Grocery Baskets

One for the Pretty Bike People:

The Cost of War

While Iraq may be a winnable situation, Afghanistan is a hellhole. Our government tries to paint us as liberators. We're not. The Afghans may not like the Taliban, but they are their Taliban. Not matter how noble our intentions and actions, in the eyes of the Afghans we will always be invaders.

This morning I stood in the street having this discussion with Terry F. He is a few years younger than I, but I've known him all his life. He's a little rough around the edges, unkempt beard and a long ponytail. He has spent his life as a carpenter and general handyman - a good man, skilled and honest - a good man to know.

We were talking about the army and war because earlier he had talked to his son and daughter-in-law. His son has been laid-off from Cargill for some time, there are no jobs in sight, and he needs to provide for his family. He made one of those hard life decisions. He is going back into the army and will soon be moving to Kentucky. Terry is really down. Not only is he worried about his son's safety, he won't be able to see his two grandchildren regularly.

Terry himself was drafted, went to Ft. Leonard Wood for training, then sent to Vietnam. Shortly after he arrived he was in a fierce, close-quarter fight, and in the smoke and the fire and the fear, he bayoneted a young Viet Cong. He got down and cradled the dying bloody boy in his arms. The soldier kept patting his pocket and signal blinking with this eyes. Terry opened the pocket and took out a packet. There were photos of the man's young wife and children. He nodded that he understood. "He didn't want to be there any more than I did." Shortly, the young man bled to death in his arms. When the smoke cleared they had a number of prisoners tied up. He agonized about it for hours and late that night he went to the prisoners one at a time and showed them the pictures. Finally one of them recognized the photos and called their names. A brother? A close friend? Terry said nobody was watching. He cut off the man's ropes and gave him the pictures. "He reached out and squeezed me like this," he said, softly touching my shoulder, "then he was gone". His hand still on my shoulder, Terry said, "I gotta go now before I start crying again". He turned away and got in his pickup. He didn't have to cry. I did it for him, for his family and for a family back in Vietnam.

Mark Trail

I was sitting at the counter in Nancy's Cafe this morning drinking coffee, eating a late breakfast (one egg over-easy, links and hashbrowns - no toast), and reading the newspaper. The horror of this one jumped out at me.

Mark Trail is really straight-forward. Ol' Mark lives in a black and white world (except on Sundays). Mark Trail doesn't have any gray moral issues. Good guys are very good and bad guys, and when they are bad, they are very, very bad. These Bad Guys all tend to look like Trail himself, except for hair color and a propensity for long sideburns. They are his evil twins, with nicknames like "Butch" and "Lefty" and "Blackie".

____________________________

Blackie? There hasn't been a Blackie outside of Lost Forest since Boston Blackie shaved off his pencil-thin mustache (an allusion to a long past Private Eye).

Using a puppy as alligator bait? Now that's a BAD MAN - a man to be dealt by likes of Boston Blackie not by some Mark Pussyfoot Trail.

Sorry for the rambling digressions, but if you were busy, you wouldn't be here anyway.

Stars and Watercarriers

Maybe the second best cycling movie made, possibly behind A Sunday in Hell. If you click on the "play all" on the right hand column in YouTube you can sit back and enjoy. (Note the doctor's yellow car. At that same time I was driving a similar Fiat 124 Spyder, only in a spiffy Italian red. Ah, youth.) So, enjoy:

It's hard to watch this and not get absorbed by the differences between yesterday and today. Those mountain roads were were just brutal - cyclocross anyone?. In spite of all the improved technology, training, and dare I mention drugs (?), I get the feeling that strong men were still strong men. Drop Eddy Merckx into today's peleton and he's still be a tough man to beat. Even riding his "primitive" bicycle. And it's hard not to love his tactics. There was none of this nursing an 8 second advantage for a week. He went out front himself and slowly ground them into submission. Then when they were dying, he attacked and just rode away.

Old Toad Crossing

Claw Hammer Banjo, etc

This about really listening, and more about musical style and structure than the songs played. As I watched Oxcyconton Blues it struck that Steve Earle very seldom picks notes, he chords everything. I like his mountain banjo. Haunting. Earl Scruggs was so good at finger-picking that we almost lost the claw hammer style. (Please, no technicians with the "this isn't true claw hammer" crap.) On Steve Earl's version of White Freightliner Blues he gets a really bluesy feeling out of both banjo and mandolin. I love it. I'll let someone else try to run down a copy to post. Let's dedicate the first one to Rush Limbaugh. Then we have Steve stoned on Close Your Eyes. The audio on Hometown Blues is good - the video really sucks. It's free...so we got our money's worth. Nevertheless, our normal Oakwood money back guarantee does not apply on this one.

Prisoners and Pretenders

John Cash and a number of other pretenders have written or sung "Prison Songs", like it's a romantic thing, like trains or cowboys. Steve Earle took another approach. He actually did prison time. He's all strung out on heroin in Billy Austin. A short time later he kicked his drug habit in jail. Ellis Unit One is later, after he got straightened out. It reflects his ongoing campaign against the death penalty, a belief I share with him.

Signs of the Times

The Blue Streak

Doug of the Northland, occasional commenter to this blog, is the owner of this custom beauty, an Ellis, made by David Ellis Wages of Waterford, Wisconsin. Take a gander at the full-wrap fender and particular it's perfect fenderline. This would seem to be an easy thing to do. Take my word for it, it ain't. The frame builder has to have everything perfect and then the bicycle builder has to have his act together too. Ellis Cycles "Since 2008", is a little misleading, as Dave Wages has been building frames for 15 years and has won a number of show awards since hanging out his own shingle. And just a word about Doug and his creds. He lives without an auto and commutes a fair distance year round...in Duluth; Duluth, the land of cold, snow, ice and HILLS! I've been to San Francisco. I've been to Duluth. San Francisco has gentle slopes. Duluth has hills. Also, he completed the 2008 Arrowhead Ultra 135. Enough said.

McLean Wrapped Up

I'll spare you more pictures of M05030 after these. It looks better the more fine-tuned it is. The blue fabric wraps I tried didn't look right. I'm not sure of these Cinelli cork wraps, as they are not as taupe a gray as the paint. They are probably as close as I can come in gray. The cables and housings are old Dura Ace, closer in color to the paint than they photograph. Virtually nothing on this bike is NOS. I cannibalized another bike and bought some nice, but not new components. For instance, the rear derailleur came from John Barron, maybe 10 years ago, and it's on it's third bike. Somehow avoided scrapes. It's a pat '82 which is technically too new, but very few people could tell without very close inspection. As I posted earlier, the brakes are the older Modolo Professionals with newer Modolo sintered pads, the hubs are vintage Phil Woods, and the shifters are Simplex Retrofriction. That's about it, I guess.

Father and Son

Billy Joe Shaver isn't much of a guitar player, because he is missing his primary picking fingers from a sawmill accident. Though he doesn't have flashy guitar skills himself, he taught his late son Eddy well. Eddy's best work is probably blues, but there isn't much of it recorded and none on YouTube. Shaver on Rhapsody #130 is an Eddy song dealing with the affair with heroin which killed him. #27 and #104 are a couple by Billy Joe on Eddy's death. Below is about as person and brutally honest a relationship song as has ever been written.
What the hell, if you're still with me, check out #149 too. (These all are written by BJ.)

Maria Guadalupe de Reseta

(note the Pat Nixon button)

This has quite left me at a loss for words.