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!