A few quick thoughts before I call it a night:
I biked a quick 21.5 miles before sunset tonight. I’m way behind last year at this point, but I hope to better my monthly totals from last summer. I think my June through August total last summer was a little more than 1,570 miles. I'd better knock off 2,000 this summer, at minimum.
My eyes hurt. Each year I have an allergy that manifests itself around June 1 for a week or three. I haven’t had a problem until tonight. My eyes have never been so sore and swollen as they were this evening. I’m not sure why this year is so much worse than others in recent memory.
The Brewers went 6-14 in their past 20. We all overestimated their ability, evidently. There likely would have been a “super show” tonight, (a conference call of Chip, Rush and me,) but there was a death in Chip’s family last weekend and he’s readying for his return home for the funeral. The super show will be held sometime next week. It’s time for Chip to face the music, and Rush’s wrath.
I went to Wednesday’s White Sox matinee at the big inflatable toilet and got to see my squad blow a 6-1 lead. Mark Buehrle threw a two-hitter on Thursday evening, but gave up two solo home runs and lost the game 2-0. It’s a frustrating time for the Fonz.
My friends leave for California on Saturday morning...bright and early. (Before sunrise, I think.) They are spending the night in the Twin Cities on Friday, so I will see them after work. (This is German Bear’s family I speak of.) Their son needs surgery, again, for a brain tumor. It is scheduled for July 2. I am not happy. At least they can follow through with their vacation plans.
I would like to spend the weekend of July 20-22 in Fond du Lac County, (that’s in Wisconsin,) but I’m not sure I can justify the cost.
Tesla has a new CD available next week. I’m pre-ordering it this weekend from Best Buy. The band may hail from the hair band era, but they’re better than that.
I am anxious to blog about my five 100-mile bike rides. I hope to do that this weekend.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Why we're all here
I can't speak for anyone else, but I know why I'm going to try to make a go of it with this blog.
As I noted recently, I wish I had a journal of our 18 annual camping trips. I have vague memories of our first trip, random memories of several others and distinct memories of 1996, 1998 and 2000, if I have my dates correct, (and I think I do.) But it would be nice to have a few notes from year to year that might remind us of things pictures don’t capture, pictures I haven’t taken in several years.
I don’t intend to use this blog as a place to file memories of my annual camping trips, details about my weekly and monthly bicycling totals or opinions about current events. I will probably write about all those things, but they won’t be the purpose for this blog.
My blog will simply be an excuse to write, be it something pointless and stupid, something personal or something I will want to look back upon years from now. (I’m not saving text files of these blogs, so I’m rather trusting that the content won’t simply disappear some day.)
I’m not concerned about building an audience, but I don’t hide this blog, either. I haven’t told Chip or Rush about it, but I have told one friend. I include a link to it at a site I post comments at, so perhaps somebody will stumble upon it, much the same way I stumbled upon D Cup’s blog, linked above as my favorite blog. For now I’m glad to be writing something periodically that isn’t work related.
Tonight, however, I’m not writing anything entertaining. It’s too late for that.
As I noted recently, I wish I had a journal of our 18 annual camping trips. I have vague memories of our first trip, random memories of several others and distinct memories of 1996, 1998 and 2000, if I have my dates correct, (and I think I do.) But it would be nice to have a few notes from year to year that might remind us of things pictures don’t capture, pictures I haven’t taken in several years.
I don’t intend to use this blog as a place to file memories of my annual camping trips, details about my weekly and monthly bicycling totals or opinions about current events. I will probably write about all those things, but they won’t be the purpose for this blog.
My blog will simply be an excuse to write, be it something pointless and stupid, something personal or something I will want to look back upon years from now. (I’m not saving text files of these blogs, so I’m rather trusting that the content won’t simply disappear some day.)
I’m not concerned about building an audience, but I don’t hide this blog, either. I haven’t told Chip or Rush about it, but I have told one friend. I include a link to it at a site I post comments at, so perhaps somebody will stumble upon it, much the same way I stumbled upon D Cup’s blog, linked above as my favorite blog. For now I’m glad to be writing something periodically that isn’t work related.
Tonight, however, I’m not writing anything entertaining. It’s too late for that.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
The highlight of this year's camping trip
I wish I was keeping a journal of our annual camping trips.
Off the top of my head I can’t recall much about our 1995 trip. I don’t remember who came that year, how the weather was, what we did that weekend or anything that made that weekend unique. The only thing I remember definitively is that I was living in Canada at that time and had to drive about eight hours to get there.
I won’t, however, have a hard time remembering 2007.
Our annual trip is typically a gathering of four of our charter members. I’m the only one who has been there for all 18. German Bear has missed one. Doug and JayHawk have missed a few each. All four of us were there this year, and each of them had a child or two in tow. Chances are they’ll all remember this trip, too.
Our campsite is on private property. It’s nice because we don’t have to worry about waking the old people in an RV at a nearby campsite. The drawback is that we have to carry our coolers and gear through a field to get to our site tucked inside the trees. We don’t have the luxury of parking 20 feet from our tents.
I rode to Wausau with Doug and his son. Doug hurt his foot a couple of weeks ago and wanted to reduce the distance he had to walk back and forth from his truck.
There are a couple of pseudo-roads through the property. Over the years trees have been harvested from the woods, and trucks need to be able to get in and out of the property, hence logging roads have been created. They’re not easy to navigate, but you can tell that vehicles have traveled them in years past.
We don’t have the luxury of a road to the campsite, but Doug thought we could drive through the field to get near it. The field is uneven, but it’s not as uneven as the wooded area. Decades ago the small fields around the wooded area were farmed by German Bear’s grandfather.
There’s a tiny pond in the middle of the main field, so I knew we had to avoid that. I jumped out of the truck and walked ahead of Doug to try and spot ruts he should avoid as we crossed the field. I thought he should go straight back to the trees and then try to drive across the field while hugging the tree line. I later found that wouldn’t have been much more successful.
As we got halfway into the field Doug decided it was time to start angling across it, toward the corner nearest our campsite. He came to a momentary stop as we were trying to find our way across the field and it ended up being a 24-hour parking space. He was stuck. His wheels sank deep enough into the wet clay underneath the field’s grassy cover that he wasn’t going anywhere. Driving forward or backward merely resulted in the spinning tires settling further into the clay. My attempt at pushing the vehicle from the front didn’t come close to making a difference.
We hauled a couple of things to the campsite, which was slightly further away than it would have been if we had parked on the gravel road where we always park. We had a couple of old boards at the site, so we took those and a couple of logs, as well as a shovel we keep at the site, back to the truck. We tried to dig out the wheels a bit and stuck the wood behind them, but we didn’t come any closer to moving the truck.
German Bear arrived after that and saw us out in the middle of the field with the truck. He was impressed that Doug got as far as he did given that the field is full of wet clay. His added help didn’t get us any closer to pushing the truck out of the ruts.
At this point we wondered who we were going to have to call to come pull us out of the field. A tow truck could hook the back of Doug’s truck to pull it free, but what was to keep the tow truck from getting stuck, even if it was able to keep 100 feet back from Doug’s truck? We thought it might take a tractor, but where would we find one nearby to come and save the day?
While three of us were already at the campsite on Friday afternoon, JayHawk was working that day, so he wasn’t going to be arriving from western Wisconsin until after dark. For the first time in nine years my cell phone worked at the campsite, I learned, so we called him and explained our dilemma. He immediately had two or three ideas of how to get the truck out. He was on his way home and decided to load up a variety of tools to help solve our problem.
JayHawk is a guy who can fix or solve just about any problem that comes along. He knows automotive repair, construction and a million other things, which is exactly what you would expect from a guy who was an art major in college. He brought a small arsenal of equipment with him on Friday.
By late morning Saturday the project was underway. Among other things JayHawk brought a floor jack and several long boards, some with studs. The idea was that we’d jack up the truck, get boards under the wheels and then back it out. Easier said than done.
The wheels were about as deep as the underbody of the truck would let them go, and the ruts that the wheels created were now filled with groundwater. Despite all that, JayHawk was able to engineer a slow, methodical solution. Jacking up the rear of the truck was relatively easy. The front proved to be more challenging. At one point I began to doubt that JayHawk could free the truck, but he eventually built a foundation of rock to support the boards under the front wheels, and about three hours after we started we backed the truck out. Fortunately Doug didn’t get stuck again as he backed out of the field.
It turned out to be quite an adventure I’m sure we’ll never have to repeat, and one we’ll never forget.
Off the top of my head I can’t recall much about our 1995 trip. I don’t remember who came that year, how the weather was, what we did that weekend or anything that made that weekend unique. The only thing I remember definitively is that I was living in Canada at that time and had to drive about eight hours to get there.
I won’t, however, have a hard time remembering 2007.
Our annual trip is typically a gathering of four of our charter members. I’m the only one who has been there for all 18. German Bear has missed one. Doug and JayHawk have missed a few each. All four of us were there this year, and each of them had a child or two in tow. Chances are they’ll all remember this trip, too.
Our campsite is on private property. It’s nice because we don’t have to worry about waking the old people in an RV at a nearby campsite. The drawback is that we have to carry our coolers and gear through a field to get to our site tucked inside the trees. We don’t have the luxury of parking 20 feet from our tents.
I rode to Wausau with Doug and his son. Doug hurt his foot a couple of weeks ago and wanted to reduce the distance he had to walk back and forth from his truck.
There are a couple of pseudo-roads through the property. Over the years trees have been harvested from the woods, and trucks need to be able to get in and out of the property, hence logging roads have been created. They’re not easy to navigate, but you can tell that vehicles have traveled them in years past.
We don’t have the luxury of a road to the campsite, but Doug thought we could drive through the field to get near it. The field is uneven, but it’s not as uneven as the wooded area. Decades ago the small fields around the wooded area were farmed by German Bear’s grandfather.
There’s a tiny pond in the middle of the main field, so I knew we had to avoid that. I jumped out of the truck and walked ahead of Doug to try and spot ruts he should avoid as we crossed the field. I thought he should go straight back to the trees and then try to drive across the field while hugging the tree line. I later found that wouldn’t have been much more successful.
As we got halfway into the field Doug decided it was time to start angling across it, toward the corner nearest our campsite. He came to a momentary stop as we were trying to find our way across the field and it ended up being a 24-hour parking space. He was stuck. His wheels sank deep enough into the wet clay underneath the field’s grassy cover that he wasn’t going anywhere. Driving forward or backward merely resulted in the spinning tires settling further into the clay. My attempt at pushing the vehicle from the front didn’t come close to making a difference.
We hauled a couple of things to the campsite, which was slightly further away than it would have been if we had parked on the gravel road where we always park. We had a couple of old boards at the site, so we took those and a couple of logs, as well as a shovel we keep at the site, back to the truck. We tried to dig out the wheels a bit and stuck the wood behind them, but we didn’t come any closer to moving the truck.
German Bear arrived after that and saw us out in the middle of the field with the truck. He was impressed that Doug got as far as he did given that the field is full of wet clay. His added help didn’t get us any closer to pushing the truck out of the ruts.
At this point we wondered who we were going to have to call to come pull us out of the field. A tow truck could hook the back of Doug’s truck to pull it free, but what was to keep the tow truck from getting stuck, even if it was able to keep 100 feet back from Doug’s truck? We thought it might take a tractor, but where would we find one nearby to come and save the day?
While three of us were already at the campsite on Friday afternoon, JayHawk was working that day, so he wasn’t going to be arriving from western Wisconsin until after dark. For the first time in nine years my cell phone worked at the campsite, I learned, so we called him and explained our dilemma. He immediately had two or three ideas of how to get the truck out. He was on his way home and decided to load up a variety of tools to help solve our problem.
JayHawk is a guy who can fix or solve just about any problem that comes along. He knows automotive repair, construction and a million other things, which is exactly what you would expect from a guy who was an art major in college. He brought a small arsenal of equipment with him on Friday.
By late morning Saturday the project was underway. Among other things JayHawk brought a floor jack and several long boards, some with studs. The idea was that we’d jack up the truck, get boards under the wheels and then back it out. Easier said than done.
The wheels were about as deep as the underbody of the truck would let them go, and the ruts that the wheels created were now filled with groundwater. Despite all that, JayHawk was able to engineer a slow, methodical solution. Jacking up the rear of the truck was relatively easy. The front proved to be more challenging. At one point I began to doubt that JayHawk could free the truck, but he eventually built a foundation of rock to support the boards under the front wheels, and about three hours after we started we backed the truck out. Fortunately Doug didn’t get stuck again as he backed out of the field.
It turned out to be quite an adventure I’m sure we’ll never have to repeat, and one we’ll never forget.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Farewell Chuck
It wasn’t by design, but the new game show tape I popped into the VCR while doing the dishes happens to include episodes of Match Game.
I just read this morning that Charles Nelson Reilly died at the age of 76. It saddens me to lose one of the great game show personalities of my youth.
I remember watching Match Game in the 1970s and early ‘80s. It ran in some form or another for about nine years. It was a CBS show for years, and survived a final few years in syndication.
It wasn’t until seeing it as a rerun on the Game Show Network in recent years that I was able to appreciate Chuck’s humor as a celebrity panelist on the show. I enjoyed most game shows as a kid, and was quite entertained by the show, but I certainly don’t remember why Match Game tickled my fancy. A lot of the humor was over my head, and Chuck was responsible for plenty of it.
As a youngster I didn’t know what homosexuality was, so the thinly veiled references to Charles being gay were lost upon me. The way he would give his response, sometimes going against stereotype, sometimes hamming it up, are quite amusing to watch as an adult.
I knew he had a background in acting and the theater, but I didn’t realize he was as successful as he was until I read his obit. That success came before, during and after Match Game, but I can’t claim familiarity with any of it. I only know him from his game show career, which included several appearances on other games shows after Match Game. My appreciation of him is limited to that, and that show may be how he is best remembered. I’m not sure if he’s my favorite celebrity in the history of game shows, but if not, he’s in the top three.
His game show career ended years ago, because of his age, the diminishing number of games dotting the television landscape or a combination of those things. So his passing isn’t going to deprive me of any future entertainment. Yet it always makes us sad to know those who entertained us in the past are no longer here.
But it makes me doubly sad to know that today’s Charles Nelson Reilly’s aren’t entertaining us as celebrity partners on game shows these days. His passing reminds me of that, and that depresses me more than Chuck BLANKING beyond the pearly gates of heaven.
I just read this morning that Charles Nelson Reilly died at the age of 76. It saddens me to lose one of the great game show personalities of my youth.
I remember watching Match Game in the 1970s and early ‘80s. It ran in some form or another for about nine years. It was a CBS show for years, and survived a final few years in syndication.
It wasn’t until seeing it as a rerun on the Game Show Network in recent years that I was able to appreciate Chuck’s humor as a celebrity panelist on the show. I enjoyed most game shows as a kid, and was quite entertained by the show, but I certainly don’t remember why Match Game tickled my fancy. A lot of the humor was over my head, and Chuck was responsible for plenty of it.
As a youngster I didn’t know what homosexuality was, so the thinly veiled references to Charles being gay were lost upon me. The way he would give his response, sometimes going against stereotype, sometimes hamming it up, are quite amusing to watch as an adult.
I knew he had a background in acting and the theater, but I didn’t realize he was as successful as he was until I read his obit. That success came before, during and after Match Game, but I can’t claim familiarity with any of it. I only know him from his game show career, which included several appearances on other games shows after Match Game. My appreciation of him is limited to that, and that show may be how he is best remembered. I’m not sure if he’s my favorite celebrity in the history of game shows, but if not, he’s in the top three.
His game show career ended years ago, because of his age, the diminishing number of games dotting the television landscape or a combination of those things. So his passing isn’t going to deprive me of any future entertainment. Yet it always makes us sad to know those who entertained us in the past are no longer here.
But it makes me doubly sad to know that today’s Charles Nelson Reilly’s aren’t entertaining us as celebrity partners on game shows these days. His passing reminds me of that, and that depresses me more than Chuck BLANKING beyond the pearly gates of heaven.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Blog-a-Go-Go
In nine hours my journey to the greater Wausau area begins.
There were years where we started counting down the days until camping in February. I can remember marking the countdown on my calendar when it was 100 or more days away. As much as I look forward to this weekend, there’s no countdown these days. Part of that reason is that the camping trip is no longer an event, and a few of our regulars/semi-regulars from 10 years ago are ghosts when it comes to Memorial Day weekend.
Times change, people change, so it’s no surprise it has come to this, but part of me wishes that we could recapture the magic of 1998 or 2000. Magic 8-Ball says: Don’t count on it.
Things I purchased today for this weekend’s trip:
• dollar store glow bracelets and necklaces for me and the kids
• Italian sausage links from the grocer’s smokehouse
• hand sanitizer
• one liter of generic spiced rum, distilled in Minnesota
• seven-pound can of butterscotch pudding
Time to finish packing.
There were years where we started counting down the days until camping in February. I can remember marking the countdown on my calendar when it was 100 or more days away. As much as I look forward to this weekend, there’s no countdown these days. Part of that reason is that the camping trip is no longer an event, and a few of our regulars/semi-regulars from 10 years ago are ghosts when it comes to Memorial Day weekend.
Times change, people change, so it’s no surprise it has come to this, but part of me wishes that we could recapture the magic of 1998 or 2000. Magic 8-Ball says: Don’t count on it.
Things I purchased today for this weekend’s trip:
• dollar store glow bracelets and necklaces for me and the kids
• Italian sausage links from the grocer’s smokehouse
• hand sanitizer
• one liter of generic spiced rum, distilled in Minnesota
• seven-pound can of butterscotch pudding
Time to finish packing.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Short and sweet
Tonight’s blog will be short and sweet, like my next girlfriend.
Like my good friend D Cup, I’m going to prioritize my blogging points in the near future. I bounce around from blogging about what’s stuck in my craw to blogging about topics I have been inspired by, most of those thanks to Dinesh’s comments. I’m going to attempt to create a method for my madness, but don’t hold your breath. (I won’t worry about said method, however, until after this weekend's camping trip.)
A few of my future blog topics: the purpose of my blog, the five days I have biked 100 miles or more, the history of my Wausau camping trip, my thoughts on the future of community newspapers and my favorite Spice Girl. (OK, the last one was a joke, but I own two Spice Girls CD singles, and definitely have three favorite Spice Girls songs. My favorite is “Stop.”)
I donated blood today. It was my second time this year. I’m A-positive, which isn’t particularly special, but I’m not particularly special, either. The bottom line is that they don’t turn me away when I offer a pint or two of Fonzie. But they always stop at one pint.
I rarely bike on Mondays, so today was a good day to donate blood. But I hope to log a few miles on Tuesday. I have to work Tuesday night, however, so we’ll see what happens.
The Brewers and White Sox won on Monday night, and the Twins lost. Not a bad night, but the Stinktown Indians won again. There’s a bit of a parallel between Stinktown’s Indians and Brewers, I have noticed, since 2005. Both teams showed promise in 2005, only to falter. The Indians, however, made quite a run at the White Sox. Both teams had lackluster seasons in 2006, basically from start to finish. Now both teams are flying out of the gates after a lost season last year, although the Indians have a lot more competition in their division.
Chip and I have joked that the Twins/Brewers weekend at the big inflatable toilet is “World Series preview weekend.” We’re starting to question if an interleague series between the Indians and Brewers is more deserving of that billing.
Like my good friend D Cup, I’m going to prioritize my blogging points in the near future. I bounce around from blogging about what’s stuck in my craw to blogging about topics I have been inspired by, most of those thanks to Dinesh’s comments. I’m going to attempt to create a method for my madness, but don’t hold your breath. (I won’t worry about said method, however, until after this weekend's camping trip.)
A few of my future blog topics: the purpose of my blog, the five days I have biked 100 miles or more, the history of my Wausau camping trip, my thoughts on the future of community newspapers and my favorite Spice Girl. (OK, the last one was a joke, but I own two Spice Girls CD singles, and definitely have three favorite Spice Girls songs. My favorite is “Stop.”)
I donated blood today. It was my second time this year. I’m A-positive, which isn’t particularly special, but I’m not particularly special, either. The bottom line is that they don’t turn me away when I offer a pint or two of Fonzie. But they always stop at one pint.
I rarely bike on Mondays, so today was a good day to donate blood. But I hope to log a few miles on Tuesday. I have to work Tuesday night, however, so we’ll see what happens.
The Brewers and White Sox won on Monday night, and the Twins lost. Not a bad night, but the Stinktown Indians won again. There’s a bit of a parallel between Stinktown’s Indians and Brewers, I have noticed, since 2005. Both teams showed promise in 2005, only to falter. The Indians, however, made quite a run at the White Sox. Both teams had lackluster seasons in 2006, basically from start to finish. Now both teams are flying out of the gates after a lost season last year, although the Indians have a lot more competition in their division.
Chip and I have joked that the Twins/Brewers weekend at the big inflatable toilet is “World Series preview weekend.” We’re starting to question if an interleague series between the Indians and Brewers is more deserving of that billing.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Way to go Fonzie
I'm not going to chart my daily progress here, but occasionally I'll have to celebrate bicycling milestones, if nothing else than to give me something to blog about besides game shows. (At the moment I'm watching an episode of Blackout, a short-lived game show that aired on CBS in early 1988. It was lame, so I'm not surprised it tanked in a hurry. It was hosted by a pre-Entertainment Tonight Bob Goen, who had a great '80s mustache.)
Today wasn't a bicycling milestone, I'm not close to what I'd consider my first milestone for the season, but I'm trying to get out regularly at this point since I'll be bicycling 150 miles in the fight against MS on June 9 and 10. Today I biked 35.5 miles. It wasn't at the best clip I have ever recorded, but it's early in the season, so I can let that slide. It's the longest ride I've done so far this season, yet only half of what I'll be doing each day of the MS150.
The Brewers salvaged a win, and Rush was quick to point out during tonight's conference call that the Twins should never have been leading in that game with Ramon Ortiz on the mound for the God Squad. The Brewers are struggling, but their division is full of cupcakes, so they should be OK, Rush acknowledged. The Brewers are 3-7 since we made our 20-game predictions. I need them to go 9-1 in the next 10 games for my 12-8 prediction to hold up. Chip has already been served his reality check. Rush doubts the Brewers will even reach the 9-11 mark he predicted.
While I'm still pondering my online existence, I thought of something I am passionate about, although I'm not sure when it would be appropriate to blog about it: I don't vote in the presidential elections, primary or general election.
Today wasn't a bicycling milestone, I'm not close to what I'd consider my first milestone for the season, but I'm trying to get out regularly at this point since I'll be bicycling 150 miles in the fight against MS on June 9 and 10. Today I biked 35.5 miles. It wasn't at the best clip I have ever recorded, but it's early in the season, so I can let that slide. It's the longest ride I've done so far this season, yet only half of what I'll be doing each day of the MS150.
The Brewers salvaged a win, and Rush was quick to point out during tonight's conference call that the Twins should never have been leading in that game with Ramon Ortiz on the mound for the God Squad. The Brewers are struggling, but their division is full of cupcakes, so they should be OK, Rush acknowledged. The Brewers are 3-7 since we made our 20-game predictions. I need them to go 9-1 in the next 10 games for my 12-8 prediction to hold up. Chip has already been served his reality check. Rush doubts the Brewers will even reach the 9-11 mark he predicted.
While I'm still pondering my online existence, I thought of something I am passionate about, although I'm not sure when it would be appropriate to blog about it: I don't vote in the presidential elections, primary or general election.
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