NASCAR!!! Martinsville, VA October 24, 2010

I finally decided to go see a Nascar race in person, so my daughter, Jennifer, and I set off on a road trip to Martinsville, Virginia last Saturday. The weather was absolutely perfect, and the race was awesome. I had some real, quality time with my little girl, and we had a blast. My man, Jimmie Johnson, placed pretty well, and I noticed a lot of number 48 caps and shirts, even though a lot of people booed him when he roared by. Jen was rooting for Dale Earnhardt Jr. (we'll have to have a talk about that - kidding). So I think we'll definitely have to do it again sometime. Probably to Dover, DE or the Poconos, because Martinsville - at 5.5 hours - is just kind of far. Nevertheless, we had a great time and I wouldn't trade the time with Jen for the world.

The Strider family continues to grow!

These Strider knives are kind of addictive. I finally added a folder, an SMF with "gunner grips" in green (of course). It's in the bottom of the picture, right below the Zero Tolerance knife that gets into the picture because it was a collaborative effort with Strider.

Reggie Jackson: Baltimore Orioles

A lot of people don't know this, but besides playing for the Atheletics and the Yankees, Mr. October also played one season with the Baltimore Orioles. The Bicentennial year, 1976, Reggie donned the bird's orange, black, and white uniform, batted .277 with 27 homers, 91 RBIs, and won a lot of votes for league MVP. Reggie wasn't finished - 76' was not the twilight of his career. His two best home run seasons were still ahead of him, so he was hardly a "has been" when the O's acquired him. Still, his season with Baltimore is now little more than a footnote in his glorious and distinguished career. The youthful, rookie, Jackson is associated with Atheletics, while the older, seasoned, Jackson is always associated with the Yankees. But he was one of ours, once!

I've had an autographed 8x10 photo of Jackson in an O's uniform for years. I bought it at a baseball card show back in the early 1980's, when it had no particular premium value. I've been offered up to $100 bucks for it, but I kinda like it. Recently while browsing ebay, I ran across a game used jersey card of Jackson - an Orioles jersey! Needless to say, I bought it and it will have a special place among my other Orioles game-used jersey cards. I suppose it's just a little bit of Baltimore history as well as MLB history, but I still think it's kind of special.

"Road Trips Close to Home" Article in August issue of The City That Rides

James and I took an 1100 mile bike trip through southern Virginia and West Virginia in June. I wrote a little article about it - a few transcription typos (grrrr!) Don't forget to click to enlarge for easier reading, enjoy!

Second half of article on "Road Trips Close To Home"

Article published in June issue of "The City That Rides" magazine:

I was really pleased to have this little article published in a local motorcycling magazine. It's been a number of years since I had an article published.

Second half of the article:

Back in the Harley Family!

I have done some wheeling and dealing with motorcycles for the past couple of weeks. I sold my 2006 Kawasaki Concours to a nice fellow in North Carolina. I needed the cash to pay off some nagging debts. I didn't want to be without a bike, so I started looking around at different bikes. I found a dealer in Dumfries, Virginia called Classic Iron www.bikerbill.com who specializes in used Harleys. He had a fantastic selection, and they all seemed like decent bikes at uninflated prices. Last Saturday my friend James and I rode down to check them out. I looked at a bunch of different bikes including some wide glides, a fat boy, and another dresser. But I kept coming back to this bike. It's a 1997 Ultra Classic Electraglide. It looked well maintained and pretty much stock so I gambled a little and bought it. It's got the 1340cc Evolution engine, and it runs well. The only problem is that the guy put Vance & Hines pipes on it - that sound awesome - but didn't remap the fuel injection and it "pops" a lot. At some point I'm going to have to drop $300 bucks and get a power commander so that I can adjust the fuel/air mixture and tune it a little better. It's nice to have a Harley again, though, even an older one.

A few comments about some knives - old and new:

Cardboard History

I've been an avid baseball card collector for years. Like everybody else, my mother threw away what could have been a small fortune when she discarded my childhood baseball card collection. This, of course, left me no choice but to start another one in my adulthood. I'm actually pretty limited in what I collect. I have acquired a number of game used jersey cards, because I think they have a real, genuine connection with the player.

I made an exception last week when I bought my first T206 card. These are tobacco cards that date from 1909 to 1912, and the fabled PSA 8 Honus Wagner card, the holy grail of baseball cards, is from this set. As you might imagine of a 100+ year old card, the examples in pristine condition fetch absurd sums. The one I bought cost me less than thirty dollars, but as you can see its condition is PSA 1.5 "fair." That didn't matter to me. It's genuine, the picture is clear and attractive, and most importantly the subject of the card is interesting.

Shown in his Chicago White Sox uniform - which he wore only during the 1909 and 1910 seasons - is pitcher William Thomas Burns known as "sleepy Bill." He only played baseball for five years, and he finished with a very mediocre record of 30 wins and 52 losses. So why is he interesting? Because a few years after he retired from baseball he played a major roll in the 1919 world series "Blacksox" scandal shown in the Martin Sheen movie "Eight Men Out." He was the man who approached the Sox and convinced several of them to throw the series. He was the go-between with Arnold Rothstein, the wealthy gambling kingpin who put up the money for the fix, and added to his fortune by betting against the Sox. When news of the scandal broke, he became a witness for the prosecution, thereby escaping punishment for his involvement. So you see why I regard this card as an interesting little piece of cardboard Americana.

First ride of the Season!

My friend James and I rode to Gettysburg today. It was a perfect Spring day with warm, but not hot, temperatures, and blue skies. We made a circuit through the battlefield, stopped at our favorite trendy coffee house, and visited this covered bridge near the Eisenhower farm.

My Mother's Birthday

Today is my Mom's birthday. She's been gone for 15 years, but she would have been 85 today. She was born in a little coal mining town in West Virginia, her father and most of her brothers worked as coal miners. Like so many of her generation, world war 2 broke the cycle of poverty and allowed her to leave. She worked as a QC inspector in defense plants, because of her intelligence and sharp eye for detail. She finished eighth grade, that was all the formal education she had. She would have been a brilliant attorney, and would have been successful at anything she did, if fate would have allowed her an opportunity for an education. As it was, she was a very successful business person, and died with an estate valued at several million dollars. Not bad for a little girl from the Appalachians with an eighth grade education! She was a smoker, a patriot, and drank coffee like it was water - I guess I come by it honestly. Although she was a hard-nosed business woman, she helped so many people over the course of her life that I couldn't count them. I had so many "uncles and aunts" (honorary) that I felt rich in family. I could name three men and one woman who would have starved in poverty or ended up institutionalized had it not been for her kindness. This is why I get so damned angry when liberals try to villanize smokers as being bad people. Most of those idots could only hope to be half the genuinely good person she was. She was the woman's side of the greatest generation. Happy birthday, Mom, I love you.

House to House: An Epic Memoir of War

I've been on a true crime/forensic reading jag lately, but I've read all the books that I wanted to so I started reading this Iraq War memoir. Man is this thing good! It is not a polished or slicked-up type of thing, it's in authentic language and really gives you the feeling of what it was like to be there. It centers around the author's unit's participation in the battle of Fallujah, probably the largest single battle of the war. The combat is like Stalingrad with sand instead of snow. I honestly had no real understanding of all the various dangers these guys faced as they fought to clear the city of insurgents.

This may seem odd, but I just recently got a memo from my school system about dodgeball being banned from school playgrounds as too dangerous, and too violent. It really upset me. The liberals are doing everything they can to feminize American male youth, and they're using the education system as a tool. Liberals are so very studpid about so many things, but trying to make sissies out of schoolboys is just too much. I'm a teacher, and I don't like feeling a part of this cultural suicide. Well, reading this book made me feel a little bit better. America's manhood is alive and well! Try as they may, the liberals have not yet been able to castrate America's male youth. If you can read this story of American men fighting evil - thank your teacher!

GSG-5 SD is more accurate than I thougt it would be!

At 50 yards with iron sights, this isn't half bad for a .22!

GSG-5 SD Fake Suppressor Recall

A few months ago I bought a .22 rifle that I'd had my eye on for several years. It's made in Germany, and it's a dead ringer for a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. I waited a long time because I wanted to see if they were junk, or worth the rather pricey tag they had, for a .22 - even a really cool one. Well, in December I'm cruising the forums and come across a post that says that Heckler & Koch has sued GSG (German Sport Guns) and has forced them to cease production on their patent infringements. I figured I'd better get one while I still could. What did happen during the interval I waited was that GSG came out with an SD version of the rifle, the integrally suppressed version of the MP5, which was just what I wanted. So.....I sold a few guns, ordered one from a dealer in Oklahoma, set up the transfer with a local dealer, filled out four pages of paperwork for the state police for transferring a "regulated firearm" and waited. Between the big snow storm we had and some paperwork hickups, it took me about a month before I could finally take delivery on my .22 rifle. If you're thinking that's a little ridiculous, you're preaching to the choir, believe me. Anyway, all's well that ends well, I finally got the rifle and was able to take it up to the range for a little workout on February 20th. It works great! I probably put about 250 rounds through it - using three different brands and types of ammo - and not one single malfunction. That is downright amazing for any .22 self-loading firearm, especially a brand new one. A lot of times people forget that the .22LR cartridge was never intended to be used in any semiauto firearms. It's a rimmed cartridge. The only reason they work at all is because of the excellent design and workmanship that goes into them. So when you get one that REALLY works, it's cause for celebration - in a low key, modest sort of way. Yea, well anyway, here's a picture of me at the range with mountains of snow still remaining. They dug a trench so that you could reach about ten firing points at fifty yards. That was it, the rest of the range was still snow covered.
I got home, cleaned the rifle, and was all set to write up a range report/review of it and put it on the Maryland Shooters forum. As I'm looking over the latest posts I see one that says, "important notice for GSG-5SD owners." So I'm thinking, "great, what now?" To make a long story short, the ATF had decided that the fake suppressor (known in the vernacular as a "can") was far too easy to convert into a real, working suppressor, so I was now illegally in possession of an unregistered NFA (National Firearms Act of 1968) weapon, and could be in very deep shit if I didn't comply with whatever they specified. At this point, I'm starting to think that this rifle was somehow starcrossed or something, just a bad luck kind of rifle. As it turned out, the importer of the GSG line, American Tactical Imports, did a fantastic job of processing these recalled cans, and I had my ATF approved can back in hand one week from the time I shipped it back. So, my rifle and I are, for the moment, in a happy place in our relationship. All is well. It's here, functioning very well, and there won't be an ATF swat team kicking in my door in the middle of the night. These are good things. I don't think I could ever really sell this rifle - we've been through so much together!

Another Strider!

Ok, I shouldn't have, but what the hell, you only live once, right? I found another Strider, a smaller model called an MFS in Montana. The guy wanted a very reasonable price, so I bought it. I don't have it in hand yet, but he sent me a picture of it. The smaller size will probably cause this one to get a lot more general use. The S30V steel that is used in these knives makes them incredibly tough. More on this latest acquisition later...

14MAR10, update: I got the new Strider yesterday and it's really nice. Same extremely high quality as the other one. I only have two minor complaints about Striders in general. First, people who are willing to put out the money to own a Strider have a lot of pride in the fact. The stampings in this knife are so shallow you can hardly read them. They should make it part of their QC to ensure that the stampings are deep, clear, and legible. Second, the kydex sheath that comes with these smaller knives scrapes off the finish on the blade each time the knife is drawn or resheathed. Again, when you pay this much for knife, you don't want the very cool finish to self-destruct every time you draw it. Still, these are the coolest knives ever.

Strider knives: my newest obsession

About a month and a half ago I was over at a friend's house and he showed me the coolest knife I'd ever seen. It was a large folding knife made entirely from non-magnetic alloys and intended for use in explosive ordnance disposal. I had heard of Strider knives before, but never really gave them a lot of thought - not really being a big knife hound. Seeing this first one started me researching them and the more I learned, the more I wanted one. The problem with Striders is the price. They're ridiculously expensive - even considering their exceptional quality. The fixed blades are crazy, the folders are simply absurdly priced. I decided a fixed blade would probably serve me better anyway, as I seldom if ever carry a knife as a matter of course. Hunting, fishing, hiking, that's a different matter. I always carry a knife when I'm in the woods. I found a nice used BT model located in New Jersey, and I bought it for about 2/3 new retail. I've been really happy with the knife, and will probably pack it with me whenever I venture into the woods. The first thing you notice about a Strider is the thickness and heft. This thing makes a Ka Bar look like a cheap steak knife! The blade is 3/16" thick. They also use a very special alloy of steel called S30V that is reported to keep it's edge under almost any circumstances. I can attest that this thing is freaking sharp! You could shave with it, it's not quite at true "razor sharp," but it's as close as I would ever figure a large field knife of this type could be. I don't consider myself a knife collector of any sort, but these things are so cool they're addicting!