your feet off the pedals and bang your knees on the bars or at worst, toss your feet off and then jam the pedal against your calf. This would lead to some 'epic' elephant skids and usually wad up the whole works in a roadside pile. I'm really happy I hadn't discovered clipless pedals back then. The idea of being locked onto cranks rotating like a washer on spin gives me visions of ambulance rides and knee replacements. It was all thrilling for sure but not especially enjoyable.

I foresaw a similar fate for the current corrodable occupant of the garage. A quick twist of the front derailleur shot down 'Plan A' though as the cable instantly parted at the bottom of the guide loop that 'Excitor' cleverly designed to retain any and all moisture where it can do the most damage. That left the Trek up to bat. I hated the idea of taking aluminum out in the crud but figured I'd stick to the trails if I could and avoid as much salt as possible. Lucky for me, the snowmobiles have packed the paths as hard as a sidewalk and a couple of above-freezing days followed by clear, cold nights have iced everything solid on top. Following the posted trails over the hill behind my house worked out pretty well except for an occasional drop into a soft spot that brought me down to a crawl. Oh, how out of shape I am. The climb up the hill damn near killed me and those stretches of softer snow just about buried me. Who's idea was this anyway?
Eventually, I crested on the hilltop and stopped long enough for the fire to go out in my legs and my heart to quit pounding all the way up to the back of my eyeballs. Whoever said it was cold out is a liar, I'm sweating like a galley slave. As a side observation: You know, the world looks really strange when seen with a fuzzy purple fringe around the edge of your vision, the one you see right before you pass out from lack of oxygen. No, I didn't pass out...yes, I wanted to. Kids, I'm telling you true...I'm REALLY out of shape.

Once my breathing slowed a little and my heart settled to the point of no longer feeling like I needed a pacemaker, I collected myself, looked around and remembered one of the reasons why I started doing this in the first place...the view from the top:

I wound up in an open field on top of a hill with a view over the whole hometown valley. Once again, I'd stumbled onto a place within a couple miles of home that I've never seen before. If one thing hadn't led to another, I would have missed it again. Makes me think I probably won't live long enough to see all the horizons, hidden little wonders and small mysteries to be found right in my own back yard...but it'll be worth a try.

A bit of R&R and now it's back down the other side of the hill. This was all new to me but I know every marked trail has to come out somewhere so damn the torpedoes and down we go. This piece of trail wisdom (or lack of) has led to some unplanned adventures before. It is true that sooner or later, you'll pop out of the woods someplace so it's pretty hard to get lost, the catch is that you never know what might be lurking in between where you are and where you'll pop. There's some really steep and deep places around here that are sucker traps for the unwary. Routes that are designed for vehicles burning dead dinosaurs are particularly risky as the trail blazers don't worry too much about long, steep climbs when all they have to do is push a little harder with their right thumb to get out. Wide, cleated tracks turned by big engines are one thing, I on the other hand have skinny, mostly worn out tires powered by very low octane old legs. I've had to accept defeat and walk out more than once.
This time, I got lucky and no 'portage' was involved. It was all descent...and steeper descent...and switchbacks...and ice...and soft snow...then a drop like a cliff followed by the sudden stop of the front wheel in a rut without proper notification to the rear. I clearly remember watching Doc smacking himself in the back of the head with his own rear tire on a downhill once and now I know how it's done. His classic endo tossed him in the pricker bushes though while I only fluffed to a landing upside down and half-unclipped in a Kama Sutra position, spitting dead leaves and tangled in bike, brush and a snowbank. There's times like this when it's better to be riding alone as no one is there to laugh out loud while trying to sound sympathetic when you embarrass your silly self so blatantly. Unless you happen to fracture your skull on the landing it's better. Some things I'd rather not think about.
Unwinding from the contortions, I found no harm done but to pride so I got off easy. I guess you have to pay somehow when you wander blindly around the woods in the dead of winter and this one was cheap.

Now being soaked from shoulders to chamois from rolling in wet snow, I concluded that that was about the end of trail riding for the day. I tiptoed down the rest of the sled path and found myself on a familiar dirt road. I decided against any more bushwhacking unless something presented itself that I couldn't refuse. As things were warming up, the trails were getting more and more sloppy anyway and the burning legs weren't having anything to do with climbs in two inches of mush. I say to myself, "Self, it's a mountain bike, not a snow machine stupid, you're ridiculously weak right now and the next crash-landing might not be so easy...ride the back roads home and stay out of the drifts. Duh." I'll go with that.

Concluding that it'll be a couple more rides before I'm ready for the big time again, I tucked tail and headed up the frozen dirt trying not to hit the salty mud puddles any more than I had to. Save the bike at least.

Yeah, it's still winter out there but there's at least hope for spring I think. Doesn't look like it in my last shot of the afternoon taken somewhere along one of those half-frozen dirt roads but I have faith.
After one more go at a trail which failed spectacularly, I managed to slog back into my driveway with the light fading and the temp. dropping. Only 12 miles and change for the outing so not really a prizewinner or record-setter by any means but with luck, yesterdays little soiree in the snow is only the start of a really good year in the hills. I have faith.

Is It Spring Yet?

2011-02-13T17:48:00.000-05:00

Like everyone except skiers, snowmobilers and other assorted 'hardy' types, I'm looking out the window, watching it snow, groping my way through winter and waiting for the first glimmer of spring. They say every year in the lead-up to winter that "it's going to be a bad one" and this time the naysayers might just have been right.

I know, I know; if you live in NY, you have to expect crummy weather about 2/3 of the time anyway but by this point in the year, I've had about enough of the cold. Nothing against you winter sports people but there's something about volunteering to go out in the snow unless you really have to that doesn't make much sense to me any more. To each his own I guess but I'd rather be just a tad warmer in my old age. Wet feet, aching knees and numb fingers have very little appeal to me anymore even if I wanted to tempt the fates and go outside. Snow shoveling is pretty much my limit and I believe I've also had about enough of that for the year as well. The driveway will have to melt it's own self 'cause I don't think I'm scraping it by hand again.

I think of the days when I rode a motorcycle almost all year-round and wonder how in hell I ever managed it. My face would get so cold I thought it would shatter and it took all my upper-body strength just to pull in the clutch. My leathers froze solid more than once while out riding somewhere in December or January but I rarely surrendered until I couldn't get out of the driveway anymore because of the snowdrifts. When it really got down there, the old scoot would sometimes give up to the almost-solidified 50 weight oil and refuse to start. No problem. I'd jump the thing off the car battery and force it back to life but would I drive the car? Nope. Just add more layers and saddle up. Ahh, to be young and tough. And stupid, really stupid.
I distinctly remember drafting trucks on the interstate to get out of the wind and sleet riding north from Florida in October once upon a time. Or hunting desperately for a motel in a New England snowstorm after we got run out of Montpelier Vermont by the local cops (another good story for another day). New Years day and 15 below was probably the dumbest of moments but getting smacked in the face by an early-spring robin when it was about 25 above hurt the worst.
There's a line between dedicated and idiotic that I crossed repeatedly up 'till about 15 years ago but as time went on, those kinds of escapades made my knees ache for days and bleeding windburn lost a lot of its appeal. Most times lately I don't even feel like venturing out to my truck to go to work when the temperature is below 30. I think that's why I put the old Hog on the cover for now...a reminder that shortly after the inevitable season of mud will come a season of warm and I won't feel so much like living under a rock. We'll ride again but the frost will be out of the ground and the salt off the blacktop before it happens.

The one and only consolation of winter in my opinion is that once in a while, the sun does peek out on a fresh snow and the world actually becomes a postcard place.

Trust me, it looks a whole lot prettier in the daylight photo than it did when I was trying to drive home at three in the morning. The snow was much less impressive when it was pitch dark out, the snow was blowing sideways in the wind and even the plow guys hadn't ventured out of their lairs for time-and-a-half yet. The only tracks on the road for the last 15 miles of my commute were my own.

There has to be an end to this. I get so I'd do anything to see green again and dump the winter gear out of my grip. I'll hang up the Carhartts and put away the snow shovels soon enough but 'till then, it's still winter out there and the old guy is bundling up for another trip.

Busted Flat...Waitin' For a Train.

2011-02-01T17:20:00.001-05:00

It's a Sunday again...or at least it was when I started this entry. And it's another one of those days. I'm reminded of that line from my old girl Janice. She was in Baton Rouge but Pearl knew what it was like..."...feeling near as faded as my jeans." She sang her throat raw on the blues and died young but she knew. Waiting to go to work and watching the snow fall. I'm sick of winter and cold and wet and dark. I need some sunshine. Yeah...I need some sunshine.

Looking Over My Shoulder (In more ways than one)

2011-01-19T22:13:00.001-05:00

I've been dragging my feet again. Seems like there's never enough hours between trips to do all the stuff that needs doing...to say nothing of the stuff that HAS to be done. Little things like spending 5 hours shoveling the driveway last week. My shoulder still aches from that one. I must be getting old...I've pitched snow and every other material that would fit on a shovel by hand since I can remember what a shovel was, now it hurts. You know what I call this blog: "Adventures in Middle Age"...well, this middle age crap is not much of an adventure sometimes. I wish AARP would take me off their mailing list so I wasn't reminded all the time.
Another milestone is coming up next week but I'll just let that one go by without much comment. It's one of those 'as soon as you turn 50 you have to do this' things that have suddenly crept up on me. I don't even want to think about it.

Billy Connolly describes the process so much better than I could anyway so I'll let him take it from here...Parental Guidance Suggested!

I can't wait.

_______________________________

In the meantime, I actually have been busy doing stuff around the Ponderosa. One example: I finally got around and wired the first and second level for sound over the last couple days. I missed having music playing all the time and that was one of the things that'll make this house my house. It wasn't absolutely necessary but it sort of feels more like home.

Chasing Monster Cable through the walls and figuring out series/parallel wiring brought back memories of building speaker arrays back in my DJ days. I built up a set that could bring on auditory destruction and possible hemorrhages at short range. I miss those big stacks of but they were a little much to keep for a home stereo when I got out of the business so I let them go. Wish I hadn't. There's a whole population of future scions of industry and government that will never hear high frequencies or possibly much of anythng else because of that gear. Those tweeters sounded like bacon frying at 120 decibels when you got too close and having your head six inches from the cabinet with everything in the red was definitely much too close. It felt like icepicks in your head to me so I rarely ventured out front when I was really on the sliders hard but the drunk and foolish couldn't feel their eardrums disintegrating and so partied up close and personal with the cabs every time. I saw extensive future sales of Miracle Ears down the line every time we played one of the Greek houses.
The highs and mids were factory but I built the bottom ends from scratch out of used 3/4" plywood, sawing away after hours at the Buildings and Grounds shop I worked in at the time. They were cut from some old Altec Lansing A-7 'Voice of the Theater' plans I scrounged up somewhere and took most of a winter to cut, screw, glue and sand. They were always pretty rough looking in plain old hardware-store flat black even when they were done but I loaded them up with new Peavey Scorpions that moved enough air to rattle the frat boys' piercings and pushed a pair of 1200 watt Crowns to the limit driving them. It wasn't to unusual to have stuff shaking off the walls in the early evening followed by visits from Campus Security before it was over. Even from my perch out of the line of fire behind them, my teeth would vibrate sometimes. It was impossible to play records anywhere near the lows without cutting way back on the equalizer to kill the feedback through the tonearms. How anyone could be out front for four hours at a crack was beyond comprehension. I loved those babies but they were huge and even a house as big as Old Drafty just couldn't handle the mass. It was a bad day when I sent them down the road.

In hindsight, I should have kept at least a pair of my secondary system's SP-2s and a CS-800 to fill in some of the corners of the living room had I known how everything would shake out. That old 20/20 thing...
After all the head-scratching and wire stringing this week, I've got it sounding pretty good for what I've got these days. It ain't too bad but that pro gear was the stuff so the glassware and wall hangings will be safe. Eventually though, I'll get the place set up so I can zip the lid off the turntable case at the drop of a hat and 'put the needle on record' like old times. It won't be the pounding of the frat party days but it'll do. The neighbors are going to hate me.

Enough Already

2011-01-05T20:55:00.000-05:00

Now it's back on the trainer and back off the feed bag. The scales in the bathroom scolded me yesterday and the ones at the clinic where I had my physical only confirmed the bad news. I've become significantly more massive since I went on the Enola job a few months ago. The hours are different on this run and the mileage considerably longer and as a result, I've pretty much stopped working out. Comfort food and I have also obviously become much too well acquainted. Now comes the payback. I was really slamming the weights and 'mill at the crew hotel up in Saratoga but this trip is quite a different ball game so I've fallen by the wayside more than I care to think about. Besides, we tend to get out of there as soon as we're legally rested which means sleep fast and saddle up again without much extra time to fool around. Then there was the holidays...

I tried to keep up the pace for a while on the new job but the gym in the hotel where we stay is pretty sparse and the treadmill has a deck that's harder than sidewalk so it hurts my knees to run on it. There's also a communal 'fridge and microwave in the exercise room with the resultant continuous foot traffic in and out. It sort of breaks up any attempt at concentration and makes your workout kind of like running laps in the lobby of a Burger King. You're trying to be good when some guy strolls in and nukes two dozen wings and half a pizza then pauses to watch Oprah on the big screen while he gnaws it all down to bones and wax paper. In the meantime another yahoo ambles over and chats with Mr. Sausage and Pepperoni about what's good at the nearby sub shop while his leftover apple pie from McD's warms up. Picture yourself in Planet Fitness if they moved it to the food court. To say I had a hard time staying on-task is putting it mildly.
As I was running with this sideshow going on, I got thinking of the idiot who wound up in the bed next to me when I was in the hospital last year...now that's another story: I've probably told this one before...or not...

I was on a zero-food restricted diet for over a week prior to surgery which in and of itself isn't all that bad once you get over the hungries at the beginning. The bad news came when in the midst of not eating anything that couldn't go in the tube in my arm, they imported some sort of Hatfield/McCoy type with a broken hip and an appetite the size of Ohio to be my roommate. This skinny guy with a traction rig couldn't get out of bed but he certainly could and did eat everything that didn't eat him first. He must have had the metabolism of a nuclear reactor to demolish the food he did, lay still for months and still not weigh more than 160 including all the rods and screws holding his lower extremities together. It was an awesome thing to behold. He destroyed the hospital menu first then sent two of his kin out for more vittles. They passed the end of my bed on the return trip with about four bags each full of delicacies from every fast-food joint in a six block radius. I'm not much on greasy burgers and deep-fried anything in the best of times but when you haven't had a morsel in days, everything smells good. I was in agony trying to block out the sound of lip-smacking and trough-wallowing, not to mention the scent of eau-de-french-fry that came through the privacy curtain. They repeated the ceremony about five times in the first day alone. I was convinced that if I heard one more chorus of, "Did you try the cheese fries honey?" or "How about some more nuggets Sweetie?", my ears would bleed. I could cheerfully have murdered them all if I had had a way to get loose from the IV. I figured I could plead insanity or self-defense and no court in the land would convict me.

Worse yet was the flip side to all that chowing down. After the menagerie trotted off in the evening to tend the still or whatever, the bottomless pit in splints started whining for the nurse to bring him a bedpan. By the time that stunning performance came to a noisy and pathetic close, the poor floor nurse was gagging and I was close to strangling myself with my own heart monitor. I vainly hoped my ailing gall bladder would simply explode so I could die quickly and never, ever again experience such olfactory misery. I wished repeatedly for firearms to use on either him or me. At the time, I didn't care which. Requests to ship the bum back where he came from got nowhere for another full day until Chris reached the end of her rope and lost her cool with the head nurse in a very vocal fashion. This is one of her specialities when the going gets tough and it's usually spectacular if not always effective. This time it was both. In pretty short order (no pun intended) after the blast, I was suddenly moved out to a suddenly available room down the hall to spend the duration with another patient in straits similar to my own ie., no food unless it would fit through a needle. I left the reddest of the rednecks to consume himself to death and digest in peace for all I cared.
The rest is another tale.

But I digress...it's a good story (it even happens to be true) but only a sideline to where I started and convincing evidence that I have the mental focus of a squirrel these days.

Where was I...oh yeah; As I was saying before I so completely distracted myself...

I usually feel better when I'm working out a lot so I'm endeavouring to get motivated again. And since spring will undoubtedly show up and the salt will eventually wash away...I'd like to not start from scratch when I hit the road with the Trek this year. Getting passed by 6th graders on big-box mountain bikes and the local beer can guys towing shopping carts is pretty humbling so to avoid any such embarrassments, it's time to get back at it. I've got a Tour to get ready for.

I better stock up on tires and hope I have only one gall bladder to lose.

Looking Out My Back Door

2011-01-01T17:28:00.000-05:00

2011 drifted in last night and I didn't bother to stay up to meet it. I hardly ever do...I usually flip the calendar and head for the sheets pretty early. Must be getting old...oh wait a minute...I am old. At least that's what the kids tell me. I prefer to think of it as aged like a good wine or maybe just getting old but the fact is, New Years reminds me of passing days and so I have a tough time being happy about it. It may be socially unacceptable to feel that way but the fact is, it's just a plain old hard time of year for me.

About the only good I can find in it is that it's the end of the holiday season and as such, hopefully things will return to semi-normal. Or at least as close to normal as it ever gets around here.
I've said before that the whole mess from about Halloween (it used to be Thanksgiving but the retailers decided we needed a longer season to shop) straight through to New Years is pretty depressing to me. The days are too short and the nights are too long, people get strange, there's a weird expectation that all the world suddenly becomes wonderful because it's December and you're supposed to be happy dammit. The whole thing wears me out but at least it's over for another year. I wish it wasn't that way sometimes but there it is...

I did get up early today on 1/1/11 for some reason. Chris was still sacked and both kids spent the night at friends houses so it was just me and the four-leggers. It was pitch dark off the porch but I threw the pooches out anyway and nuked some of yesterdays coffee while they made the rounds of the back yard. I like getting up and around in the zero-dark-thirty hour unless I've been out working all night and see it from the other side. It's usually peaceful and watching the light creep in from the east clears my head for the day.

It actually was pretty warm out there this morning considering it's now January so the dogs weren't in a big rush to get back to the door and my toes didn't freeze padding across the deck to unhook them from their run. A quick poke at the fire in the basement and back to my new spot at the table in the kitchen had dawn sneaking up on me out of the fog.

I've decided one of the things I like most about our new place is my current perch by the back door. All the years we lived in Old Drafty, I kind of hung out at the table in the big dining room with a streaky double-hung view toward the road. Here I can see the slope of the back lawn across the deck and watch the world get brighter over the trees on the hill. I'm farther from the highway traffic and facing due north so I don't hear much except the 'fridge kicking on and the water pipes pinging as the boiler warms up. The cat prowls around looking for something to eat or hoping to make a break for it when the screen door opens but other than that, it's mostly very still. In that kind of quiet, I can only hear myself thinking. You never know where it'll go from there.

By now the morning was in full swing and my spouse appeared with an empty frying pan and a pout on her face looking for me to make an omlette. I can do omlettes and it seemed like a good way to get the year underway. I managed to not scramble the eggs and if I got some shell in there, she was kind enough not to mention it. We eventually got moving and tore down the tree, gathered up the Christmas stuff from around the place and stuffed it all in bins to hide till next winter. It's official after that...the Holidays are done.

Now it's back to watching the computer for approaching trains and planning around the crew callers but that's what I know. It's back to the on-call grind until I have some real vacation time in April and I can turn off my cell again. I'll make it I think. And if sometimes I can stop for a while in the morning and look out the back door, I think I'll be alright.

So Goes '10

2010-12-30T21:15:00.000-05:00

With tomorrow, another year comes sliding down the slope to the end. Times they do change. I suppose I should do the requisite retrospect but somehow it seems a little pointless. Like the '70s, I lived through it once and shouldn't have to re-run a condensed version of the whole smash again. Let's just say it's been, like the Chinese curse, interesting times; not completely good, not all bad, the end of some chapters, a few milestones passed; some awful, horrible days but a lot of bright blue skies to chase away the darkness. Even when I wondered if there'd ever again be light, there came sunny days. Another page in my timebook, a tick of the clock and that's all she wrote.

It was above all else, life as I know it; warts and all, wonderful and terrible and so very much like so many of the other years in my five decades come and gone. The good, the bad and the ugly. We lived it and that's enough.

A highway once travelled can't ever be completely new again and no road can be ridden the same way twice so at the end of the day, I'm content to see this year roll away behind me like all those summertime miles on 81 South. It'll be alright to watch it disappear under the wheels and around the bend without a fuss. It'll be alright to know things are as they should be.

Yes, most of all...it'll be alright.

Quiet and Cold

2010-12-22T08:59:00.002-05:00

This post started on Sunday, stretched through Tuesday and ended up on Wednesday. Somehow these things happen...

Up and around early today. I was wiped out last night and conked with a house full of people. Chris covered for me and held the fort but I kept drifting off in the middle of sentences and fading in and out of conversations. I only slept a couple of hours yesterday morning after I got home and these days I find that I just can't operate 24+ at a time without some pretty serious consequences to my disposition. The long trips and constantly flipping from days to nights keeps me off balance and out of sync with the rest of the world and last night I had to pay the piper. I only vaguely remember crawling into the sheets and that was that until the dogs whined at the door to go out. The critters always get priority.

A few minutes later, coffee firmly in hand, furballs safely back in the house and eyeballs focused at last, I stepped back outside and took a pause to look up at the hill behind the new domicile. It was one of those rare early mornings that I've always been so fond of...absolutely still and bitter cold. No noise, no breeze, not even a bird singing yet. I wait for times like this. It's like the whole Earth holds its breath for just a second before it wakes up and gets on with the uproar of another day. The sky is bright but the sun hasn't peeked over the trees yet down here on the ground and for only a little time, there's peace.

If I could catch those minutes of silence and put them in a jar like we did with lightning bugs when we were kids, I'd take off the lid and turn them loose when it gets really dark and noisy in the world. The quiet amid the racket of our lives would be good for us all.

The Move Ongoing

2010-12-08T14:28:00.000-05:00

I know everybody (who am I kidding? There's only like two people who read this) is probably getting tired of hearing about our move. Well, guess what? We're still at it. If I live through this, I think I might just take root and never, ever do anything like it again. I might have to sell the old place still full at the rate we're going. We've been trucking for a week steady and the end is not in sight. There's a lot to be said for having a bunch of big galoots box it all up and carry it out to a truck while the homeowner supervises. The bad part about that is...they usually want a fairly large chunk of change to provide this little service. On top of that it just didn't seem logical to load it all in a semi, pull out of one driveway, turn into the next one and unload it all again. Even if we could have afforded it, the ridiculously short duration of the trip and the extravagant price tag wouldn't ever have worked for me. We tossed the idea around but elected to do the job ourselves at a more leisurely pace and save the cash. Good thing since painting, plumbing and a few other unforeseen difficulties cropped up.

I did manage to rope a pack of my son's teenage pals into doing some heavy lifting in return for pizza and a place to crash in the new digs. They helped drag the big stuff around and saved me from probable hospitalization had I done it alone. Some of it just barely fit in the pickup bed and the rain was a real plus until it turned to sleet and snow halfway through the job. Did I mention that we had several inches of rain and flash floods in the midst of all this? I think I did but just let me say again...it flat out poured like you read about. I was beginning to think bad Karma but it could have just been crummy timing as opposed to actual divine retribution. The outcome was about the same.

Yes, it's been kind of a lot of hauling and a lot of stuff with a tiny truck but at least most of the things I can't lift alone are finally in. Now it's a matter of finding a spot for everything as it comes out of the boxes and then locating it again when you want to use it. Case in point: When I got home the other night, I looked all over the place for a wine glass as I thought they were already here and put away. Not so fast and not that easy...I searched every cupboard; in the dishwasher, all the drawers, through the pantry twice and orbited the kitchen to the point of just tipping the bottle in frustration. In the end, I finally wound up fishing one out of...guess what? A box. I shoulda known.

We still have to get to the attic in Old Drafty and sort that mess out, along with the minor disaster that is the rest of the place. My old office alone may require earth moving equipment to dig out once I chew into that project. God forbid that anyone show up to look at the place right now because they'd most likely laugh themselves unconscious before they got two rooms into it. We might get an offer of about six bucks for the whole thing the way it looks today, if we got an offer at all. I seriously doubt it.

I know we'll get through it all eventually but it's for sure been a handful and a headache. The new place is at least starting to feel like home and the critters have found new places to lounge so it'll be OK. But it's been an awfully long hundred yard trip from one life to another.

Are We Moved Yet?

2010-11-30T13:43:00.000-05:00

Spent all day at the new place again yesterday and more to follow today. This is getting a little depressing trying to haul all this junk. It sort of seems like a lost cause to box it all up and move it across the driveway, un-box it and try to find a spot for it. It's not like moving a couple states away where you put everything in a truck and don't see it again for a week. Some of it doesn't even make it to a box at all, just the back of my pickup and right off again. The stuff doesn't even have a chance to get cool. We just haul the empty boxes back and reload. I grow weary of cardboard.
I've at least got my tools where I can locate them in the garage (wow...a garage) which is good because there seems to be quite a lot of things that require tools. Chris and her crew have painted damn near everything from one end to the other and in the meantime, I've been tinkering on assorted revelations that have come to light in their wake. A variety of water leaks, wiring oddities and a non-whirling whirlpool promise to keep me in projects for the foreseeable near future. I knew there was some stuff but...

Well, chalk it up to not moving for 20 years. We'll get through it eventually but for now the rain is pouring down and the heavy lifting is just getting started. Wonder if we'll ever make it to Christmas?

Thanksgiving Day...One For The Record Books

2010-11-25T07:12:00.000-05:00

Gaaa...moving (still, endlessly, repeatedly). It's Thanksgiving Day and it's going to be boxes from one house to another for a good share of it. I'll mostly be thankful for getting through this. You'd never know it but we have moved and packed an awful lot of stuff. Where did we get all this junk? The living room looks like a minor plane crash and we haven't even packed a lot of it yet.

We decided against doing the usual big bird and trimmings this time around because quite frankly, we can't find the kitchen easily or anything much to cook with once we locate it. Everything is half packed and partly moved so to try the turkey route is pretty much out of the question. We're ok with it though...we've never been too much of a traditional bunch around here. With me coming and going all the time, it's sometimes pretty doubtful that I'll be present for the big meal at any particular hour most years so we just have the holiday when we can. Last year for example, I worked outbound Wednesday night and didn't make it back until about 4pm on Thursday. I just barely remember dinner and was probably lucky not to fall asleep and face-plant in my apple pie. We've learned to adapt to stuff like that (mostly) and it's more important to me to be home with my brood than to do the feast anyway. Good thing because this year, it's one-pan lasagna with packing on the side.

I know this too shall pass and once we actually get moved, things will settle down. Until then, it's mayhem and madness, stress and worries mixed with relief and anticipation, a little fun and a new view from the kitchen window...a fine recipe for Thanksgiving no matter how you slice it.

Rolling With It

2010-11-21T18:34:00.000-05:00

Short and fast again. We've been moving like mad and now it's off to the races for another 'round trip. Will we ever get this stuff all moved? Will we ever do this again? Why did we wait this long?

Stay tuned.

Facebook, With Reservations

2010-11-16T22:40:00.000-05:00

So let me say something about Facebook. I resisted it for a long time; stubborn I suppose but I finally succumbed and opened a page for the Thoroughbreds team. I was hoping it would help with recruiting and fundraising and it may yet but by doing so, I also acquired a personal page and an instant bunch of 'Friend Requests' to go with it. Strange that I hadn't even posted anything yet but there they were. Some were from family and some from people at work so I confirmed a few and skipped the rest. I guess that's what Facebook is supposed to be about so I figured I'd run with it and see what happened.
Well, as it turns out, I'm having kind of a hard time on the biggest-thing-that-ever-hit-the-planet-or-at-least-the-internet network.

See the problem is, there's just not that many people I know or am looking for. How do you socialize with nobody? The first thing I noticed once I got a page was an ad over on the right that offered to search for long-lost classmates. Chris found a bunch of people from her school when she got on and re-connected and that's great. I on the other hand, didn't really hang with a whole lot of kids back then so I'm not sure who I would search for. I wasn't on any sports teams, wasn't in the band or plays, never made academic honors, didn't get in trouble or party much and never moved on to college or the military. The long and short of it was; I hated high school and couldn't get out fast enough. Hence, my circle of friends had a very short diameter. There were a very few I ran around with I guess but when I got to be a senior, I went to work and they went to parties...we didn't have much in common to reminisce about. Besides, I haven't seen or heard from a single one of them in the 30 plus years since I graduated. I don't see why I would look for people I hardly spoke to in the hall. A couple of my good friends that I do miss are dead and even Facebook doesn't claim to be able to find them. I guess there are limits...

Browsing around a little more, I looked at the search box at the top of my page and kind of wondered whose name I could type in. There must be someone. I ran the old memory back a few years, looked at the box, looked at the keyboard, went back a ways further and looked at the box again. It stayed empty. The circle is apparently still pretty damn small.

Maybe I'll come up with some names eventually or I suppose someone might show up and surprise me (other than the total unknown that popped in this morning with a generic 'Hi there' message and a prominently well-endowed, clothing-less profile picture). I might be a noob but nothing screams "SCAM" to me quite like an unsolicited personal message from a big-breasted blonde who 'only wants to be my friend' but doesn't have a name. I thought Craigslist had the corner on the phishing spammers but at least Fb let me block this one with only two clicks. I'm trying to keep an open mind and give it a chance.

It isn't all bad news anyway. I've exchanged some posts with a few people, put up some pictures, sort of poked my way around the gadgets and that's been pretty cool...a strange way to interact with people but kinda cool. I'm not sure about it yet but it might just turn out to be a pretty quiet place on my laptop with an empty box at the top and a really small circle on the wall.

Thought For Today

2010-11-16T09:18:00.000-05:00

A simple quote from my all-time favorite book...Fate Is The Hunter

"Tell me now...by what ends does a man ever partially control his fate? It is obvious from the special history of our kind that favorites are played, but if this is so, then how do you account for those who are ill-treated? The worship of pagan gods, which once answered all this, is no longer fashionable. Modern religions ignore the matter of fate. So we are left confused and without direction.
Let us admit, then, that the complete answer may only be revealed when it can no longer serve those most interested."

E.K. Gann

Moving Day Sneaking Up

2010-11-09T20:48:00.000-05:00

I'm almost beginning to believe we're actually going to move. The countdown is running to the day when we'll pack out of 'Old Drafty' and take up operations in our new digs once and for all. I can't say it's going to be easy to leave this place. We've invested 20 years of our lives in the old barn, raised our kids here, made it our home, loved it and hated it. It's been a project that I'm just running our of ambition to work on anymore. But no matter what, it's the first and only house we've ever owned and so I'll miss it.

The reality of it all comes down to the fact that sooner than we think, Chris and I will be empty-nesters. The guys are sneaking through being teenagers on us and already looking out the door and down the road. They've grown like the proverbial weeds and emptied the refrigerator twice a week for the last year.

Even Connor is almost looking me straight in the eye these days. The desperately sick baby who only had about a 50/50 chance of ever walking or talking is now my jazz man and calls me 'Dirt' because to him, that's how old I am. I think of that awful day when we handed him to a surgeon and wondered if we'd ever see him again in this world. He became our 'Miracle Child' when the tumor came out and my son came home to live and grow up. He can call me anything he wants as long as he calls me Dad once in a while.

Seneca passed me in altitude long ago and is on his way to being a big man in more ways than one. He came home from the maternity floor to a screaming Nor'easter that buried our old house in more snow than I'd seen in a lot of years. The snow was over the top of my van and kept two brand-new parents pretty worried about being stranded in the creaky house with a newborn. I shoveled for days to dig out and wished for global warming. I still wonder every time his birthday rolls around if we'll get a repeat of 'Seneca's Blizzard'.

There's a million memories kicking around here but ours are only the latest. Who knows how many kids have passed through this place in a hundred years or how many more will follow before it's gone? We're hoping another young family will move in like we did and make pencil marks on the door to chart their kids on the way up. Someone to fill it with dogs and noise, fresh paint and piles of laundry. It's a big and quirky house and it needs a new brood to keep it loud and alive, full of comings and goings so it never has a chance to get too old. It needs a fresh blast of baby cribs and stuffed animals, a new batch of local musketeers to parade to the 'fridge and another late winter storm to go down in the record books. The change will be good for all of us.

Cold...With Fog

2010-11-04T11:19:00.000-04:00

With the weather closing in and fall most definitely upon us, I decided to make one more effort at a long ride before the snow flies. I was due in Bingo at 10 in the morning to meet Jess, our Tour de Cure coordinator for a little presentation. She had a framed plaque for our Thoroughbred team to recognize that we came in third last year in fundraising. Pretty cool for the first time out and a pretty good excuse to ride in the cold. Not that I usually need an excuse...
Unexpectedly, my announced intention to leave the house at about 6 AM in order to have lots of time to make the 42 mile push to our office was met with unprecedented resistance from the management. I knew it would still be dark and likely be extremely chilly but I had lights hooked up on the 2.1 and had multiple layers of clothes all picked out to get me through until sunup. Nothing like thinking ahead. The weather forecast was for sunny and low 50's by midday so the return trip promised to be a breeze. A pre-dawn departure was my plan and all I lacked was fresh batteries for the headlight. Chris was watching all this preparation without much comment until she realized I'd be riding about 2 hours out of the gate in full dark. For the first time in our married life, I actually saw her stamp her foot on the rug, cross her arms and flat out say no. She's pretty much accustomed to my more common antics but I guess this one crossed the line in the sand. I think the foot-stomp was the killer indication that there would be a few alterations to my itinerary. I promised I wouldn't ride in the dark.

Instead, I hooked the rack on the van and loaded up the bike in the morning and took off on a slightly different angle. I'd drop the van at the shop (which happens to be in the direction I was going anyway) for an oil change, get geared up and ride the 20 or so remaining miles to the yard. By then, it would be daylight (sort of) so I could get around the prohibition on darkness and yet still get in some miles. So far...so good.

The guy at the counter looked at me like he was seeing an idiot for the first time when I told him I had to unload my bike before he could have the van. His customer-service face cracked a little but he handled it without calling me a moron to my face. I happened to glance at the thermometer on the overhead in the van as I was gathering up my stuff...27 degrees. That's pretty cool, even for me. Less than ideal but not unheard of in my biking escapades so a quick change into riding gear and I was on the road east in gray morning light. Gray being the key word because I soon realized that it was not only 27 degrees out there, but hanging around the valley was a pretty thick coating of fog.
Fog is a way of describing water floating around in the air and when the air is somewhat below freezing, said water tends to solidify on whatever thing it touches, things like me. My gloves, sweatshirt and glasses were soon decorated with a heavy layer of frost and the feeling went out of my hands. In changing my plan of attack, I guess I neglected the extra gloves I had layed out thinking it would be warmer with daylight. I missed them very much. I stopped every couple of miles to defrost and take a look to see if I still had fingers or if they'd snapped off in my gloves. Eventually though, the sun popped up and started the mercury in the positive direction. Luckily too, the mist burned off quickly and though it stayed cold, I could at least see where I was going. It was another hour before I could shift without actually looking at my fingers to see if they were doing what I wanted. Note to Shimano: You guys could make those shifter paddles a little bigger and it would be alright with me. They work a little hard when you have to use your whole frozen hand instead of the customary one finger.

Daylight brought out the commuters and so began the dodging of vehicles. I'm pretty used to that anymore so unless someone does something openly hostile, hustling around in traffic doesn't worry me much, I just jump right in and go. I try to get out of the way as much as I can but sometimes lack of maneuvering space means they either have to go around or hit me. Nobody's clipped me yet; close but no cigar so it I must be doing something right. Potholes and broken glass are as much a problem as anything but all obstacles were avoided and there was no horn-blowing or finger-waving this day. There's been other jaunts that included urban adventures but I'd never ridden in the city of Binghamton before. Turns out to be like all it's concrete cousins, it's just a matter of rolling with it and getting where your going without being run down. I got straight across the middle of town with only minor annoyances and rolled into the yard right on time. Cold but successful.

It was nice to see Jess again even though she had her own adventures getting down from Syaracuse. She's good people and it'll be a blast working with her on the 2011 Tour. We had a good chat before Mark and I took off for a short ride on a local rail-trail. A few miles with the Big Galoot and it was back on the road west to pick up the van and call it a day. The sun was bright and if not warm, at least tolerable and the wind was at my back. With any luck, there'll be a few more of these before I have to rely solely on the trainer. I hate the thought of salt and snow but spring will be here eventually...

Trick or Not

2010-10-31T13:20:00.000-04:00

It's the 31st of October, which is Halloween in the real world. Oh boy...tell me it ain't so.

Just to be up-front, I pretty much hate this non-holiday anymore. It was fun when I was a kid I guess but like everything else, it's degenerated into another opportunity to blow out your credit line on expensive costumes and decorations instead of just carving up a pumpkin and soaping the neighbors windows. Trick-or-treating is almost an industry in itself; structured with designated hours and approved locations. The annual hike around town with a costume and a sack is now escorted, patrolled and by curfew, will end at 8pm or else for most folks thank you very much. For the miscreants who decide to stay out dodging the police, the tracks are more temptation than they can usually resist. If I wind up working (which I will this year), the whole night will likely be punctuated with eggs, rocks, paintballs, junk on the tracks and the occasional chicken-player trying to 'scare' the train crew. The old mannequin-sprawled-on-the rails trick might be a big yuk to the locals but I never know till it's too late if that might be a real body I just ran over. Yeah kids, that's a real thrill.
Call me jaded but to me it also sort of kicks off the mad-consumption, retail-driven hell that marks the last couple months of the year. We don't even get a break from the shrill, ridiculous political screaming of the election cycle before the nauseating 'Holiday' ads kick in and TV becomes even more unbearable than usual.

A bonus at this time of year is the networks overwhelming desire to show every horror movie ever made for the whole month of October. I clicked on in the hotel the other day as I was packing for home and just as the screen popped in, I was treated to a close-up, full view of a semi-dressed and busty young lass (they're all semi-dressed and busty in horror movies) being split right down the middle by an axe-wielding zombie...complete with a follow up shot of steamy innards plopping on the ground. Nice. That made my whole day guys, thanks. I know you are required by tradition and poor taste to show all the straight-to-video splatter failures that have ever been produced in a four week span but come on...it's 2 in the afternoon and you've probably run this sleaze-bag 50 times since Thursday...give it a rest. On top of that, no matter how many times it airs it still sucks and is not likely to improve with age. In case you can't tell, this stuff makes me a little cranky.

Every time around it gets harder to take. I don't watch the tube very often anyway but sometimes when I'm stuck in the hotel for hours, I channel surf out of boredom. I might be able to take a 'CSI' or 'Modern Marvels' rerun for the 80th time if 6 minutes of high-volume commercials weren't spaced by 3 minutes of show. I wish I could trap a brace of ad execs. in a room for 24 hours and blast them with their own insanity so they'd know how the rest of us feel. On second thought, they'd probably have a ball and spend the whole time congratulating each other. Thanksgiving and Christmas on cable is worse than the split girl sometimes.

I'm sure I'll return to this as the season rolls on but for now...I'm holiday-ed up to my eyeballs and hoping it pours tonight to keep the tricks to a minimum. It might be a long trip.

Spinning

2010-10-24T14:21:00.000-04:00

Flying these days. Not literally but it feels like the earth is spinning under the landing gear most of my waking hours. I'm only working two 'round trips a week so I actually have a couple days off in between but with everything else, I can't catch my breath.

Old Drafty has been on the market for a little over a week and we've had a couple of showings but mostly it's cleaning rampages and trying to come to grips with the fact that we might actually pull this off. I've been rolling with it as well as I can. This is all new to us again.

More when I can...

House For Sale

2010-10-12T14:31:00.000-04:00

I've been falling down on the job lately. Not literally of course because to fall down and get injured on my real job is to come into the realm of the dreaded Medical Department and "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here". No, nothing physical like that. Just slacking off on blogging while all hell breaks loose around Old Drafty. It's never too peaceful hereabouts for any stretch longer than ten minutes anyway but this is real shock and awe. Suddenly, we put the house up for sale. Suddenly, we're thinking of moving. Suddenly, everything looks a whole lot different.

Things have been more than a tad hectic since we decided to put the big homestead on the market. Without going into all the details, let's just say this little adventure came out of the blue and we're still struggling to believe it might actually come to pass. Just when you think nothing else can happen...

We've lived in this monster house for twenty years or so and raised our kids here. It's the only home they've ever known but it's just getting to be too much for the old guy. The recent estimate I got for repairs on the roof (again) kind of took the wind out of my sails for the last time. It was a pretty substantial chunk of cash and even if I had it in my pocket, (which I don't), there's still everything else below the eves yet to do. It also dawned on me that I've got about 15 years to go until I'll be either retired or real close to it and frankly, I don't want to do drywall and plumbing until then...much less for untold years after I leave the right-side seat for good. It's time for someone else to have a go at the old chicken farm. My dearest wish is to retire and do things I WANT to do; not things I HAVE to do. Unless Bob Vila drops in with his checkbook and a boatload of contractors, there's never going to be an end to the fixing-up projects for me. With my lack of schedule and bizarre working life, I could quite possibly tinker on this place until I die and still not have it all done. Reality sometimes sucks but there it is.

The illusion of all twenty-somethings that life just goes on and on over the horizon has sort of faded for me as most illusions will. These days I'm thinking more about the end of things and watching the clock. There comes a point where you have to quit kidding yourself and face the fact that you will most certainly not live forever. I think it's time to look down the road with different eyes.

The kids will probably be out and gone sooner than later and when they pack out to homes of their own, it'll be just Chris and I rattling around in this three-story-endless-renovation project. We've poured a lot into the place over the years but the long and short of it is that we're getting older and time is starting to look more and more like a finite commodity. There's a limit to how much I'll ever do unless my sulfur-water well suddenly becomes the fountain of youth or an armored truck pulls up and just happens to unload pallets of money on the porch. Do I really want to be hanging sheetrock and pulling wire when I'm about 90? Not if there's any way out of it I don't.

I realized a while back that I've been working since I was about twelve in one form or another which translates into almost forty years of nearly continuous employment so far. Not that I'm complaining but its been a pretty long haul. I've still got half a career with the railroad ahead of me so I'm not ready for the rocker quite yet but at least the end is in sight. When I do finally get to the end of it, I might just want to sit on the porch for a minute, sip a beer and think things over instead of installing a bathroom. I might consider mowing the grass eventually...or I might toss a neighbor kid 20 bucks to do it while I have another beer and supervise. Who knows? There may be grandkids to wreak havoc with by then. There's always the original plan Chris and I have for our retirement...two full-dressed Harleys, an offshore bank account for my pension checks, summer clothes in the tour-packs and no forwarding address. One way or another, my days of fixing it up before it falls down will be over.

Yep, the house is for sale and I hope the payoff is more than just an end to the mortgage. I hope it's the life we've worked so hard for all these years.

Video Of The Day

2010-10-05T21:53:00.000-04:00

I found this link a while ago while surfing some video sites...

Saturn V Launch - Sonicbomb.com

I remember the Saturn V moon rockets in grainy black and white on console TVs. Walter Cronkite told the story and counted down the minutes until the big F-1 engines lit, the pad breathed fire and the monster lifted off. They say the roar of the launch travelled around the world but I heard it through over-driven mics in Florida and cheesy RCA speakers in New York. I wish I could have been there.

Something about daring to light 7.5 million pounds of thrust under 6.5 million pounds of rocket, fuel and men leaves me in wonder to this day. It was an awesome thing to watch back then and to see it now in super-slow-motion as well as in color is pretty amazing.

Here's to the Saturn and the people who flew her...I never knew you, but I remember you. Fly high and fast for the next generation. Run the clock down to zero and light the candle again. We're counting on you.

The '82

2010-09-29T13:32:00.001-04:00

I don't ride my old Harley as much as I used to these days. Its a phase I guess, pushing pedals instead of twisting throttle. I haven't forgotten the old Hog though...we've been through a lot together.

I bought my FXE brand new in the spring of '83. It was a carry-over from the previous year and the dealer was hot to get rid of it to make room on his floor for newer stuff. He made me a smoking deal and so my Sportster passed into history and the Superglide came home to roost. It was pretty plain as Harleys go; the only thing I got extra was a turn-out tail pipe with no baffles to replace the fat, ugly baloney-shaped stock muffler. The only thing that made it special was the fact that it was screaming, gaudy, burn-your-eyes, fire engine RED. Maybe I was the only one crazy enough to buy one that bright but having a big motor was my goal and it was the only way I was getting there. Back then, that 80 inch iron engine hooked to a four speed hanging on two wheels was all I needed to be right with the world.
After a couple of years spent on my stiff-legged Sporty, it rode like a Cadillac even though I had to wear midnight-dark shades to cut the glare off the tank. I promptly started pouring in high-test and rolling up the miles. I did find a need for a sissy bar and forward foot rests so a little accessorizing got the red monster set up the way I wanted and life was good.

The first fly in the ointment was my discovery of a fairly large pool of tranny fluid on the ground one day as I was getting ready to ride out to lunch from work. This was not a good thing. The dealer said he'd look at it so I topped off the transmission and headed for the shop. Dissection found that a hex bolt head had sheared off, digested itself in the gears, cracked the case and pretty much wrecked the whole works. The really bad news was that the warranty had run out the week before and H-D was not remotely interested in covering it. This was really not a good thing. Having just spent a boatload on the bike and since it was only days off the warranty, I kind of thought they might bend a little and fix it, especially since it was a manufacturing flaw as opposed to abuse. Nope. This was my first hint (more on that another day) that all maybe was not rosy with the Motor Company in Milwaukee. The long and short of it was; no amount of threatening or pleading was shaking them loose so I bit the bullet and had the shop wrench tear into it. He managed to weld up the cracks, clean out the metal shavings and stuff Pandora back in the box. It cost a bundle and there was no promises as to how long it would last but I was back on the road. Wiser and poorer but moving again.

Fortunately, that was the worst of it for years thereafter. The transmission held together (and is still holding) as a testament to the mechanic's ability. And the miles just flew away. I jammed all over the northeast (those are stories to tell another day too), commuted to work, took off on the weekends and just generally rode the wheels off it like there was no tomorrow. Unleaded gas went away so the valve guides wore out fast and the rings got sloppy so a first re-build came along somewhere in there. Tires and brakes changed like my socks as the odometer cranked around into the 40's. At some point the red paint finally got to me and one winter, the old girl became basic black. No emblems, no pinstripes, no flames...just black like a Harley should be. The painter wanted to put a badge on the tank but I figured anyone who cared would know what it was and anyone who didn't know didn't matter so why mess up the gloss? So now it was black on black with the chrome starting to show some dings and rust. The turnout pipe got razor-sharp on the bottom edge from dragging it around corners and the instrument lights gave up the ghost around 50K. And still we rode.

Chris and I finally decided to get married in the summer of '87 and the only way she and I were leaving the church was on that black scooter. On the big day, she put a helmet over her wedding hairdo, stuck on some Wayfarers, gathered her wedding dress up in her lap, threw a leg over and away we went. As usual, the Superglide was in on everything. We ended up living in a trailer for a while and at one point even owned a second Harley. I came across another red '85 FXE (what is it with red?) and picked it up out of an estate. It was nicer and newer than the '82 so it became our primary ride for a while. It wasn't meant to be though, the payments were a little big and along came a house with a mortgage. The '85 went, the '82 came out of semi-retirement and then there was only one.

The kids came next and hard riding went on the back burner while we did cars seats and mini-vans. We'd sneak out for a ride when we could get someone to watch the boys but there were weeks on end when the big twin never fired. Years came and went while the guys got bigger and still I hung on to the bike...hell, it was the only thing I had that was paid for. I rode it while I taught rider education courses to a flock of novices for a decade or so but that was mostly commuting and demonstrating what I wanted my charges to do. The days of packing a bag and taking off for Virginia were temporarily (I hoped) gone. What riding I did took a toll though because the bottom end finally developed a persistent knock that could only be a sick crank bearing and that meant another round of rebuild after almost 90,000 miles. This time it was a lower end, a bore job and yet another set of valves. She came out running like a champ with a couple mor cubic inches but still hanging on to the bone-stock Japanese carb and the original clutch plates. I couldn't seem to wear them out.

Suddenly, my boys are in high school and the old shovelhead is parked under a tarp on the patio. That carb finally managed to vibrate itself to death a couple of years ago so a new S&S took it's place under my right knee. The brand new and shiny chrome on the air cleaner is almost embarrassing compared to the way the rest of it looks. The sudden increase in horsepower that came with better breathing instantly did in the clutch so that got a little upgrade to end the slipping.
Chris and I ride a bit more now that the kids are pretty much self-sufficient but still nothing like the old days. The bike's got about 106,000 on it now and all those miles show. She's rusty in spots, the pipes are mostly blue for about a foot from the heads, the chrome is pretty much shot, the forks leak (along with most everything else), the black is faded and after almost 30 years, I still can't see anything out of the mirrors because they vibrate so much. For all of that, it's still the bike I rode to and from my wedding, the one I rode in the heat and sun and snow and rain for what seemed like a million miles, the ride that took us to a string of crummy hotels in strange places because that's as far as we could go, the one Chris used to fall asleep on when we rode all night, the one I took my kids for their first rides on...the one-owner scoot that always starts no matter how much I neglect and abuse the thing.

Yeah, I ride bicycles a lot these days and it takes up time I used to burn up on the Hog. I haven't forgotten the old shovel though. We've been through an awful lot of changes and roll with them like the song. We'll get back together again one way or another. I've even threatened to turn it into a chopper someday when I hit the lottery but I doubt I could do it. I'd probably just shine up the black, re-plate the chrome, buff off the rust and ride some more. It just seems like the right thing to do for an old friend.

Song Of The Day

2010-09-26T11:44:00.001-04:00

Now here's a guy with a life I can relate to...

After the last round trip I had...buddy I can feel your pain!

Observations

2010-09-23T11:16:00.000-04:00

During my long haul yesterday, I got thinking about a trend. Spending much time alone in the saddle gives one time to do that...just think about assorted subjects. This one came to the fore when the guy in his tan-colored sedan pulled out of a side road and right through a stop sign with nary a glance. I don't think he touched the brakes or turned his head one bit. Lucky for him I wasn't a semi or he'd have needed a new car and an ambulance. As it was, he nearly wound up with Trek and rider embedded in his left front fender. This time, fortune smiled and I happened to be looking right at him when he blew the sign so at least I saw it coming and was able to brake and swerve enough to miss him. He was completely oblivious and apparently unimpressed by an extended version of "WTF" screamed in his direction. How do people like this function? Is the populace in general that unconscious and unconcerned or just a select few that Darwin hasn't gotten around to yet?

I remembered the clueless sod from another ride who passed three cars in one shot at very high velocity. All while talking on his cell, drifting over the line into the oncoming lane's shoulder and forcing me to nearly dive for the ditch to get out of his way. I'm certain he never even saw me on my side of the road, tooling along in broad daylight on a straight stretch that ran for over a mile. Even with my day-glo yellow jersey and upright middle finger, he never saw the guy he was about to run over.

This stuff happens all the time and I can't help but wonder...

I thought about the parade of people who insist on hanging around a railroad bridge I cross every trip. Mostly they're young and possessed of all the vast wisdom of youth but still, why would you walk out on a skinny little bridge with a train coming and expect good things to happen? I've stopped (or tried to anyway) on several occasions and the response is always the same..."I didn't know I wasn't supposed to walk here." Hey, nobody ever actually told me not to play and party where large, moving objects that can kill you operate but it seemed fairly obvious even when I was pretty young. My reward for slowing down for one group of trespassing idiots was a shattered window on a trailing unit from a large rock pitched at us in gratitude. Who raised these geniuses and how did they live long enough to make it out of grade school?

Another very common lunacy is the race for the gate when a train is approaching. I see this everywhere but most prominently every day in a little burg called Sunbury PA. Sunbury has multiple crossings, all with lights and bells but no gates. A long train effectively cuts the town in half for several minutes as the speed limit is only 20 mph. In addition, we're frequently pulling out of a restriction which lowers the rate even more. This is an invitation for foolishness and a pretty good percentage of the population just can't pass it up. The locals who know what's about to happen ignore the warnings and scoot for the other side regardless of what's bearing down on them. It's almost fascinating to watch everything from pedestrians to tour buses look directly at the train, decide they'll risk it, then just roll the dice and go. I guess they don't realize that I can see them and know exactly what they're going to do but can't do a thing about it. I'm afraid someday I'll be looking one of them right in the eyes when they go out of sight under the nose and under the wheels.

The point is...how did so many people get to be so unthinking and uncaring? How do they expect to climb on moving trains without a chance of getting cut in half or run in front of one without a chance of getting hit? How do they figure that everybody and everything will get out of the way of their poor driving habits? How many times do they get to be stupid before it kills them or someone else? The lack of skill and judgement seems to be on the upswing lately and I can't explain it.

...Then there's the people who aren't just oblivious, they're nasty. Case in point...A certain individual around town has a taste for roaring up behind my son when he's out on his bike, jamming on the brakes to squeal the tires, blowing the horn and generally scaring the daylights out of him. There's a real adult for you...one with a full sized truck, complete with a manly Monster sticker on the back window who shows his daring and bravery by terrorizing a kid on a bicycle. I'm impressed, really I am but it might not be nearly as sporting for him if I come across that truck one of these days and he finds that not everyone in the world is quite so easily frightened. Where do these guys come from?

I get it all the time from drivers who don't figure anyone has anywhere to go or anything to do that's as important as the mission they're on at the moment. Bikes are a terrific inconvenience because they might force someone to steer around one or (gasp!) slow down a little. Same with trains...heaven forbid that anything cause said motorist to wait, even if it outweighs them by a factor of thousands and has a really hard time stopping in short distances. That's not important. What matters is that not a second of any one's day be wasted by anyone else. I've pulled out of my driveway taking the kids to school and had irate commuters climb on the back hatch, blast the horn and ride 6 inches off my bumper all the way to the drop-off loop. Classy...not too effective at making me go faster but it does get my heart going a little with kids in the car. And on it goes...the list is long and varied but you get the picture.

All I want to know is when did so many of us lose the patience to do things the right way? When did it become OK to be a jerk to others so much of the time? We all have our days when we're a lot less than perfect but is everybody on a roll on the same day?

I was just wondering...

The Accidental Fourth

2010-09-22T16:38:00.001-04:00

I started out yesterday on what was intended to be a relatively short jaunt around the countryside. Well, as these things sometimes go...I wound up making a century out of it just by the simple fact that I don't know enough to quit. I'm like that.

One turn led to another and pretty soon I was 50 miles into it and a long way from home. At least the weather was nice; warm and breezy again and this time I was on the outbound leg with the wind in my teeth.  I hoped that maybe once I turned for home it would be easier sailing, unlike the last go when the wind destroyed my legs 60 miles out. I got as far south as I figured I should reasonably go and then hooked west on PA Rt. 6 out of Towanda to make a big circle out of it. Rt. 6 is advertised and marked as a designated bike route in PA but I think PennDOT better reconsider that until after the gas rush. More on that in a minute.

Now being a rational, semi-intelligent person, I understand this was a working weekday for everybody in the real world. My weekend is Tuesday and Wednesday so it's not like everyone else is drinking beer and hanging out around the Weber when I have my days off.   I may not be working, but it's not yet hump-day for 99% of the population. This means that unlike a Saturday or Sunday when things might quiet down a bit, commerce was going full blast down the blacktop while I was trying to make my way from turn to turn. The alarm bell was ringing again.

Once I crossed into Pennsylvania, truck traffic increased exponentially and I realized too late that I was now riding in the long, all consuming shadow of the Marcellus Shale natural gas boom. As my kids say when texting...OMG!

This thing is a monster swathed from top to bottom in raw, undiluted money and the gas drillers are in overdrive. These guys are poking strings of pipe in the ground so fast it's a wonder the world doesn't deflate from all the holes in it. There's an unmistakable smell of cash burning through expense accounts that just hangs in the air no matter which way the wind is blowing. The madness of the rush caught  me off guard since it hasn't hit in NY yet, all things still being hung up in litigation, legislation and legalization for the time being. But PA is going at it like 49ers running full tilt west for California gold. It's awesome and frightening to be at ground level on a fly-weight bike watching this insanity go roaring by in a solid string of 18 wheelers and leased white pickups with gas company logos. I've never seen anything like it. I thought I'd somehow gotten lost and ended up on an eight lane interstate with no speed limit. I can only imagine the chatter among the truckers on the CB regarding the idiot on the bike where no reasonable idiot should be.

I was frankly scared witless.  A fair number of the trucks didn't even bother to move a foot to the left or lift a boot off the gas. They just kept the hammer down and sailed by me so close I could smell the driver's aftershave and cigarettes in the windblast. A couple got their yuks in by climbing up on my back wheel and letting me have it with the air horns. Classy...in a Red Man long-cut kind of way I guess. Let me think...there's been an uninterrupted line of rigs tearing by me at maximum speed for a solid hour...I should be surprised by another one?

I do have to give some credit where credit is due though. Many of these guys were pros and it showed. I know some of the drivers were trying to do what they could with what they had but there just wasn't enough room or time at 55. When there was nothing coming at them, they tried to move over to give me some wiggle room. Some even slowed down to give me time to find a wide spot between the lane-line and the ditch but mostly there was nowhere to go and circumstances made them cut it mighty fine. Some of them were really good and I'm glad of it because the shoulder wasn't much in many places and there were a few passes were I could have stuck my elbow out and touched a fender. Lesser men would have run me over with the trailer tires.

Roughly every three seconds for miles on end, another heavyweight ripped past and blew me about two feet to the right. The dirt, grit, exhaust and wind was intense. Before I got 10 miles along this nightmare, my eyes were dried out and I was covered in grit like I'd been caught in an Arabian Desert haboob.

I got a weird, metal taste with my Gatorade and knew every moving part on the bike was getting chewed by the emery-fine dust. Talk about taking the wrong way home.

Obviously, this was no place for me but I had to soldier on to the next turn before I could get aimed back north. I've ridden bikes all over the place and never dreamed I'd hear myself say it but bicycles should be banned from roads with this kind of traffic and conditions. There was no sign or warning of any kind for an out-of-towner like me and no real way to get out of it except to keep going. Maybe PA doesn't want to admit their 'scenic byway' is a deathtrap but I sort of think terrifying or killing visitors might be somewhat bad for the tourism business. I never thought I'd live long enough to see that 14N sign with an arrow pointing to Elmira but just outside of Troy, there it was.

My relief at leaving 6 was enormous. As I suspected, the tailwind was fantastic and my average speed increased by leaps and bounds. Traffic let up to almost nothing and the shoulders got wide and smooth. It was like hitting the lottery. My stress level dropped and I could enjoy cruising again. The next 30 miles rolled easily even as I closed in on the 100 mark. I just let the wind push me along and let my speed do what it wanted.

The last obstacle came along when I was within spitting distance of home. The town highway dept. apparently decided to stone and oil about seven miles of road that I had to ride to get to my driveway. It was freshly done so there were drifts and dunes of fine gravel piled up beside the four tire-worn tracks in the lanes. Those grooves were the only place I could remain upright on 23mm skins since loose stone and narrow tires don't get along too well. Every car that went by stirred up a cloud of dust and I couldn't really move over much without risking a slide in the piles of dry stones. That meant even more dust and grit stuck to my grimy self but with the end so close, it didn't seem to matter much. I just slowed down some more and slogged my way through it until I finally hit real pavement again for the last push.

At the end of the day, it turned out to be a really nice ride except for the Rt. 6 section and I was pretty stoked to make another century without really thinking about it much. 100 miles at a crack is still not the easiest thing in the world but I'm getting better at it. Winter will soon be here and I'll probably get fat and lazy with the snow but for now...I'm knocking off mileage at a pretty good clip. When do I start working on a hundred-and-a-half?

The Third Century

2010-09-08T20:17:00.000-04:00

On the spur of the moment, I took off on another long ride this morning which as usual, turned out to be a little longer than I planned. The 2.1 and I have gotten well-acquainted and within a couple of miles, we were touring easy along the highway like old friends at about 20 mph. Since I knew I was going to go for some distance, I paced so as not to burn up the legs and watched the scenery. It's getting a little cooler these days but it's still nice. Breezy but nice. That breezy thing would come up again later.

In my normal fashion, I just kind of turned when I felt like it and let the road lead where it would. I had a rough destination in mind but no real plan of how to get there. I find it's good therapy to just roll sometimes and let the mental flip of a coin decide where I'm off to. The flip today led west from one lake to another. A lengthy climb out of Watkins Glen and away from Seneca Lake led over the ridge-top toward Waneta Lake and a little burg called Tyrone. The view was pretty spectacular as I started down the hill and I got a little distracted until I realized that the road surface had turned from smooth and fast to a very rough, coarsely grooved stone and oil sort of thing that had the bike weaving around under me.  Besides the change in pavement, I noticed the computer on my handlebars was reading a velocity somewhere up around 45 mph. That, my friends is humming right along on a feather-weight bike with not much between my pink skin and the ever-so-unforgiving blacktop.  Visions of how much tissue and skeletal damage I'd incur if I unloaded at that rate wearing only shorts, a thin jersey, fingerless gloves and a plastic helmet flashed through my head just as the high-speed front end wobble hit. God, here we go again. I thought I was done with this foolishness when I got off the 1400 with the cracked frame.
A shimmy at warp speed is probably the most frightening thing that ever happens to me on a bike. I'm OK with trucks, dogs, weather, close calls and all the other typical hazards of the sport but when that front wheel starts vibrating like the spin cycle on an off-balance washing machine, my life flashes before my eyes in an instant. Loss of control is a given and a flying leap over the handlebars a very real possibility unless you can break the shake and slow down somehow. Fortunately, I was already down in the drops instead of on the hoods so the brake levers were near to hand.  I three-fingered both, again availing myself of more luck than brains by not grabbing too fast or too much thereby adding a skid to my problems. Trying to hang on to the gyrating bars, I got the anchor thrown out and deceleration going before the front wheel went 90 degrees and launched me into orbit. I was still doing 40-plus and had lost all interest in the scenery.
Only old Sir Isaac's First Law about a body remaining in a state of constant velocity and tending to move in a straight line saved my bacon from what could only have been a very poor landing in the ditch.  There was absolutely no control over my direction except momentum. Since I was screaming straight down the hill when my ability to turn went out the window and there were no curves in the road to navigate, I managed to stay on the tarmac with only minimal wandering while I chased the wiggle out of the forks.
Eventually, as always happens if you can stay on the bike long enough, things slowed a point where the harmonics dampened out and the shimmy broke allowing a return to normal steering. Normal steering mind you, not normal breathing. That takes much longer and requires the pulse rate to first drop below triple digits. Wobbly knees replace wobbly handlebars and and certain impolite language is used while you shake your head in wonder and think, "How many times can I get away with this and live?"
Reflection leads me to believe that a combination of excessive speed, a nasty cross-wind (remember that breeze?) and a crummy paving job brought on this episode of the wiggles and that it's probably an isolated incident. It's never happened before on the 2.1 and the rest of the day passed without a repeat performance so I'm hoping it was just a weird, one-of-a-kind thing that won't become a trend. Onward and upward.

Once my heart subsided and a quick inspection found nothing technically amis with the bike, it was back on the road and on to Penn Yan. The breeze had now become very stout and being behind me, I ate up miles northward very quickly. A little alarm bell was ringing because I knew that sooner or later I would have to turn back south and the wind would no longer be my friend. The turn came with another bonus...not only was it upwind but uphill in spades. Rt. 14A is straight for several miles which gives you the ability to see what you're up against. It looked like a tower. The wind was blowing 15 to 20 mph off my starboard bow and trying to push me out in the lane of traffic with every gust. I've never been in creeper-low so long in my life. It just went on and on up that hill until I my legs cramped and finally just shut down. I had to pull into a little ice cream stand and just sit with a cone for about 20 minutes while the burn subsided. I still had over 40 miles to go and the wind just didn't let up. Brief rest stops became increasingly common until I finally dropped down off the ridge back into Watkins Glen and took another long breather on the lakefront to fortify for the last push home.

Anyone who's been to Watkins knows that it's pretty much located in the bottom of a hole. Any way out is up except due south which didn't happen to be the way I needed to go. All you can do is pick the lesser of the evils for a climb and then just gear down and do it. I decided on a secondary road out of the valley which turned out to be ridiculously steep but mercifully short. It saved a long slog up the truck route which is still steep enough but also stretched out so much that it makes you want to shoot yourself to end your misery before you finally get to the top, especially when you've already got 90 hard miles behind you. No matter what road you pick, you've got to do the grade to get out of the pit and that last little push just about did in the old guy. I had to pace pretty carefully after that to nurse it on home. And the wind just wouldn't quit. I kept trying not to bonk for well and all at this stage.  Surrender would have meant a rescue operation by van and a considerable blow to my self-esteem so slow but sure, I limped on back to the barn. 103 miles after my departure, I sort of wobbled into the driveway and unclipped. I'm usually not that whipped but this time I hurt enough that a couple of beers only took the edge off. Sometimes it's like that...

Once in a while, I have to keep trying to remember that I really enjoy this. Seems like an awful lot of hurt to volunteer for. Then I think about the land and the sky and all that I've seen and before I know it, I can't wait to go again. Sometimes it's like that too. The Fourth Century AT is already on the horizon.

Five One

2010-09-05T16:38:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was another birthday for me. It sure was nice just to be home with Chris, Connor and Seneca. I got in late (early for the real world), ran all night on not-much-sleep and the van broke down trying to get to Old Drafty but a wonderful dinner and a suprise gift made it all ok.

Sometimes I lose track of how lucky I am. I hope I never stop remembering.

Trek 1000

2010-08-25T21:11:00.000-04:00

After the beating I gave myself on the hills yesterday, I took a little recovery ride this afternoon with Dave. Everything above my ankles was cramped up and sore so I needed to un-kink before the next train trip. Sitting down for 12 hrs. in a locomotive doesn't loosen up stiff legs very much so an easy cruise was in order. As a bonus, the 2.1 turned over it's first 1000 miles somewhere along the way. Not bad for only a couple months old. Nobody can say I'm not making good use of it.

My mood is a little better today too. I probably will never know what that thing is that hits me like it did yesterday. I hammered until there was absolutely nothing left trying to make it go away but it didn't work. I do know there's always a day when the skid gets to the bottom of the hill and the whole world just shatters...kinda like yesterday. After that, things will slowly get better until the next cycle when the "uncontrolled descent below known terrain"; more commonly known as a 'crash and burn' begins again. It's not like I become non-functional, even at the worst of times...I just don't feel like doing anything or being around anyone. Going to work has almost the same effect as the killer biking or running I do...it makes me focus on just one task and put away everything else.

I preach to engineer trainees when I get them that when they run trains, they have to be able to put all their problems and distractions in a little mental box and stash that box away in the back of their head while they concentrate on the job at hand. I guess I've pounded it enough that I can actually do it pretty well when I need to. It takes so much of my mental capacity to keep track of a train that I can't think about much else anyway. Single minded I guess. It's the rest of the time that's a problem.

The only thing I keep thinking...This too shall pass.

Dark Days Vol. 2

2010-08-25T07:57:00.000-04:00

Today is just one of 'those' days. It seems to run in cycles of about 2 months...the bottom falls out and there's a long slide with no pool at the end. It's hard to describe but it feels like waves of...what? Sadness, fear, anger, pain? Whatever it is, it's almost paralyzing. I know it'll pass and in a while, I'll be ok again but for now...

I sprinted nearly to collapse but couldn't outrun it. I climbed hills but it was there at the top. I tried to make my legs hurt enough to forget but it still rode with me. I've worked so hard at being strong but I still can't lift it.

An old song I like has a line about "the nexus of the crisis and the origin of storms"...maybe I'm just passing through there on the way to better days. I hope so.

The Tour Is On!

2010-08-19T13:32:00.003-04:00

I'm waiting for the phone to ring to head out for a train so I got some work done on the 2011 Tour de Cure. Hey, I know it's months away yet but if I don't get started, it'll wind up being May before I do anything. Somebody talked me into being the Captain this time around so I've got more to do than just ride it and collect donations. I got the NS Thorougbreds team and my personal web pages going so now it's just a matter of getting people signed up.

I've got some plans in the works but we'll have to see how things shake out as the summer winds down.

Did I really just say that? Summer winds down? How did that happen? It's going to be my birthday pretty soon and I seem to have lost another year someplace. Too busy to watch the time go by I guess. I sort of noticed that the days were getting shorter but was trying to ignore it and hope it would go away. Looks like it'll be a year-end blog entry before too long. God I hate to see it get cold again!

Anyway...I'll have more to get down in the old Wayward Home when I get back from this trip...unless the urge to peel off another century ride hits me and the 2.1 gets precedence over the keyboard. The blue and black rocket could very easily go over it's first 1000 miles. You never know what might happen...

Seneca Lake could be on the destination list again.

Over The Hills

2010-08-17T21:13:00.002-04:00

Took a spin on the 2.1 today...actually a couple of them. Started out looking for a good hill to climb and since I happen to know a real beauty right down the road, it wasn't long before I was in granny low and hammering. I like climbs as they kind of give me a really hard workout without doing a zillion miles. The old heart rate gets pretty high and stays there on a long hill.

I did a couple of 6% grades and then zoomed home on the flatlands to meet Chris and the kids around noon. I sprinted the last 10 miles or so and had a good burn going when I got in the driveway. Grabbed something to munch on and decided to head out again but realized the front tire had gone flat in the interim. Grrrr.

On disassembly, I found a circular piece of sharp metal stuck in the tread and a small hole in the tube. Dig out the patch kit and slap a sticky on the puncture, pull the shard out of the tire and we're back in business.

Out the door and rolling again. This time I dropped into Ithaca and negotiated the traffic. This time of year it's laced with fresh Cornell and IC students, many of whom have yet to drive their first thousand miles. It's a zoo when the college kids hit town but I did a little zigging and zagging and got out unscathed. The hill back up out of town is an epic and my lungs were competing with my legs to see who could hurt the most. Ahh...the Bonk approaches.

I ran out of water somewhere about 65 miles out but I knew the end was near and forged on to the high school where Chris was at a meeting and bummed a ride back home on the bike rack. Not sure I could have legged it home but it damn sure would have been way-dark-thirty before I got there. That was enough for one day anyhow. The next century will have to wait for a day when I don't deliberately overdo it so early in the trip.

I realized sometime along that I miss my riding partner on these adventures. Doc could make me laugh no matter what and push me way out there when I thought I didn't have anything left. People come and people go but the good ones seem to go more often.

Here's to ya Doc...I'll be down that way sometime to cut the wind.

Great Dismal Swamp

2010-08-05T09:20:00.018-04:00

This took a little longer than I thought...

I said I'd soon get back to that long ride in the swamp down in VA but as usual, life in general kind of caught up with me and the keyboard got sidelined. Here then without further delay, is the adventure in the muggy flatland...

I heard about this place from one of the locals and thought it sounded interesting so a little web research led me down the road and right to the gate.

Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge

I didn't really know what to expect but their website promised miles of trails and lots of interesting scenery so I loaded the 4500 dirt bike, packed extra Gatorades and headed out. The day I picked for my explorations was unfortunately one of the hottest of the week with heat indexes of around 106 degrees with the humidity hanging at the top of the scale. Not exactly the best weather to explore a low-lying swamp but you work with what you have.

The first thing I discovered was a serious miscalculation on my part on the scale of the place. It's much bigger than it looks on the map so even the parking areas turned out to be a couple of miles off the main drag down some decrepit looking dirt roads. The next revelation was that the whole area appeared to be totally deserted. Mid-week afternoons don't seem to be a big draw.

I offloaded in an empty parking lot and set off down a trail along a 'ditch'. All the trails follow these things which are just as described...stagnant, bug and snake filled swales that run straight and true right out of sight.

The first one I followed was dug in the time of Washington (that's George...of 1776 fame) by hand with slave labor. The idea of chewing a four-and-a-half mile ditch with pick and shovel for any reason in these kinds of conditions is mind boggling in itself. I guess it must have seemed like the thing to do at the time. Each one is bounded by a slightly raised, relatively clear path that you can ride right to the horizon. These things are way too straight and flat for a guy used to trails that go out of sight around the next curve in about 10 yards. Took some getting accustomed to.

As advertised, Washington Ditch led to a large puddle called Lake Drummond. Again, it was absolutely deserted. Nothing stirred anywhere except the local critters and the (swarming, voracious, bloodthirsty) bugs. Stopping meant swatting but I parked on the small observation deck for a breather, a look around and a couple of pictures.

That marker I leaned the bike on had an excerpt from a poem that caught my eye. I quick search when I got home found the rest of the text. It seemed appropriate for the place...

The Lake of the Dismal Swamp

"They made her a grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true;
And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where all night long, by a firefly lamp,
She paddles her white canoe.

And her firefly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and moving our life shall be
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree,
When the footstep of death is near."

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds,
His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before.

And when on the earth he sank to sleep,
If slumber his eyelids knew,
He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venemous tear, and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew!

And near him the she-wolf stirr'd the brake,
And the copper-snake breathed in his ear,
Till he starting cried, from his dream awake,
"Oh when shall I see the dusky Lake,
And the white canoe of my dear?"

He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright
Quick over its surface play'd,
"Welcome," he said, "my dear one's light!"
And the dim shore echo'd for many a night
The name of the death-cold maid.

Till he hollow'd a boat of the birchen bark,
Which carried him off from the shore;
Far, far he follow'd the meteor spark,
The wind was high and the clouds were dark,
And the boat return'd no more.

But oft, from the Indian hunter's camp,
This lover and maid so true
Are seen at the hour of midnight damp
To cross the Lake by a firefly lamp,
And paddle their white canoe!

Thomas Moore
Norfolk, Virginia
1803

I believe I could picture that white canoe out there under the moonlight. But the idea of being here in this swamp at night gives me the willies just thinking about it. Dismal is certainly the right word in the daylight...nighttime must be perfectly awful.

Leaving the lake suitably melancholy, I had to ride back the same way to hook onto the other trails so after a rerun of the ditch, I found myself at the parking lot again. Still not another soul around so I gave serious thought to giving up for the day and heading back to the beach. Not one to waste a drive by only riding 9 miles, I decided to venture back out and see what I could see.

Other named 'ditches' led further into the swamp and a check of the map had me eyeballing a route on Lynn, Williamson, East, Camp and Middle to make a loop out of it. Lynn was the now-familiar laser-straight line out of sight but the surface was hard sand and the grass was cut so I got into the big rings and flew. A little warning bell was going off in the back of my head about how far I had gone but the going was easy and miles ate up fast. I passed through another empty parking area and navigated to Williamson Ditch; also curveless and endless to the horizon. That nagging little bell got some louder as the trail turned rougher and the grass a bit deeper by the time I hit the East Ditch. I was down to a single Gatorade and the temperature was peaking at mid-afternoon. I was at the furthest point from my vehicle and had to decide to turn back or push on to finish the loop. Six of one...half a dozen of the other. So it seemed.

East, Camp and Middle turned out to be a nightmare. East Ditch had not been mowed in a very long time and the grass was deep enough to hide tree limbs and potholes. I could just barely find the single track and had visions of getting lost in here if I missed the turn onto Camp Ditch. My progress slowed immensely. Occasional rest stops were cut short by airborne assault waves of blood drinking insect life coupled with an intense temperature increase once I stopped generating my own breeze. That little bell was now really loud as I realized my core temperature was getting dangerously high and my liquid supply dangerously low. The van seemed very far away. Having had heat stroke once before and finding it very much not to my liking, I started pacing as much as I could but the tall grass and ever-rougher terrain had me down in the gears and struggling. Camp Ditch was a bright blur of ruts, clinging grass and thoughts of 911. I recognized the signs of being in over my head...no more sweat, a blinding headache and empty water frames. I wondered if they'd find me before the bugs drained every drop of blood if I passed out. Why won't this ditch ever end? The thought of cooling off in the stagnant water was less than appealing since I had no idea what might live in it but I resolved to try even that if the world got to spinning any more than it already was. Episodes of SurvivorMan and mirages of Bear Grylls living on slugs passed through my head. We're having some real fun now!

I remember seeing clouds of butterflies in the wet ruts, large birds flying along beside me and hearing assorted invisible things thrashing in the brush but all that may or may not have been just exhaustion talking. I'll never know how much of that actually happened but eventually, a tee in the trail shimmered out of the west and a very real left turn materialized ahead marking my return to Lynn Ditch and the end of the worst. The heading change to due south got the sun out of my eyes and put me on good surface again for the run back to point 'A'. There was shade and a natural breeze along Lynn so my body temp started down and some of the flashing lights dissipated from my peripheral vision. We win again.

Just as the parking lot finally came in sight, I finally met the only other people I'd seen since I left the van that morning. Two women in hiking gear surrounded by a cloud of bug repellent were walking into the first trail I'd started out on hours ago. They flagged me down and wanted to know what I'd seen and where I'd been. I think I was almost coherent enough to answer but I was mostly grateful to be inside their DEET force field and free of insect attack for a minute. We chatted for a bit but I think they were a little taken aback by the dirty and bedraggled looking idiot raving in front of them. I was just happy to be out of there. They went on their way with a shrug and I limped back to the van and collapsed in the driver's seat with the A/C on full blast.

All in all it was lessons learned and in retrospect, nowhere near as bad as it seemed when things were at their worst. I'm glad I went but I do have a new sticky-note stuck inside my head...next time, don't do anything involving "swamp" by myself and always, always take a closer look at that little mileage scale in the bottom corner of the map.

Sun and More Sun

2010-07-28T20:34:00.009-04:00

Another day back at the mine. My first 'round trip after getting back from vacation and it seems like I hardly left. Heat, heavy train, long stay in the hotel, frustration...oh yeah, it's great to be back. I guess it really isn't all that bad but it sure is hard just trying to get back in the groove after living almost like a human for a couple of weeks. You know; sleeping when it's dark, spending time with the brood, a little leisure time...that kind of thing can grow on a guy. If I live long enough to have 5 weeks of vacation, I don't know that I'll be able to ever go back to work if I take all of it at once.

Speaking of vacation...where did I leave off? Oh yeah...back in VA Beach...

As it turns out, our first night was kind of fuzzy. I was really beat and it all seemed to melt together like everything does when you haven't had enough sleep. I crashed pretty hard and pretty early, hoping I'd be recovered enough to hit the sand in the morning. By the time it got dark, I was gone.

Dawn brought sunshine, climbing humidity and a fast rising thermometer.

Much recovered, Chris and I ventured out to reconnoiter. Early morning is far and away the best time to be on the boardwalk. Only a few runners, bikers and bladers are out and the beach is nearly deserted. The sun traded places with the previous night's thunderheads on the horizon, bright but not yet too hot. I could live with an AM walk or ride by the sea most days for about the next 20 years or so. If we could find a place where I could hold a job and keep my seniority, the ocean rolled up to the sand, there were nearby hills to test my mountain bike, somebody desperately wanted to give us a house and traffic didn't SUCK...we'd have it made. But for here and now, the sand was warm, the water was cool and for a moment...all was right with the world.

One thing I discovered very soon about that area aside from how nice the beach is...everything around there is flat. You have to actually search to find anything resembling a knoll. A short road bike jaunt with some folks from the NS Tour de Cure team demonstrated that if it wasn't for a stiff breeze...riding down there is like sitting on the trainer. Apparently, the riding mode of choice in these parts is to go really fast with a whole bunch of people and swap leads in a paceline. Sounds like fun but I personally prefer a view that doesn't include quite so much bib short and derailleur. I'm pretty much a solo guy when I'm hammering unless Doc is in my draft so I'm not really used to following anyone. Besides, the roads were extremely skinny and completely devoid of shoulders or much in the way of markings. This means you either tiptoe on the edge of disaster between asphalt and ditch to let traffic go or you just let it all hang out and ride in the lane hoping the next low-flying Audi doesn't need a new hood ornament. It's interesting and I can't wait to (hopefully) ride in their version of the Tour next April but for my part, I think I prefer the vertical world.

Anyway, I spent a chunk of one day lounging on the beach and sloshing around in the surf. Very relaxing, especially without a cell phone. Someday, I'm going to heave my cell right out in the ocean and cease to be available. I got along pretty well before those miserable things and I think I might like to do so again at some point. Dream on.

I also got out on both bikes at one time or another while Chris baked and the kids body-surfed. One little cruise right around the beach front area led me into a park with some pretty nice paths and scenery. Still generally flat terrain of course but at least it was dirt instead of sand (mostly). It sure is weird to bike in places with Spanish Moss hanging off the trees. Looked like Pirates of the Caribbean to me but it was pretty cool anyway. Challenging in some ways like fighting the heat and humidity and pushing through the sandy spots but fun nonetheless.

Street riding on the other hand was quite a challenge in other respects as most of the drivers were either oblivious or outright hostile to bicycles. I'm not much intimidated by traffic after years of risking life and limb on the Hog but the deliberate near-misses and cut-offs got old pretty fast. Now I know why group rides are de rigueur around here; there's more back-up available if you have to drag some side-swiping idiot out of his car and review his legal obligations to other highway users (or just stomp his ass if you're a little less PC). I guess you have to get out into the open a little to do much road work without the hassles but I gave it a whirl anyway. I had a loop all figured out but the daily thunderstorm sort of let the air out of that plan and maybe it's just as well. I got some pavement miles in and lived to tell about it so it's all good. Then there was Thursday and the last, longest pedal adventure of the trip. Let's just say that that one that turned into an epic and will be a post all it's own. When I get back from my next rock around the clock on tonight's train, I'll try to get it down. The Lake of the Dismal Swamp is all I'm gonna say for now.

Invaders on the Beach

2010-07-25T22:56:00.010-04:00

Ah...vacations. My last post covered just one event in the first week of my 14 day hiatus from railroading. Needless to say, there were others.

Looming large on the list was a trip to hot and sunny (really, really hot and sunny) Virginia Beach. It's been a lot of years since Chris and I last took a jaunt down thataway. A couple of offspring, a house, a career change and middle age have all intervened. And this time around it was a luggage-stuffed mini-van with kids in the back and bicyles on the rack instead of a screaming red Shovelhead with garbage-bag-lined gym bags on the sissy bar. Times they do change.

At least when the usual enroute monsoon opened up on this go-round, we didn't get drowned and beaten half to death as was normally the case on the Harley. Hitting rain on the bike headed to the shore always seemed like riding through Heaven's own urinal flush; the sky would get dark, lightning would flash and then the Big Guy would zip up and pull the lever...
Every time we rode to Norfolk or VA Beach, we'd UPS our clothes down ahead of us because we knew nothing would arrive dry enough to wear no matter how many Heftys we used. Once the downpour started, there was no rain gear short of a space suit that could withstand it. There's just no describing what it's like unless you've done it yourself. You could volunteer as a target for fire department hose practice and that might be close but it probably wouldn't last as long. I've been more than suprised a few times that the Big Twin could gulp down that much water and keep the plugs firing. It sure looks different through windshield wipers.

Unconcerned with dodging tropical weather this time and hoping to miss at least some of the heaviest beltway traffic, we hit the blacktop in the wee hours of the morning. The kids promptly crashed in the back and I never heard much except music and tire hum until daylight. A breakfast and gas stop in Harrisburg displayed the first cracks in the plan as we got nailed by the morning rush hour trying to get out of town. The ETA display on the Garmin kept creeping further and further into the future as 6 lanes stuttered slowly southward. This was frustrating but also merely a warm up for the main event. The real fun came in the neighborhood of DC...pretty much as I remembered it from every time I've ever been near the place. Construction, detours, gridlock, attitude; yep, nothing's changed here. I95 was an 8 lane, 15 mile parking lot which only accelerated above 3 mph after we passed the crunched plastic and glass remains of someone's artery-clogging 'oops'. My lack of sleep before departure began to display itself as a lousy disposition which finally led to surrending the wheel for a while to catch a nap. Another hour slipped away.

Eventually the traffic jams, rest stops, thunderstorms and brake lights all blurred together until at last, signs appeared advertising an approaching beach. The screen on the GPS showed nothing further east but blue so I knew we'd either reach our hotel soon or have to find out if a fully packed Toyota will float. Fortunately, the road took a left before the blue line and we didn't have to test the van for seaworthiness. But we did need to offload and get all that stuff out the hatch and up to the 5th floor. Long intervals passed waiting for the single bank of elevators to have room for our travelling show. When the van was at last safely parked, the last coolers and suitcases had made it to the room and all hands were accounted for, I finally got a look off the balcony and realized we really were here again. The ocean was a smooth hazy blue fading to mist where the clouds touch the water, just as I remembered it. The beach looked toasted, edged with slow breakers and boardwalk. Late afternoon storms were still rolling around in the heat so the sky was moving, dropping lightning and rain squalls as the weather moved out to sea. I'd forgotten that big horizon over the Atlantic. It drops right off the edge of the world taking ships and thunderheads with it. There's places and things in life that can still make me stop and stare. The sea meeting the sky in it's eastern home is one of them.

We slowly got settled into our temporary digs and wound down watching those short, vicious little thunderstorms blow off shore. The ships out on the sea lanes disappeared behind sheets of rain only to pop back into view a few minutes later as the squalls passed. In between every blast of wind and lightning, the Navy fighters doing touch-and-go's at Oceana would roar overhead, coming in low with gear and flaps hanging out. Mean looking little devils sneaking in through the overcast with a touch of afterburner to stir up the neighborhood. Things were looking up.

The Second Century AT (After Trek)

2010-07-15T06:27:00.007-04:00

One century was not enough. And now I'm calling everything AT because it's a whole new ball game with the 2.1. Everything BT (before Trek) was just a warm up. That beauty is some way to fly!

So I'm a sucker for punishment. From out of who-knows-where, a notion occurred to me to take a little solo distance ride while I'm on vacation. Great idea. No pressure to get back by such-and-such a time, no worry about getting called to work about 87 miles from home, just me and the mileage. But where to go, where to go?

How about around another lake? Sounds like a possibility. I've ridden the old Harley around Cayuga a zillion times, how about let's pedal it once? And just like that, a plan was born.
Load up on Gatorade and Clifs, pump up the tires, pack my tool bag, plug in the iPod and point the Trek north.

07/14/2010 Second Century - Cayuga Lake
Find more Bike Rides in Finger Lakes, New York

The weather was a little iffy right out of the gate. The NWS guys advertised a 70% chance of rain but clearing later on. I'm game for that so I was on the road by 8 AM under clouds and fog. Funny how fog sometimes gets thicker and darker until you really can't tell the difference between the mist and rain. Less than an hour out, I noticed it was a lot thicker and darker and very much like rain. In fact, it was definitely rain. The world on the other side of my shades disappeared.
Fortunately, it didn't last too long and dropping down the valley to the foot of the lake put me under the worst of it. Not the most auspicious way to begin.

I made a short stop downtown to get my hair buzzed at my sister-in-law's shop (nothing like getting something productive done while I'm at it), then off and running again. The ceiling lifted a little and the rain quit but still looking pretty dreary. I dispensed with the sunglasses on the way out of Tiny Town. The lake came into view and started drifting slowly by on my left as the long climb back out of the valley got underway. So far, so good.

The first misadventure caught me at about mile 30. I'd been grinding along up a steep little dip, gritting my teeth at that right shoulder of mine that always gets sore after a few hours on the bars. Why not pause for a stretch, a drink and a couple ibuprofens to take the edge off? Pick a spot and pull over...Uh...why didn't my left foot unclip? How about pick a spot and fall over? Why is my world rotating leftward and earthward? This can't be good. My right foot finally popped loose and in a desparate attempt to avoid eating tarmac, I jammed it between the front tire and downtube with big chainring teeth embedded in the calf. Now this is fun!

The good news is, the bike never hit the ground so it doesn't really count as a crash. The bad news is I was now equipped with a fresh row of greasy bite marks leaking red stuff down the back of my leg and into my shoe. And alcohol wipes burn like crazy. Well, my shoulder doesn't hurt as much but I needed that ibuprofen a little more than I did. Back in the wind after a bit of first aid and Gatorade. I just hope ProLink chain lube is a good antiseptic.

Still pushing a pretty stiff north wind, I eventually dropped down to lake-level at Aurora and met up with Chris, her niece and our younger son. They'd followed me out with the van so I could take a look at Jessica's new Diamondback and sort of fit it up for her. She'd bought it the day before and couldn't wait long enough for me to get home and put it on the trainer to have a look. So instead, they put it on the rack and brought the bike to me so she could ride it ASAP. The big-box where she got it didn't even bother to put air in the tires or raise the saddle once she paid the tab so nothing was right. She's a shiny-new rider and all this is pretty much from scratch for her but it seems like they could at least show her how a presta valve works before they kicked it out the door. It was kind of a quick-and-dirty, close-counts setup done in a parking lot but it was more than the store gave her and at least its rideable. I needed a break anyway and they restocked my bottle cages before we took off in opposite directions.

By now, the sun was peeking out and raising the temperature as promised and the humidity was creeping up along with it. The road along there is an endless series of little dips and dives which means you don't get much of a break anywhere for a lot of miles. It was a preview of things to come. The north end of the lake eventually appeared and I took a little breather at the lock where Cayuga connects to the Erie Canal. I've lived around here all my life and never seen this. Guess going a little slower isn't all bad.

But if I wanted to get home before Thursday, I had to keep rolling so it's back on the blacktop and around the turn at the top of the lake to head south. I'd been anticipating that the wind at my back would help a lot on the return leg but I didn't count on the hills. It turned out to be a long, gradual climb with only minor variations for what seemed like a week. The breeze coming from behind did give me a little boost but it also meant I didn't have much free air conditioning to keep me dry while I chewed my way back up to the top of the ridge.

Somewhere in there, a yellow jacket zoomed in, bounced off my helmet visor, lodged under the strap in front of my right ear and before I could grab him, buried his stinger in my cheek. He must have been a healthy one because it felt like somebody punched me. And alcohol wipes burn like crazy. My eye sort of puffed shut for a while and teared until I couldn't see past the forks. Somewhat less than ideal but eventually it cooled off and calmed down to where I had binocular vision again. I guess between the sweat and alcohol, the venom didn't have a chance. It took my mind off the sprocket holes, shoulder ache and saddle burn. More ibuprofen.

I eventually got up on the hilltop and in the nick of time, an ice cream stand appeared. I'd had about enough hot Gatorade for a while so a break in the shade and a cone fit the bill nicely. I managed to speak coherently enough to order and chat with the owner while I soaked up some of their conditioned air. Leg burn was becoming a significant issue but the cold vanilla and cool air took the edge off enough to clip in and push on.

From about mile 85 all the rest of the way down the lake, the short climbs and drops just ran together. This was the same stuff I was doing earlier in spades. It turned into an endless exercise in gear changing. The cables were stretching out and shifts were a little harsh but the lake kept moving slowly along on the left. The bonk was lurking just around the corner so rest stops got more frequent and cruising speed dropped quite a bit. My saddle had seemingly developed fangs and there wasn't really any spots left on the bars that didn't come with stiff shoulders and tingly fingers. At one lightheaded pause, I foolishly decided to swab some more grease, dirt and blood off the chainring gouges in my calf and just about passed out when I tried to stand up. Note to self...don't do that quite so fast when you're already loopy, stupid. And alcohol wipes REALLY burn. Finally, there was no more lake, just road and the last 20 mile leg to home was all that was left.

I know this part from riding it many times in the past and I know that it comes equipped with several climbs including one wretch called McMillan Hill. This thing's just steep enough to get your attention on a good day but normally isn't that big a deal. It's about 2% and only a couple miles long, just gear down a bit and grind it out. Having 112 miles already behind me when I hit it this time made it a very big deal. Granny low got used all the way to the top and I thought my legs were going to burst into open flames. The old bonk was drafting right off my back tire and gaining.

By mile 119 I was pretty well done in. Just about everything hurt at this stage of the game and the world was going by very slowly. About then an orange jersey appeared headed toward me and there was Chris, returning the favor of coming out to meet me and riding shotgun into the finish. I needed that extra boost of having a cheerleader and found enough in the old legs to make almost 20 mph for most of the last five miles. I don't know if I'd have made it in without my escort.

We hit the driveway ten hours after I left and that put away another record distance. It was a long day but worth the trip. I keep pushing, finding out what an old guy can do and surprising myself. True, a lot of my parts are pretty sore as I write this even after a stretch of sleep but this too shall pass. I outran the bonk-monster one more time despite a close race at the end and with any luck, will always stay just one pedal ahead.

Now where do I go from here? Two lakes? Who says you get smarter with age?

Tour Diary Part 3

2010-07-12T06:54:00.003-04:00

Finally, finally...I'm on vacation. It always seems like it'll never get here and it's gone too fast but for now, I'm out of the loop for two whole weeks. Time to get caught up a little.

We're putting the finishing touches on our NS Thoroughbreds for 2010. A couple of last-minute donations came in late yesterday to put us over the top in donations so not only did we all ride like Armstrong, we topped the list of fundraisers as well. How's that for starters?

We're kind of planning on doing some riding while I'm off but mostly the big idea is to get to Virginia so Chris can dip her toes in the Atlantic. I'm all for it. After her trials and tribulations on the 65 mile loop, she really deserves it. Even though Doc and I had our share of problems on the 85, those 65 milers really got hammered.

The courses for three of the distances all started out the same way so everybody got pounded with that stiff hill-climb right out of the gate. There was a fair amount of walking bikes up that killer which kinda takes the edge off the rush pretty early. Once out of the valley though, it's more of the up-and-down stuff that's just the way of life in New York so the six from Team NS got together and rolling. Somewhere along the way, Chris heard that unmistakable TWANG as two spokes in her drive wheel gave up the fight and broke off at the hub. The rim instantly went out of true and that was that. A call went out to the trusty SAG truck and mechanical help soon came over the horizon. One spoke was fixable but the other required the one tool that the tech didn't have. A quick replacement was made and a good-enough truing was done to get her going and back in the game. He even gave her a ride to catch up with the pack. Nice!

Unfortunately...it wasn't the end of the run of bad luck. Why is it that no matter how much prep you do, something always decides to break once you get out on the road? Half the troops started throwing chains so several stops had to be made to fix greasy drivelines. No big deal but it sure breaks up the rhythm of things. Luckily, no flat tires or crashes put in appearances but then the weather decided to chip in on the proceedings. It was hazy and humid all the way which in this neck of the woods means there's always a chance of thunder showers. Sure enough, they got caught in one of those afternoon squalls that tear around the area on hot summer days. Luckily, there wasn't any lightning but the rain was like trying to ride in a waterfall. Reports of water sheeting down off the visors of their helmets were pretty much universal. Since there's really nowhere to hide from such a thing and they were all instantly soaked anyway, the only thing to do was keep on keeping on and hope the storm passed. Bicycles make very poor submarines so riding the remainder of the day under water was not exactly high on anyone's wish list. No wonder the answers to my cell phone inquiries were short.

True to form, the mini-monsoon came and went it's merry way fairly quickly and the rain was replaced with humidity normally reserved for malarial places like the Amazonian jungle. Ain't New York great sometimes?

Wet and trying to breathe a semi-liquid atmosphere, they pushed on around the detour Doc and I had already negotiated and found it to be a dead end. The only reason for them to do another climb and wobble down the afore-mentioned torn up blacktop was to reach a rest stop, then turn right around and go back the same way. Not exactly a great idea for half drowned people wearing soaked chamois and shoes that squished water every time the pedals went down. It added about 12 miles to the route for not much benefit. Thanks DOT.

Finally on the return leg, the remaining four...Chris, Dave, Norma and Amy with Karen bringing up the rear in that screaming red VW, started pounding away into the wind for the finish line. Karen wouldn't leave her adopted kids alone on the road and gave them a first-class escort all the rest of the way in. No more mechanical or weather adventures came along but by now, everyone was getting pretty tapped out and the bonk was lurking around waiting to pounce. A steady supply of goodies and Gatorade stashed in the VeeDub kept them going but as the time ticked down, they were still miles out and pushing the south wind. That's about when we found them.
They looked pretty droopy strung out in a line ahead of Karen but perked up a little when Doc and I came around the curve and tacked on behind the pack. A couple miles further and the road drops over a crest and runs downhill all the way to the foot of the lake. I heard a lot of whooping and hollering during the long coast down off the ridge and into town. We hooked up with Mark and Gary at the light and the damp, weary, dirty but happy tail-enders rode into the park like they rode out...as a team. What a way to end it!

So we all finished the day with smiles, hugs and handshakes on a ride well done. The photos say it all. Our first Tour was something I'll never forget and something I'm truly happy we did. It really was "The Ride Of Our Lives".

Tour Diary Part 2

2010-07-05T20:30:00.005-04:00

On and on we go...

The Good Doctor and I finally turned the corner and headed back south down the east side of Seneca Lake toward Watkins Glen. Our first official rest stop came at a winery parking lot just south of Geneva. I decided to forgo any wine tasting since I couldn't think of a good vintage to compliment Clif Bars. Would that be a white or a red? Instead of a fine Finger Lakes pressing, I stuck with a couple of PBJs and a reload of my Gatorade bottles. Doc had to take on more chamois butter as his saddle-burns were smoldering pretty good by now but other than that, things were progressing remarkably well. The rain was mostly holding off except for a few sprinkles so our biggest obstacles were the hills and the stiff south wind. A little rest and recharge and we're back on the road.

I finally did make cell contact with the 65 milers over on the other side of the lake. The conversation was still terse but at least conveyed information. By now, a couple of them had surrendered to the SAG truck after a heroic effort and Chris had broken two spokes on her drive wheel. It was pouring rain on their side of the lake but they were still going. The detour that we took led them on a merry chase to nowhere except a dirt road down to a rest stop and a double-back to head south. It added about 12 wet miles to the 35 or so they'd already done. It sounded like they were getting pounded on all sides but by all accounts, they hadn't given up. I looked across at the very dark sky to the west, shook my head and dropped into the bars to cut the wind for Doc. There wasn't much we could do for the time being except keep pushing.

A couple of stiff climbs got us back up on the ridge-tops and cruising but suddenly Doc disappeared off my back wheel where he'd been a fixture for some few miles. I'm used to him doing that. Sometimes he just drops out of my draft and is gone before I realize it. He gets a little behind but just hammers along until he catches back up or I take a mini-pause. I never worry because I know he'll be along eventually. The guy is so damn strong that you can watch his chainstays and derailleurs flex from the strain when he pedals so I'm rarely too concerned. This time though, he was nowhere in sight and my pause got a little bit long to be normal. I did a quick loop, backtracked and found him along the shoulder looking disgustedly at his own rear wheel now also newly equipped with two broken spokes. What is it with broken spokes? Could it be that the high altitude bunny-hops over railroad tracks and potholes that Doc specializes in finally had an effect? He got about a foot of air over a couple of them and the landings were an audible crash so that does have potential I guess. I made a mental note to remind him sometime that street bikes don't have long-travel suspension like the mountain varieties. A quick inspection and the verdict was an unrideable bent rim necessitating a call to the SAG wagon. Fortunately, we were near one of the Ham radio operators stationed around the course so a call went out for the mobile wrench to swing by and make repairs. ETA for the bike medic was about 30 minutes so the idea was that I would keep going while Doc waited for the fix and then he'd catch a ride with the truck to catch up. Looked good on paper.

Now solo, I took off for the next R&R about 15 miles ahead. Another vertical climb up out of the lake valley pretty much tapped out the legs for a while so I put in at a fire station/bonk stop to refuel and stretch out a couple of fairly serious kinks. Still no sign of the Big Man so one last fill of the bottles, another Clif or two, out the driveway and back into the wind on the last leg for home plate. Turns out that all that climbing had some benefit because it was pretty much downhill all the way into Watkins. Lucky for me because my uphill muscles were really singing by this stage. Head down over the bars and rolling, the last downhill finally came in sight with 'Zoom Zoom' chalked on the turn marker. One last swoop and suddenly, there's the park and the finish line. Seven hours almost to the minute after we rolled out at the back of the pack, I clicked out of the pedals and put my foot down on the longest ride of my life.
And that is how we do that.

I checked in at the gate so they didn't go out looking for my number at the end of the day and picked up my goodie bag from the Tour staff. Gary and Mark were still hanging around so we sat and rehashed adventures until Connor and Angie showed up after their shuttle back in the SAG van. That left five of the team still out on the course so calls started going out to see who was where. No answer on all cells. This made more sense when Angie mentioned that she had a pocket full of cell phones she'd been handed to keep them out of the deluge. She was ringing like a switchboard but it really didn't help us figure out what was going on.
About this time, here comes Doc limping in. Still missing whole spokes, back wheel still wobbling but at least true enough to use the brakes.
The tech was able to get his wheel straightened enough for the brakes to work and just enough to gently ride it home if Doc promised to go easy. If he didn't baby that much-misused rim, he'd be done for good and all. In true Doc form, he refused a catch-up lift in the truck and just got back on the saddle. I heard later that there was quite a lot of radio chatter among the support guys about the crazy man riding in on a bent wheel and a certain amount of concern among them that the thing would fall apart on that last fast downhill. He did manage to control his usual hell-bent instincts and keep it under 50 and so NS rider number six came in under his own steam.
And that leaves four.

By now, it was after 3 o'clock and all the rest of the field was in and accounted for. The course officially closed at 4 and anyone still out there was required to be swept in by the SAG van. I sort of knew that would never fly with our troops so Doc and I decided to head out backwards on the 65 mile loop in hopes of finding them and riding shotgun to get them in. Besides, we'd promised ourselves and everyone else in earshot for a month that we were going to do 100 miles but even with the detour, we still only had a little over 90. That would never do so back on the cranks and out the gate again. Even Gary and Mark got in the spirit of the thing and volunteered to go along. Mind you, these guys are real shiny at this bicycle madness and had very little saddle-time to work with. They did the 10 mile loop so this promised to almost double their mileage for the day. The first stretch on the reverse is all a steady, solid climb and I had some serious doubts. Once again though, the team showed what they were made of as those two dug in and slogged that hill. They just chewed away at it until somewhere near the top, Doc and I finally pulled away to extend the search and rescue a few more miles. For two guys who had already ridden a personal record day, that was a pretty impressive feat.
But we still had only open road and cars as far as we could see. No NS jerseys in sight.

I knew we couldn't have missed them so I stopped to have one more go at the only cell phone I knew they still had. No answer but Doc rode on while I was messing with it. He'd only gone a little ways when lo and behold, around the next curve and over the crest of a hill comes our long-lost compadres. Still banging along; tired, sweaty, damp and dead last but still refusing to surrender. Following the tiny pack was a bright red VW bug with a flashing yellow beacon light on the roof. The last support vehicle with the faithful Karen at the wheel. Karen had pretty much adopted them and even when they were supposed to get swept, she refused to bring them in and refused to hand them off to anyone else. She said she didn't care when the course closed. If these guys wanted to make it in, she'd stay with them 'till dark if she had to. End of discussion. She was the best of the best for our team.

With the lost now found, Doc and I fell in to ride back down the hill into town. When we dropped over the top and started coasting along, all the tired disappeared and all the sore went away. We caught Gary and Mark right at the first stop light in Watkins Glen and now 8 of the 10 were riding together. The traffic was heavy and we sat in a left-turn lane waiting for the light to cycle a couple of times, getting nowhere. Finally, the light went green again and out of the blue, Gary just rolled into the oncoming lane and stuck out his hand like a state trooper. The first car in line could either run him down or stop and I guess it was the Chief's lucky day because the driver decided not to smash him flat. With the line of cars held up, we made the turn and rode right in the lane down the last few blocks to the park. I can't think of too many times I've been as proud of a bunch of people as I was of those nine. Our final four led us in and across the finish to cowbells and applause from the crowd. What a way to end the day!

We grabbed Karen out of her bug and dragged her into our team pictures along with Jessica, the Tour Co-ordinator. A bunch of sweaty and dirty bike riders in the photos but all smiling and all pretty proud of ourselves. Not a bad showing for a pack of amateurs if I do say so myself.

Stay tuned for Part 3 when I have a few minutes to tap it in.

Tour Diary Part 1

2010-06-29T20:35:00.005-04:00

I'm still jazzed about the Tour de Cure that I rode in on Saturday. Hard to believe I finally got a century (100 miles) in one day. Here's the map and the mileage readout so it's official:

06/26/2010 Route
Find more Bike Rides in Watkins Glen, New York

If you've never seen these MapMyRide maps before, they're a tool I use to keep track of my biking and workouts. You can click around and view the elevations, fly the route, or change the view to a satellite photo with the roads overlayed. It's a pretty cool gadget and it figures out the mileage and how many calories (lots) I burned so I don't have to guesstimate.

Mapping and statistics aside, it damn sure seemed like a long way around that loop. At the end of it though, I still had some fight left and I think I could have gone just a little ways further. The new 2.1 helped I'm sure. Somehow, the miles just rolled away and the lake stayed on my right until I wound up back at point A. Doc and I just kept hammering along until after seven hours, it was over. I never figured I could do anything like this.

It started badly. We were late signing in (of course) so the pack was mostly lined up and ready to go before we got through the registration tables. Before we knew it, the flag dropped and away they went without us. Somebody told Doc that if we didn't go right then, we'd have to wait an hour for the next wave. My mind was saying, "I'm not ready for this" one second then "We gotta get going" the next. Not wanting to be any later, we launched while half our team was still milling around in confusion and Chris was in the bathroom. Leaving without so much as a fare-thee-well, good luck wish or even a see-ya-later smooch from my team captain went over like the proverbial lead balloon. My cell rang from my jersey before I got a mile down the road. The conversation was decidedly one-sided and ended with a click. This did not bode well.

The initial five or six miles out of Watkins Glen was as advertised. Steep verging on vertical. This got us out of the valley and up on the hilltops where the Good Doctor and I fell into a steady cruise mode that just ate up distance. He claims he ran into my back wheel a couple of times in there while drafting me too close but you couldn't prove it by me. The Trek just kept rolling without so much as a hiccup from the impacts. By about twenty miles into it, we started passing a few people fizzling out or "hitting the bonk" real early in the game. "Bonking" is a nasty state of affairs which Wikipedia defines as, "In endurance sports, particularly cycling and running, hitting the wall or the bonk describes a condition caused by the depletion of glycogen stores...which manifests itself by precipitous fatigue and loss of energy."
I started devouring Clif bars and chugging Gatorade to avoid any such developments on my part. Doc was draining his Camelbak at a record rate, slurping down whatever that high-powered stuff is he mixes up in his water.

We passed the first two rest stops without a pause, spinning along by the farms and Amish kids waving from the lawns. Lots of them were out on bikes also but the girls were in dresses and the boys had wide-brimmed hats and buttoned up shirts. No spandex or compression shorts but they all waved and smiled at the bike geeks. Speaking of the Amish, an interesting fact about their way of doing things is that they use steel wheels instead of rubber tires on their farm equipment. I sort of knew that but never thought about it much or realized what steel does to a paved road surface. The treads chew grooves in all directions whenever they move on or across the road. Zipping along on 23mm tires over those diagonal cuts in the asphalt felt like hitting rumble strips at 70 on the freeway. My hands started falling asleep from the vibration even with gloves on. Amish families also drive horse-drawn buggies instead of cars to get around, the key phrase being 'horse-drawn'. The motive power of these vehicles tends to 'exhaust' at random intervals which creates another minor obstacle to skinny tires without fenders. Nothing like hitting road-apples at high speed and throwing a stripe up the front and back of your jersey. Fortunately, a few miles down the road it was soon back to the usual expansion cracks, potholes and angry automobile drivers on our list of hazards.

By about mile 25, the pack had stretched out to the point where we almost thought we were riding alone. Then we hit a stretch of 3% grade which put a halt to any thoughts of making time for the moment. The climb up out of that valley was mercifully short but got me down into granny-low and Doc put on that gunfighter stare he does when his legs are on fire. We passed a couple of groups on the hill but as usual, a few exotics strolled by like they were on escalators. Showoffs.
Luckily the grade eased once we got out of the valley but it was still mostly uphill for what seemed like an awful lot of miles. A couple of further efforts at conversation on the cell were still pretty short and terse but at least I knew everyone else got out of the gate and was riding somewhere. Now if we could all just get back.

This being New York, the infamous Department of Transportation decided to tear up a portion of the route that was next on our cue sheet. This after everything was chalked and published for the Tour. Ah, summer in NY...road construction and visions of dust covered orange barrels. I'm all for off-roading, pounding dirt and that kind of thing but I normally do that with a mountain bike, not with drop bars and carbon forks. They just couldn't wait a couple more days to rip out that blacktop. We'd been given a hand-written detour sheet at sign-up which led us a merry chase around the missing pavement and added about 6 miles to the loop as a bonus. No big deal but it put in yet another climb and meant you had to back-track to get to one of the rest stops. We decided to pass on that one as well since there was another anti-bonk area about 14 miles further along and the weather was starting to look a little angry. It actually spit a few drops of rain at times but not enough to wet the road or fog my shades on the leg into Geneva. It was a long, mostly straight and downhill zoom into town and Doc and I traded drafts again to make up some time. The wind was behind us and it was smooth sailing right into the traffic lights and city streets.

Going into Geneva meant we had made the turn at the end of the lake and were now on the return side of the map. So far, so good. Legs feeling strong, no mechanical troubles, still one full Gatorade in the frame and lots of time left. Out of the city traffic and back out in the open on the southbound stretch. The wind was now in our face and that cut about 3 mph off our pace but Doc tucked in my wind shadow again and we put away the last stretch to a rest stop. More to follow...

Tour de Cure - WOW!

2010-06-27T06:06:00.006-04:00

Well, the 1st (hopefully) Annual Watkins Glen Tour de Cure for the American Diabetes Association is now history. I rode with the team of miscreants in the pic below as Team NS Thoroughbreds and from where I stand, I think we rocked the world!

The cast of characters goes like this from left sort of to right:

Dr. Alton Annabel - AKA 'The Good Doctor.' or just 'Doc'. My main man in the bicycling world. Riding partner and training guru, source of endless inspiration and hilarious mishap photos. He hung on through 2 broken spokes and a set of prize-winning saddle sores to finish the 85 mile loop and then had enough juice left to go on a search and rescue mission at the end of the day to total out with 101.48 miles. Large and in charge as always.
Angie White - My wife's sister and novice bicycle rider. She took on the 65 mile loop after only riding a few weeks on a borrowed bike. Her enthusiasm for this madness was contagious. Even though the initial 6 miles of 5% grade just about did her in, she soldiered on and got almost 20 more miles before she finally had to surrender. Even then, she stuck around and was moral support for the rest of us and keeper of wet cell phones.
Hiding in the back is Gary Thomas - More commonly known as 'Root' for reasons that will remain undisclosed in this context. He's an engineer like me but only recently got back on a bike. I'm particularly impressed with him since he only gave up smoking in April after being on cigarettes since he was 14. He's now is trying to lose the weight he inevitably gained when he quit and actually thinking about living longer. He bought a helmet, borrowed a bike, couldn't find Watkins Glen (how you lose a tourist trap like Watkins Glen I'll never know but that's another story), ponied up the entry fee and rode the 11 mile loop. He even managed to climb out of the valley at the end of the day to ride the to the rescue with Doc and I. We'll have him hooked for good by the fall.
In the black shirt is Jessica Bottoms - ADA Tour coordinator and leader of the cheering section. She managed to answer all our dumb questions and still have time to cover all the other silly details like developing routes, organizing the SAG people, setting up the rest stops, you know...coordinator stuff. She insisted on being in our team photo and frankly, we wouldn't have it any other way. Now about next year...
The big galoot in the back is our Red Rider, Mark Krukowski, fondly referred to as the uh...Big Galoot. He's also an engineer and another one that surprised me by signing up to ride right out of the blue. Unlike Gary, he at least has a really sweet bike to ride and has been out and about figuring what to do with 24 gears. Being pretty new at the bicycle game too, he teamed up with Gary and rode the 11 miler as a warm-up for greater things. He's another one that finished his loop and then went up the hill hunting for missing teammates. We're going to keep him on the team next year for intimidation purposes.
Down in front, smiling like a lunatic is the blogger himself. I think one reason I was so happy was because I was finally off that pointy little saddle but the main thought at that moment was how proud I was of the team. Ya done good gang!
Right behind me is my younger son, Connor. He's fallen for the bike bug pretty hard lately and put on a great day with his new Diamondback. He went on the 65 miler too and banged his way up that first climb non-stop. Then he hung on with the pack and did some pretty impressive ups and downs out there on the hills. He had to call it about 30 miles out but still really kicked butt in my book and showed an awful big heart for such a small guy!
Behind us is of course...Captain Chris - Leader, head honcho, chief herder, team banker and prime motivator. She got hooked into being Team Captain by virtue of not waiting for me to sign on the computer when we first decided to do this and since first on is Captain by default...she got the prize. It's lucky she did because I'm too idiotic to figure out the donations, envelopes, permission forms etc. All the stuff that she did while Facebooking, texting and volunteering for everything that wandered by all at the same time. On top of that, she led the 65 milers out of town until she broke 2 spokes and had to be patched up and caught up by the SAG wagon. Back in the game after roadside repairs, she shared the same sudden downpour, thrown chains, goofy detours and bizarre rest stop adventures with the rest and still managed to finish. All this without an iPod. She always was and still is a keeper.
The next two to the right are Dave and Norma Jayne. Probably our longest-lasting friends from way back in the bad old days when we had nothing and knew even less. They're another pair that fell into biking fairly recently but fell hard nevertheless. Dave went from a Target special mountain bike to a Diamondback Podium in nothing flat and Norma gave up the Sears hybrid even quicker. This by way of a pair of mountain bikes which we occasionally beat up in the woods for a change of pace. They also did the 65 and banged it out to the very end. To go from just about zero not that long ago to 65 miles is pretty darn impressive, especially since they did the rain and fought all the obstacles along the way. I figure they've got some bragging rights over the bike elite that showed up with unobtainium bikes, biometric computers and snazzy bib shorts but hung it up when the deluge started.
Way out on the right is Amy Bishop - Mrs. Bish to most everyone because she works in the same elementary school as Chris and if you remember that far back, no adults in elementary schools are allowed to have first names. She's put in an lot of hours on her bike getting in shape and pounding out miles. She and I had a long talk about gears once because I found out she was staying in the big rings all the time for a 'real workout' which; since she's damn strong, led to ripping the spokes out of her drive wheel and early bonks going uphill. She's a tough one and despite fears of looking like a bike snob by wearing a jersey or padded shorts, she put on the colors and rode an honest 65 through thick and thin. Someday maybe, we'll wear her down and get her beyond chamois shorts and into clipless pedals. One thing at a time.
And last but far from least is Karyn Freund - our faithful SAG driver who stayed with the team to the very end. She wouldn't leave them and even when there was talk of sweeping them in when the course closed, she stayed right there with her bright red VW bug protecting their tail and helping them along. She wouldn't let anyone else replace her because those four stragglers were hers and she wasn't letting them go. We made her a member of the team in gratitude, smothered her with sweaty hugs and dragged her over to be in the photo with the rest of the mob. A friend indeed for friends in need. Thanks Karyn!
Not pictured is Karin Stamy - She's our contact at NS Corporate who hooked us up with the jerseys, pointed us in the right direction on how to get started, answered a zillion email questions from the northernmost branch of Team NS Thoroughbreds and even admitted to being a trainmaster once-upon-a-time. We'll be hunting her down and running with her and the big dogs down in Roanoke one of these days.

All in all, it was one of the most fun, crazy, exhausting, exhilarating and inspiring things I've ever done. I'm not much of a 'team player' and don't really 'join' much of anything very often but I'm sure glad we did this. It kind of restored a little of my faith in people and maybe, just maybe...helped the world in some small way.

Thanks to all of Team Thoroughbreds! You guys are THE BEST!

On and On

2010-06-24T21:45:00.004-04:00

I've sort of come to the conclusion that not too many people are actually looking at this little adventure I started. The Home may not be much read but not to be to discouraged, merely tardy in keeping up, I continue to fire off the occasional outburst. Time, as always is a factor. Summer is upon us and with the increase in outdoor doings, time at the laptop is somewhat limited. Like it wasn't most of the time during the winter, right? So where to begin to catch up...

I guess the best thing is to just jump in and go...School is officially over for the summer for my two offspring. They are now free to pursue more important things like a girl for the older one and who knows what for the younger one. The testing is over and the long-winded Middle School Graduation is under the bridge so now we can get on with July and August. Whew.

The Tour de Cure we're riding in is coming up Saturday. Doc and I are psyched for the 100 miles (psyched mentally...physically may be another story). It's turned into kind of a strange road to get to this thing. I was riding pretty steadily on my old 1400 Trek to train for my first century. I'd been seeking and destroying steep climbs and putting on mileage but the old aluminum warrior suddenly developed a nasty front-end shimmy at almost any speed above about 25. Very unpleasant when you suddenly can't steer at high speeds and the front wheel shakes so much you feel like you're going over the bars. Further investigation found a very much weakened fork and three cracks in the frame right around the bottom bracket. One on each chain stay and one in the seat post. Not good. The tech at my local bike shop suggested earliest possible retirement to avoid bodily harm should the cracks suddenly turn into breaks and the whole frame turn to mush at high velocity.
I couldn't really justify a new bike and the stuff on Craigslist and Ebay was too much hassle so I was resigned to taking it easy and trying to stretch the 1400 through the Tour and worry about upgrading later. My wife was less than enthusiastic about that plan but what can you do?

I wound up working on Father's Day and didn't make it home until late but I did find a really good steak on the barbie and a card from my brood waiting when I finally made it in the driveway. Opening the envelope, a printout of bike specs and a photo fell out along with the card. I guess she really was afraid I'd get killed on the old one because there were also instructions on when I could get fitted for and take delivery of a shiny new Trek 2.1 with all the trimmings. Sometimes, you just don't know what to say or how to say it if you could figure it out. I'm still pretty much speechless. I don't know how she did it and she won't say but the bike is here and I've already put sixty miles on it. It's an incredible machine...fast, light, stable and equipped with more gears than I have fingers and toes. The thing sails down the road like nothing I've ever ridden. I thought the 1400 was a rocket but this is a whole different world. How she knew and got it so right, I'll never understand. I wouldn't have bought that bike for myself in a hundred years but that girl of mine got it together and set me up. It's a Father's Day gift that will be with me for many years. My only biking wish now is to keep riding until this Trek is old and to have her right there with me while I wear it out.

The Tour is coming up and I'm in pretty good shape to have a go at it. I just never figured I'd be doing it on a new ride but that weird shimmy and some cracked aluminum suddenly changed just about everything. I'll see you all after.

MIA

2010-06-05T06:13:00.002-04:00

Sure is an awful lot going on around here. Even when I don't go to work...

I took a personal day to miss a round trip on the Saratoga Express yesterday. I'm pretty burned out from the endless RR insanity. There comes a time when I know I've had enough and need a break and this was one of those times. As I've said before, it's a good thing I like what I do or I'd never put up with it. An old buddy of mine said, "It's a good thing they pay really well or nobody would work there." Very true.
What wears on me the most is the almost universal view among some of the higher-ups of T&E (Train & Engine) people as liars and thieves. Just for example; last week I was accused by one of our "partner" railroads of lying about an engine defect and using it to hold up their operation for a couple of hours while I fixed it. Let me think about this for a minute...I'm on the homeward leg of my trip so I'm trying to make it as short and painless as possible...I'm making a bunch of extra work for myself since no one from said partner RR was available to assist...I still managed to get the train where it was supposed to go even with one unit dead...and oh by the way, I happened to be right. What kind of idiot would put himself through the hassle if it wasn't legit? Not me but for some reason, they wanted me disciplined for it. Luckily, there was some of our own guys who stepped up and stepped on the whole mess before it got too ugly. The only thing damaged was my serenity but as the saying goes, "It's the principle of the thing."
There's been a whole series of minor crisis' lately, mostly with junk engines but I just got to the point where I couldn't think straight and thats when I know I've got to miss one and just de-stress without the phone for a couple days.

For therapy, I dragged out the old Trek 1400 yesterday and pushed 72 miles around the countryside while the kids and spouse were at school. I'm trying to figure out if I can do 100 by the end of the month when we're riding the Tour de Cure all the way around Seneca Lake. I think I'll be alright as I could have kept on going yesterday if I hadn't run out of time. The last big climb almost did me in but hey, it's NY not Iowa so there's hills, deal with it. I normally don't try to find flat routes when I'm out and about anyway, I just go and if there's hills, there's hills. It's kind of tough to plan a route in this neck of the woods that doesn't have at least some climbs somewhere even if you wanted to. Pretty good practice for the jaunt around the lake.
Very soon I've got to come up with some new tires though. The front end has developed a tendancy toward a serious speed-wobble and I'm getting tired of tip-toeing around like I'm riding on marbles. The only cause I can come up with is tire wear setting up some kind of harmonic at just the right speed and road condition. Unfortunately, most of the town roads hereabouts are surfaced by drizzling tar out of a truck and spreading crushed stone on it. This makes for pavement that's basically filled with grooves so sailing down a hill at any kind of velocity has a feel like those miserable steel deck bridges. Very twitchy. The skinny road tires hunt back and forth in the ridges and the bike rides like its got flats front and rear. There's enough roads around like that that unless you ride on the main drags all the time (which I can't stand), it's going to happen. I never noticed it that much until recently which leads me to believe something has changed on the Trek ie., tires but I'm not even sure that's where the problem is coming from. None of the local bike guys have any really good ideas that I haven't already checked so it's got me a little puzzled. Oh well, I need new skins anyway so I'll give it a try.

The other part of the plan that involved missing a trip was to take Chris and the boys up to the Erie Canalway Trail and ride a while Saturday. That's what she asked for for her birthday and it sounds like a good idea to me. Off we go to try out a new path.

Politics in General

2010-05-28T06:28:00.005-04:00

Can I just tell everybody that I'm pretty tired of hearing how bad things are in this country/state/county/school district etc.? I was sitting around the other day shooting the breeze with a bunch of friends and as almost always happens, the conversation rolled around to the impending downfall of America into a 'socialist' state.
At that point I sat back and just took it all in as I generally avoid political debates among friends. Talking politics is a pretty good way to create ex-friends and so I've learned from unpleasant experience to leave other's opinions alone and keep them as friends rather than try to score points and run out of people to hang with. This is particularly so when they have wildly different views from my own and it's obvious that no amount of bickering will change their minds. Unless someone is willing to hear and think about another point of view, outright vocal fencing is probably a waste of time. Besides, antagonizing the few friends I have over their politics won't change the world but it sure makes for some tense rides when you have to spend twelve-plus hours in an 8 X 8 box with someone you've pissed off by arguing social agendas.

It does get old however when people who aren't doing too badly for themselves line up to take shots at the system under which they've done pretty well. So once in a while, I let go a broadside and at least get my two cents in. This time around though, the cooler side of my disposition prevailed, I steered the conversation into calmer waters and all was well but it got me thinking...always a dangerous proposition.

As I mentioned above, I've heard any number of times lately that we are in a free-fall toward socialism at best and communism at worst. This is usually a shot at our current president who happens to be unpopular among the well-off and well-connected for various reasons that have been thoroughly and truly hashed to death by any number of conservative outlets. I find this train of thought pretty funny because most of the ones doing the accusing don't have much concept of socialism or communism or any other '-isms' except what they've heard from Rush when he's not in therapy or Glenn Beck when he isn't sobbing into the camera.

We're a long, long way from socialism kids if you care to look into it a little deeper than the sound bites. Most public programs since the turn of the century have been labeled 'socialist' and predicted to be the downfall of the republic by assorted interests who stood to drop a percentage point or two on their earning statements. Even Social Security, which is now 'too big to fail' in itself was forecast as the end of all things democratic and capitalist when it went into effect. Seems we got along pretty well nonetheless.
Every program from minimum wages to healthcare; from gun control to border protection seems to get lumped into that catch-all by those who oppose them. I guess invoking the boogie-man works when you really don't have much else to go on. Anybody got any better ideas out there? Glenn, are you listening? Why don't we let Tricky Dick Cheney run the show? He's pretty good at second-guessing but what happens when he has a lick of power? Oh, that's right...his company has a part in the newly remodeled Gulf Of Mexico. And weren't they the ones who had something to do with certain astronomical no-bid, no oversight contracts in the Middle East when old Dick was hanging out at the White House? Hmmmm. How about Sarah P. then? If the argument against Obama is that he's out of touch and elitist, where does that leave her? Think she could come up with something constructive that she could actually finish? I'm sorry but she makes my skin crawl.
The point of all this is, everybody's complaining but nobody's come up with anything different. Come on...step up and give us some options. I dare you...Inspire me, challenge me, lead me. Do what you get paid to do. I have to or I get fired. Now there's a concept. Don't sit there and vote no on everything just because you can and call that leadership. Don't just sit there and call everything 'socialist' when you refuse to function democratically.