Monthiversary

Hello there.   This is The Voice From The Future.  Hoo hoo hah hah hah hah.  The date is actually September 12, 2010, despite what you see above.

TVFTF is a clever device to inject timely commentary at precisely the right time.  Huh?  Well, unfortunately I seem to always be about a week behind in the blog, or more, due the exigencies of this thing called Life.  I can do things, or I can write about them, but not at the same time.

I try to keep events in sequence, so thrilling adventures are not lost untimely below the fold.  This morning I woke up with a sore shoulder and a blue knee due to the motorcycle crash (stay tuned).  But before I hie me to a hot spring on this glorious Sunday, I'd like to note a milestone of sorts.

Today (real time) is exactly 1 month since I introduced this blog.

According to the pocket protector types at Blogger, there been 5185 "page views" in that time.  Including one from China, oddly enough.  Now whether that number includes 5000 bored and idle punters passing through, or simply 5 or 6 ominously compulsive stalkers, I want you to know you are welcome.

Even you robots, if you behave yourselves.

I never intended to collect numbers like this.  I never have before.  I have no idea what they mean, if anything.  It's probably just numerical porn.  And of course a month is an arbitrary slice of time.  But since Blogger presents this information to me willy nilly, I thought I'd share it with you.

Thanks for the interest, I guess.  See you soon.  We now return you to your irregularly scheduled programming.

Bob

Gasp! Errors Found in Blog!

The Evil Twins, HP and Mini-Me, who actually write the Blog.  That's Mini-Me doing the lap dance.

I have been informed by people who check on these things that the Honda EU1000 has a 0.6 gallon tank.  Which is about 5 pints, not 1 pint, as I erroneously averred.  Perhaps I will correct the former post, when I get a chance.  I was relying on a distant memory of the first one I owned, back in 2003.

Bad memory!  Bad! Bad! Bad!

You can look it up.  I could have looked it up.  I apologize.  I have no wish to misinform anybody, and will gladly correct any mistakes that are pointed out to me.  But I am still impressed.  Honda claims 8.3 hours for the tank of 0.6 gallons.  When I get 4 or 5 hours to the tank (I am nothing if not imprecise), at an hour a day, that is fuel use in the range of a pint a day, or a little less than 4 gallons a month.  ("Just to show I can do simple math," he claimed overconfidently.)

Maybe 11 bucks.  For all the electricity I can use.  Can you do that at home?

Let me tell you about this blog.  When one sets sail upon a sea of words, as I have, sometimes the only way to make progress through the doldrums is to leave pride behind.  It's mostly bilge anyway.  This blog will always be a continuous draft.

Perhaps it is my mind and my habits that are on a shakedown cruise, rather than poor Daze.

There is some evidence I am slowly improving by dint of effort, much as she is.  For instance, when I first made acquaintance with Herself, she got 7 mpg, just pulling her own weight.  When pulling two motorcycles and a pair of large brothers around the Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas back in June, and even on the Interstate coming back to Texas (what was I thinking?), she got 6 mpg.  I now realize that is because I was trying to go 70 mph and impress the truckers, instead of being content with 50.

Just last week, in the Panhandle of Texas?   The Daze outdid herself:  7.9 mpg, pulling 1700 lb. of trailer with the Beast.

Okay, then, since I wasn't able to distract you, how have I improved?  By schooling myself to not need the Internet.  Of course a Blog is nothing without it, but there is no need to insist on writing only while actually on line, as I have been doing.  Errors will creep in, when I cannot check on facts the second I commit them to pixels.  Too bad.

Ben Franklin famously suggested that moral perfection is simply a matter of system and application.  I guess I'll never know.  Much of the time, given my penchant for sleeping in the high woods, there is internet service only when I pass through a large town, usually on the Beast, snatching a few minutes in some place serving ridiculously expensive coffee, or even outside sitting on the back of the Beast.  This is not a climate suitable for extensive revision.

You know the routine from the soaps.  Looking for Mr. Perfect?  Or Mr. Perfect Right Now?

O, it's all such a sad story.  When I AM fortunate enough to find an internet cafe, I am usually under time pressure, as I drove 30 miles to get there, and it's getting dark, and my back hurts, and the conversation people are having next to me is so much more interesting than what I am writing anyway, etc.

You get the drift.  Any excuse will do.

The improvement part is that I'm trying to do a little editing before posting.  Gasp.  And then a little more.  With patience.  And that means I should not be in such a hurry to get every cherished nugget immediately into cyberspace.  A few extra days won't kill anybody.  Many an idle thought is best left unblurted.  It's ready when it's ready.

I fear nothing will clear away every error.  It was only a short while ago that I was just a bush ape, hoo-hawing through the trees.  Now I am Homo Intelensis, Data Man.

But I miss the old hoohaw, now and then.

Bob, doing more than he is writing.

A Message from the Daze

Not long ago I ventured certain indelicate and unnecessary opinions about the intimate interior proportions of the Daze, taken from an unfortunate and entirely selfish perspective.  Today I received a curt message from Herself.  Here it is in its entirety:

"We are not Amused."

O dear.

Bob

Does Brownwood Ever Cross Your Mind?

Workin' on it...

By the time I got to Brownwood, TX, I was feeling a bit peckish.  Nearly getting run over by a tanker truck can do that to you.  As I started out of town on 84 towards Coleman, I decided to pull into the Gomez Cafe.

To call this place a Mexican Food Cafe fails to give it its due.  It is that, of course, with a decor heavy on the sombreros, but in addition it is square in middle of a fine old tradition of Texas Roadhouse Vittles.  Redneck soul food.  Steaks, chops, chicken - o my, they have fried chicken livers!  That's a menu item well on it's way to the endangered edibles list.

I had to have it.

On the way in, I managed to circumnavigate a man mountain perched on a quivering chair that completely disappeared beneath him.  This guy was probably called "Tiny" in the seventh grade, but seldom since.  He was 600 lb. if he was a stone.  He surrounded a table all to himself, loaded down with platters.  I couldn't help thinking that if he keels over into that mountain of fries, they'll have to take out a wall to drag him away.

Such reflections did nothing to kill my appetite.  My appetite is the only part of me that still thinks I'm going to live forever.

The Gomez is truly an old fashioned kind of place.  Good food, lots of it, and don't spare the gravy.  The sort of place where they leave a pitcher of ice water and a squirt bottle of salad dressing resting permanently on your table, and the big red plastic water glasses advertise a local used car lot.  People don't take off their ball caps when they eat here, and excessive conversation is apparently considered an insult to the cook.

It's a place for serious eating.  Show a little respect.  If you can talk, your mouth ain't full, and why the hell not?

There were voices, though, floating down from the speakers above as from Heaven Itself.  I fully expected to hear the ghost of Paul Harvey muttering about "the rest of the story."  Not quite.  He must have been busy.

But Hank Williams, Jr., was definitely in residence:

"Why do you drink?
Why do you dope smoke?
Why must you live out the songs that you wrote?"

O Man.  Eatin' greasy food and feeling sorry for yourself.  Does life get any better than this?  Well, there could be Beer.  I blame the local Baptists for holding back perfection.

To prime the pump, the waitress, who had perfected the persona of everybody's no-nonsense Aunt, brought out a big gratis basket of tortilla chips straight from the fryer, and an entire decanter of hot sauce, just so you don't run out.

When the livers came quickly behind, gliding in on a tray crowded with six other platters, it was a rare monument to engineering.  I picked up one of those home made french fries - the sort with the bark still on it - and a big crunchy liver fell off the plate and skittered across the table.  I caught it.

That platter redefined the concept of "full".  It was a balancing act, with the food arranged not side by side but in layers:  on bottom two large pieces of "Texas Toast", followed by a dozen or so large livers crowding a substantial salad toward and maybe a bit over the edge, and on top of everything was piled what looked like a half pound of french fries.  And don't forget the gravy, which well deserved a bowl unto itsownself.

O Man.  I did my best, but I couldn't eat it all.  As I happily stood at the door and paid my 8 bucks, another plaintive voice  descended softly from the radio:  "Does Ft. Worth ever cross your mind?"

Well, uh, no.  But Brownwood certainly does.

Burp.  Er... I mean

Bob.

Chicken Fried Bacon

My brother and I took a little 231 mile jaunt on our motorcycles the other day.  My ass is gradually getting broken in.  We ran down the back roads from Georgetown to Somerville. That's where my Dad grew up, and where we used to visit Grandma's house.  I haven't been back there since I was about 12, when we went to her funeral.

I remember afterwards Dad and Uncle JD burning an enormous pile of old books in the back yard.  Even then, I thought that was just wrong.  But when I protested, I was asked what I wanted to save.  I didn't have a ready answer.  It's easier these days.  If information becomes inconvenient, we just delete it.

Poof.

It took a while to find the house.  The old place seems shrunken, and certainly in disrepair.  It used to be enormous.  Yegua Creek, which once meandered lazily nearby, has been drowned by a large lake.  The lake comes right up into town, about a quarter mile down from where Dad went to high school.

The past can't be recovered.  It's like trying to find a nail you once pounded in a tree.  At most you'll find a knot where it used to be.  It is an oddly haunted thing to even try.  If you want to own the past you have to invent it.  And then it isn't past at all.

What the heck.  Childhood is like many a vacation destination.  A great place to visit.  But you wouldn't want to live there.

Mike and I headed on up to Snook.  We've been on a mission, ever since I saw a thing on TV about Sodolak's Country Inn.  We got there in time for a late lunch.  I had the "extra small sirloin", which weighed in at 16 oz.  Delicious!

But the item of real curiosity was an appetizer:  chicken fried bacon and gravy. The bacon was very lean, and did not taste particularly greasy, though of course most of its calories had to be in the form of lard.  Not bad, actually, though I wouldn't want to make a habit of it.

And as a silly kind of redneck quest, it was irresistible.

I managed to finish it all off.  My brother left half a piece (the wuss).  And here's what he looked like in the parking lot afterward.

Bob

Doggone!

Here's a problem I never considered solving:

I was at the dealer getting a new front tire when a guy road up on an Electra Glide with one of those little chinese dogs (chi-poo? something like that, with blond hair in it's eyes) sitting in the rear seat.  Nothing holding him in but will power.  The little dog waited patiently while he stopped and parked the bike, then jumped into his hands.  I asked the guy how far he had ridden like that, and he said a couple of miles from his home.

The dog rides everywhere with him around town.  When he first started carrying it, he tied it down with a leash so it couldn't jump off.  It never tried, so he left off the leash.   He did say he never goes over about 30 mph like that.  For longer and faster trips he uses a pet carrier strapped to the seat.

O, and the dog wasn't wearing a helmet, either.

Bob