Mr. Toad's Journal

Gathering of Mustangs and Legends

2007-10-03T07:46:50Z

I have been going to airshows since my dad, a USAF veteran, started taking me with him when I was about five, a useful age at which I no longer had to be carried. My early interest in warbirds was part of a natural progression; the mobile over my crib was comprised of 1/72-scale WWII fighter models he began building for me before I was born. By the time I was in third grade, I was building my own models, and checking out books on WWII fighter aces from the library. I knew practically all of the warplanes, Axis and Allied, by the time I was eight. By the time I was a young adult, I had been to countless airshows and seen the premier precision teams--the Blue Angels, the Thunderbirds, the Red Arrows, and the Snowbirds--many times. I probably got jaded. Then other life priorities took over. I've just started going again in the past few years. The thing that's changed the most, from what I can tell: the best shows now have themes.

The Yankee Air Museum is just a few miles east of the house, and the B-17G and B-25D fly over the house at three hundred feet on a very regular basis. I made it to Thunder over Michigan, the museum's annual benefit show, this year for "Mitchell Madness," the largest gathering of B-25 light bombers in thirty years. Fifteen of the old warbirds flew and roared in a memorable formation. The sound of thirty Pratt and Whitney Wasp radials growling in unison makes an unforgettable impression.

So when Dad called last week and told me about the Gathering of Mustangs and Legends coming up, I knew I'd find a way to get there. This show's theme: invite every extant and flyable P-51 Mustang to the show, and assemble as many of the legendary pilots who flew them in anger as possible. Winning formula. If there's one sound I like better than a radial growl, it's the throaty purr of a Rolls Royce Merlin.

My cousin Rick, who holds a pilot's license and volunteers for the Commemorative Air Force in Phoenix, flew out with his wife. Hadn't seen them since I was last out in Arizona on a motorcycle trip several years ago. Called Mike S., who was game, and we all made arrangements to meet early Sunday morning in Columbus.

Though I missed Dad, who was only able to attend on Saturday, I benefited from his logistical observations and found a good place to watch and photograph. Thus we avoided getting smoked out by the pyrotechnics from the bombing and strafing runs, and stayed late enough to avoid the traffic problems.

What can I say about the show? Just, wow. Of the 100 P-51s invited, 75 showed up. One of them I'd last seen on the exact same ramp thirty summers ago. Others I'd been seeing again and again for years. It was a personal reunion of sorts, I suppose. Literally everywhere I looked, there were Mustangs: mostly the relatively common P-51Ds that saved the Eighth Air Force from total destruction over the skies of Germany 65 years ago, but other rare variants as well. NACA aerodynamic test planes; Commonwealth CA-18s built under license in Australia; Cavalier rebuilds sourced from banana republic air forces; an Allison-engined P-51A, recovered from the side of a mountain in Alaska; a number of racers, including a Griffon-powered Mustang with two contrarotating props; several twin-cockpit TF-P-51Ds; and a totally unique twin-cockpit TP-51C. Plane wonk paradise.

Another airshow first for me was the Avro Lancaster bomber, which sports four Merlin engines. This is a much larger plane than the B-17. I'd seen this particular plane once before, thirty years ago, at a little airfield near Goderich, Ontario where we'd stumbled across it by accident. It was a derelict then. The restoration was recently completed. It's one of only two of these RAF night bombers still flying.

The usual airshow fare, the military demonstrations, was practically a sideshow. F-16 demo, yeah, sure; F-15, yep, ho hum. But the F-22 Raptor, the new kid in the inventory--now that was another story. Holy cow. I didn't think aircraft could do tricks like that. Note to JCS: Could you please send a detachment of those to Nellis for Thunderbird duty?

The heritage flight was cool, too. Haven't seen one of these with this grouping. The P-51, as the senior airframe, led. It was flanked by the F-15 and F-22 and trailed by the F-16.

Speaking of Thunderbirds: Yes, they flew. They were good as ever. Love those echelon rolls. Two of the six are women this year. Still, totally eclipsed by the Mustangs.

At the climax of the show, twenty Mustangs lifted off in pairs and triples, orbited a few miles south for photos, then made a couple of passes over the field in formation, first as a fighter sweep. Then:

I can't even describe the roar. Memorable. And it's one likely to never be heard again. The promoters say this was the last Gathering; the guys who flew them new are passing on rapidly now. The planes will continue to fly on, of course, but this was the final rendezvous. I'm glad I was part of it.

Rest of my pictures here.

How old are you?

2007-01-16T00:47:45Z

xtatic1's birthday cake. We have so many geeky friends that this probably won't be lost on anyone, but I thought it was clever. Besides, the cake would have set off the smoke alarm if we had lit the requisite base-10 number of candles.

And man-y mor-r-r-re ...

Today's Theme: Arches

2006-06-10T07:25:11Z

During my recent trip to St. Louis for the Society for Industrial Archeology conference, I couldn't help noticing that the place has a distinct theme. Given the ubiquitous monolith hovering over the downtown, I suppose that theme really isn't too hard to discern, but after a while I began to notice arches everywhere. I mulled on the significance of this phenomenon for much of the trip.

After I got home and sorted through my pictures, I was finally able to put the trip--and the multitude of arches--into some sort of perspective. The way I see it, each arch has a theme or subtheme represented by a visionary proponent who influenced the character and destiny of this area.

This first one is shared between Thomas Jefferson and Eero Saarinen. Jefferson was the guiding force behind the Louisiana Purchase and the United States' westward jump across the Mississippi River--but it was Saarinen's interpretation of the long-gestating Jefferson National Expansion Memorial that has given St. Louis an elegant defining character, one that's instantly understood at a glance to be the Gateway to the West. It changes character with the time of day and weather as well; here it shimmers in the fog one evening after a few heavy thunderstorms.

This photo shows part of Swedish sculptor Carl Milles' "The Meeting of the Waters," in Aloe Plaza in front of St. Louis Union Station. One of his most important works, it symbolizes the marriage of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers, as well as its multitude of tributaries. Many of Milles' sculptures employ water as a unifying element, and here the fountain's arching web of parabolic sprays links the assemblage of naiads and tritons together as a single complex sculpture.

Speaking of links: Architect Theodore Link designed the Union Station to be a symbolic entry and exit gate to the city. He used the multiple arches of the Romanesque style to convey this sense, here on a truly monumental scale. The Grand Hall's barrel vaulted arch soars 65 feet over the floor, and other huge arches guide visitors throughout the station. As the twentieth century and its landmark World's Fair approached, St. Louis was to be second to no other city--especially Chicago--and the equal of all. These lofty aspirations are effectively reflected in the station's architecture. Recently restored as St. Louis' primary downtown destination, the station is Link's masterpiece.

Captain James B. Eads did his part to push St. Louis towards commercial parity with Chicago with this truly revolutionary bridge, which was completed in 1874. The first, and thus oldest, major steel bridge in the United States, it is massively overbuilt and more than equal to any conceivable load, though backbiting competitors said it would fall in the river of its own weight. Time has borne out the wisdom of his decision to build his bridge of steel--specifically, Andrew Carnegie's cast chromium steel purchased with J. Pierpont Morgan's financing. The three cantilevered arches soar over the Mississippi River with a maximum span of 530 feet on the longest arch, and the bridge is well over a mile long. The Eads Bridge too has found new purpose in the 21st century, as the light rail link to East St. Louis.

The last arch represents the vision of Moses Austin, an entrepreneur/explorer who came to Missouri Territory from the lead mines of Wythe County, Virginia early in the 19th century. In 1813 Austin founded the town of Potosi across the creek from the tiny French lead mining village of Mine au Breton as the seat of the new county of Washington. In the early 1800s the name Potosi meant the same thing as El Dorado, a region of great riches wrung from the earth. This mid-1800s "scotch hearth" lead furnace represents a transitional technology--a bridge, if you will--between the primitive heap-smelting log furnaces and the cupolas and blast furnaces of the later industrial mining era.

After helping to establish the lead industry in southeastern Missouri--one that eventually grew to encompass 80 percent of the world's lead market--Austin obtained a royal charter from the Spanish government to colonize Texas. He died before he could follow through--but his son, sworn to complete his mission, did. Stephen F. Austin is celebrated as the father of Texas, and Texas still regards Moses as its grandfather. Austin represents the momentum for expansion of the United States toward the southwest, a movement as crucially important as Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase.

Together these arches represent five minor versions of the same expansive vision of Missouri's place in the American destiny, through the eyes of engineers, architects, artists, industrialists, and statesmen.

Edit: Link to a post to the motorcycles community with more pictures here.

Now it can be told

2006-03-10T15:22:15Z

I inadvertantly caused a round of speculation among my online motorcycling friends last month when I posted something along the lines of "you'll never believe what I'm doing for a living these days." The job I took isn't exactly on my career arc, and I really didn't want to subject myself to the kind of ribbing I knew it would cause. But a number of people already knew, and the rumors were getting out anyway. Honestly, I didn't know how long it would last, but I went into it knowing that it would be both an adventure and a challenge. It was both. And mercifully the farce came to an end yesterday.

I was a Harley-Davidson salesman.

I've been having difficulty finding meaningful work since I got to Michigan, and the economy around here is such that you're competing with PhDs and engineers when you apply for a job flipping hamburgers. I've been doing temporary work at several places. When the ad appeared in the paper that said, "WANTED: Motorcycle Rider," I thought, "hey, that's me." The ad turned out to be for a sales position at the local Harley-Davidson dealer.

I've had a couple brushes with Harleys long, long ago in my riding career, notably a '73 Sportster that shifted on the right with a bad cog on the starter gear. My friends and I didn't know crap about either bikes or riding at that point, and it wouldn't have been much of a bike even if we had. Ever since Harley's renaissance in the 1980s I've had some serious misgivings about the commodification of Harley culture, but I've always thought that there was a place in my garage for a Sportster at some point. If you can't appreciate Harleys on some level, your biker DNA is missing a chromosome or two, in my opinion. And if you're going to sell motorcycles, it would probably be good to sell the ones that dominate the road riding market and still sell for more than MSRP, right? And working around motorcycles, any motorcycles, has got to be better than the menial stuff I've been doing.

To my surprise, the dealer hired me. I went to the interview in full sport-touring gear and made no secret about the fact that I'm ecumenical in my appreciation for all makes. It probably helped that when the sales manager roleplayed a Buell buyer, I showed him things about the bike he didn't know. At any rate, they wanted me to be the Buell specialist. I'm not exactly a natural salesman, but they said they were willing to train me.

A month and a half later, neither of us were as hopeful about the other as we once had been, so we've parted ways. There were good points, to be sure, but I knew the end was near when last week I looked out the window, watching the snow swirling, as I leaned over the last of a long line of bikes I'd just got done polishing and thought, "I wonder if this is purgatory, or actual hell." I've made my share of fun of Harley foibles over the years. Maybe, just maybe, God does ride a Harley and there was some penance to be done.

Can't say I'm thrilled about being unemployed again, but I have to say I'm relieved on one level. I'm no longer trying to be someone I'm not, and I made a good, honest effort to understand and appreciate the Harley culture. Really, most everything I learned about the bikes and the people who ride them is positive. They're actually pretty good bikes these days; in fact, they're hugely improved over just five years ago, and they have the best fit and finish of any motorcycle I've ever seen. Without a doubt they're the best bikes out there for doing what they're intended to do. And it was fascinating to watch starry-eyed middle aged guys part with $20,000 and up, more for a dream and a desire rather than a rational evaluation of value, function and performance. There's a lesson there, I think.

Anyway, this comes too late to join the gang in Florida, though I gave some thought to trying. Should be good for a laugh around the fire, though.

Instead, I'm getting on the bike tomorrow morning at 7:30 and riding up to Flushing, just outside of Flint, where the body of a young sergeant who sustained mortal wounds in Iraq last December is being laid to rest. In a travesty that rivals the circumstances of his death, a group of fundamentally misguided people is using this tragedy to promote their warped take on Christian scripture. Sgt. Youmans is past caring, but I seethe when I think about the pain this asshole and his band of followers is causing the families of our war dead. So I joined the Patriot Guard ( http://www.patriotguard.org/ ), whose mission is to shield the families from any sort of politically or religiously motivated protest, and to show simple respect. I encourage all riders to look into participating in this worthwhile cause if this mutant strain of "free speech" abomination makes your blood boil like it does mine. I'm proud to be able to do a small part in mitigating some really enormous wrongs.

Anyway, wish me luck on the job search.

Small worlds, motorcycling and auto racing ...

2006-02-10T19:40:42Z

Last night xtatic1, elizilla and I went up to Bloomfield Hills to see The World's Fastest Indian. It's in limited release, and really deserves wider distribution. I think this is the best motorcycling-themed movie I've ever seen. This genre is often tragically cheesy, no doubt scaring off funding for scripts that might have a bit more realistic relation to the sport of motorcycling--at least more so than the utterly insipid street racing and supernatural stunt movies that have somehow made it to film recently, like Biker Boyz and Torque.

If you have Easy Rider and On Any Sunday in your DVD collection, though, you will definitely want to see this. See it in the theater if you can. Short synopsis: elderly New Zealander Burt Munro cobbles together an ancient 1920 Indian Scout and turns it into a streamlined Land Speed Record assault vehicle, and travels to the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1962 to compete. The movie is a bit schmaltzy and not at all unpredictable, but Anthony Hopkins turns in an excellent, totally believable performance. It's one of his best characters since Hannibal Lector.

There wasn't a huge crowd at the cinema, and by the time the credits were done scrolling we were alone in the theater except for an older couple two rows back. After trading a few pleasantries with them about the movie as we walked out, the gentleman offered that Hopkins had done a good job capturing Burt Munro. It turns out that he'd also raced at Bonneville in the 1960s and had met (and been charmed by) Munro. Small world.

He also noted a couple of inaccuracies in the movie. The timing wasn't done between each mile; it was done at the middle mile in each direction. Munro's still-standing record of 201 mph wasn't set until later years--he returned to Bonneville seven more times--and the record was apparently an Indian-only category, not all under-1000cc streamliners as the end roll stated. That made more sense as to why that record still stands, since I can think of a couple of under-1000cc sportbikes that would need little modification, much less streamlining, to reach 201 mph.

He talked a little about the racing effort he was involved with at Bonneville, a streamliner with four Chrysler 426 Hemi engines (the original Hemi, not the new ones masquerading as Hemis). That rang a bell. I'd heard of this car before--the "Goldenrod" still holds a Bonneville record of 409 mph in its category. It was recently acquired by the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, and one of my Society for Industrial Archeology colleagues is the curator there who arranged for its accession and restoration. I asked him his name: "Peter Dawson." Ah yes, of course. I asked him if he'd been involved in Chrysler's factory racing program. "That's me," he said.

Well, we definitely had a friend in common. Dick Maxwell had been one of the original Ramchargers, a renegade bunch of Chrysler engineers who snuck special parts out the back gate of Chrysler at night and street-raced on Woodward Avenue. They eventually went legit in the early 60s as the first of the factory-supported drag racing programs, but not before creating a wealth of gearhead folklore. Dick was responsible for launching MoPar, a first-of-its-kind parts program where you could buy race bits for your street rod or dragster at the local Chrysler/Dodge/Plymouth dealership. Dick was personally responsible for the 440 six-pak, an overachieving musclecar engine that sported three twin-barrel carbs. He eventually headed up all of Chrysler's factory racing efforts.

Dick and I had both worked at the AMA, and we both had the distinct honor of being fired from there. We were in a small Columbus sport-touring group that rode frequently; sometimes just a Wednesday dinner ride, but often a spirited Sunday 300-miler in southeast Ohio and West Virginia. Dick lost his life on one such ride I was leading. We were returning to Columbus just before sunset, riding directly into the sun. Dick simply missed a turn, nosed into a roadside ditch, and the bike threw him and then landed on top of him. There wasn't much we could do. I sat in the ditch with him until the paramedics arrived. He lived for about 45 minutes. Definitely one of the worst days of my life, wondering if I hadn't chosen that particular route back, maybe Dick wouldn't have been blinded and would not have missed that gentle curve.

It was the third funeral for a rider friend I attended during the summer of 2002, and though I was getting numb to them Dick's funeral was truly astounding. I was surrounded by my childhood drag racing heroes--Don Prudhomme, Dandy Dick Landy, and several others like Tom Hoover, father of the original Hemi. As we stood around in a circle, telling Dick Maxwell stories, they groused about Dick's hearse being a Cadillac. Apparently there hadn't been a Chrysler suitable for hearse duty for a while, though I'll bet someone will make one of the new 300C.

Peter remembered Dick well, and I told him about our association, which unfortunately had the effect of dredging up some less-than-pleasant memories relating to the above. At this point, we were out at the cars and it was freezing cold, and I was having a big attack of melancholy as I told the story. I think otherwise I would have asked them to come have a cup of coffee with us and chat, but it was a weeknight and getting late, so we parted ways. I'd love to have another chance to chat with him about cheerier topics. Small world, anyway--two degrees of seperation from Burt Munro, through a racing guy who also knew two of my friends.

Going Green

2005-12-08T20:01:52Z

Summer before last I acquired a Y2K Ford Ranger to replace my late lamented Toyota pickup, which my insurance company had declined to fix after a deer strike. I was a little bummed that I couldn't find a decent Toyota with the insurance settlement, but truthfully the Ranger has been just as reliable, fits me better, and is more capable for towing and hauling. It also has some amenities that the Toyota lacked, like antilock brakes, an extended cab, cruise control, a CD stereo, and comfortable seats. It suits my needs pretty well. It has a 3.0 liter V-6 with a 5-speed, and gets low-20s for fuel mileage. It doesn't particularly like regular unleaded fuel, though; it tends to knock a little under load at low RPM, but with gas so expensive these days it's difficult to fork out for midgrade.

Something else I noticed when I got it, but didn't give much thought to, was that it's a "flex-fuel" vehicle, which means it burns any blend of gasoline diluted by up to 85 percent ethanol, effectively making it an alcohol burner. The fuel tank, fuel lines, and other engine components are engineered to deal with the corrosive effects of alcohol fuel, and the engine management computer senses the degree of extra oxygenation inherent in ethanol fuel and adjusts the air/fuel mixture accordingly.

The big three US automakers have been building these for about five years more as a way to meet their corporate average fuel economy requirements (they receive credits for these that subsidize their less-efficient but more profitable vehicles) than out of a reponse to the alleged greening of the auto market. E85, the standard 85/15 blend of ethanol and gasoline for which flex-fuel vehicles are engineered, isn't easy to find outside the midwest, or for that matter much of anywhere. It's easier to find racing fuel. I think I'd seen exactly one E85 pump in the past several years, at a convenience store in Hilliard, Ohio, near where I used to live. The price was the same as unleaded. Since E85 isn't as efficient as gasoline--it burns at about a 10-to-1 versus a 14-to-1 air/fuel ratio--it didn't make sense to me to use it.

That's changed recently as gasoline prices soared. E85 prices did for a while too, but since a) ethanol isn't taxed like gasoline and it enjoys a federal subsidy, b) more ethanol plants are coming on line now, and c) supply and demand finally seem to be ruling E85 prices, it's settled to about 40-50 cents a gallon cheaper than gasoline, for the most part. I thought I'd do a little experiment to see how well it would work for me, so I scouted out the area E85 stations. Turns out there aren't any. The closest are in Toledo and Dearborn, either about 40 miles away. So I postponed the experiment to some future time when I'd be heading past either of these locations.

That turned out to be last weekend. I went to Columbus on Saturday to fetch some Christmas and winter stuff from my storage unit and scouted out the E85 station in Toledo on the way down. It's about five miles out of my way. First nice surprise: the price was $1.79 a gallon, versus $2.19 for unleaded. Sold!It sure was nice to fill the tank for $30 rather than $50.

Second nice surprise, apparent once I got back on the road: no difference in perceived performance despite the lower energy value. I suppose that's modern engine management at work. And the pinging has gone away completely. I understand that it's almost impossible to ping on E85 since it's the equivalent of 105 octane. This is All Good.

Not so good: at 75mph, fuel economy declined from 20mpg to about 16. As predicted, about a 20 percent decrease in efficiency. This was offset by the corresponding 20 percent price differential, which is effectively the break-even point.

I loaded the truck in Columbus and headed for Hilliard to tank up for the return trip. Unfortunately, E85 was only a couple cents cheaper than unleaded there. I tanked anyway--of course, I saw much cheaper unleaded fuel on the way back--and headed back north. I set the cruise to about 65 this time; keeping the speed down returned 17.5 mpg on straight E85, even offset by the significant load that included a motorcycle engine and frame and a set of mounted snow tires. I tanked in Toledo again and I'm still using that tank in mixed driving in Ann Arbor this week. We'll see how that turns out.

Impressions so far:

I like the idea of using E85. It appeals to the somewhat latent green gene in me. Even though the cost efficiency is technically a wash, I should probably compare the cost to midgrade or supergrade gasoline because I do get the benefits of the extra octane. Ethanol burns cooler too, and leaves no deposits in the engine. As long as the anticorrosion engineering holds up, I should see no additional maintenance costs. I do wonder about engine oil formulation to deal with some of the unique acids (formic acid, particularly) that are byproducts of ethanol combustion. Chrysler recommends special acid-neutralizing oil formulations for their flex fuel vehicles, though GM and Ford don't.

I'd be more inclined to use E85 regularly if there was a local outlet. Ann Arbor's city fleet (and U-M's too) have a number of flex-fuel vehicles, though the fuel dumps for their motor pools aren't publicly accessible. There are numerous grants available for stations to convert a tank to E85 use; apparently it isn't cheap to do so, like $20,000 per tank, and the grant supposedly covers all of it. As green as this town is supposed to be, you'd think somebody would be willing to provide at least one public pump. There are literally thousands of flex-fuel vehicles in the area are capable of using E85, and their owners probably aren't even aware of it. I wonder how one would go about raising public awareness of the benefits.

Besides, there are a few social benefits to E85 as well, as this cartoon somewhat crudely expresses.

Veterans' Day Sport Tour

2005-11-16T11:02:38Z

Every year I do a Veterans' Day sport ride with my Columbus riding buddies. But now that I’ve moved to Michigan it’s a little harder to get up early enough to make it down to Cowtown for the weekend rides. Still, this is a traditional ride, and you know you can’t mess with riding traditions.

I left Ann Arbor a little after nine on Friday morning. It was about 220 miles to Coshocton, Ohio, where the group was meeting up for lunch at 12:30. I probably should have left a little earlier, but it’s hard to get moving quickly while it’s still below freezing. Weather was absolutely perfect but still about 30 degrees. When it’s below 40, I prefer to leave the Aerostich at home and wear the Motophoria Meridian/Radion outfit. I’ve never worn warmer gear. Both the ¾-length jacket and pants have removable thinsulate liners and work exceptionally well with electric gear, and the neck closure is totally effective keeping wind and rain out. The tradeoff is that it's nearly useless above 65 degrees. Along with the Gerbing jacket liner and gloves, though, it kept me toasty warm all day.

As I merged onto US23 south off I-94, I fell in behind an FJR1300 being ridden briskly towards Ohio. He was keeping a nice pace but had poor lane discipline so I didn’t follow too closely. He also didn’t have much gear on considering the near-freezing temperatures, and he was almost pathetically huddled up behind his windshield. Sometimes electric gear makes you feel downright smug. I used him as a rabbit down to the Ohio line, then ditched him south of Toledo.

I stayed on the US30 slab just past Mansfield to Hayesville, at which point I took the direct route to Coshocton over OH179, though Mohicanville to Nashville. The terrain got hillier and the road got progressively curvier as I got into moraine country, where the last glacier dumped some nice hills and valleys. South of here is essentially unglaciated. Southeastern Ohio is sort of a secret among riders. There is probably no greater concentration of fantastic riding roads in the country as there is here and continuing into northwestern West Virginia.

Ohio Route 60 is sort of the gateway to southeastern Ohio, along with the parallel-twenty-miles-east OH 83. Just about any road it crosses provides plenty of thrills. I was really enjoying the new pavement, because last time I was through here it was pretty torn up. Much of it had been underwater last fall during the floods that inundated the Ohio Valley in September and again in January. The town of Killbuck gets repeatedly submerged in these floods. It looks like it dried out okay this time. Most of the businesses were open, with a big crowd at the VFW hall.

After another fifteen miles of great twisties, the road along Killbuck creek abruptly dumps you into the Walhonding valley where, for the first time in a while, you see broad expanses of flat bottomland. The valley widened even wider as I approached Coshocton. The prism and towpath of the Walhonding Canal is still quite visible in places, especially as you approach its junction with the Ohio and Erie Canal at Roscoe, which still has a number of surviving lift locks. Roscoe Village has been overly restored to a nearly-genteel state that gives a poor impression as to what a canal town was really like.

Then I was in Coshocton, the first leg of the day's journey completed. Two hundred and fifty years ago Coshocton was possibly Ohio's largest town, as Goshachgunk, as it was then called, was the capital town of the Delaware nation. It was a significant crossroads traveled by Shawnee, Munsee, Wyandot, and other midwestern tribes, as well as Moravian missionaries, French traders, British armies, and eventually Revolution-era Americans, who pretty well destroyed it first chance they got. It returned as a trading and industrial center some sixty years later and hasn't changed a lot in mission since then.

I got to Spitler’s Restaurant about ten minutes late. Fortunately the gang was late too, so everyone was still looking at menus. I hadn’t told anyone I was coming, but they weren’t too surprised to see me either. I’m sort of known for my somewhat different take on day rides. elizilla says that it's a good idea bring a toothbrush when heading off on a day ride with me.

Lunch was buffet-style in the regional Amish idiom where all the food is shades of brown or yellow. Not that it wasn’t tasty; in fact, the trick was to not eat too much. It’s always a risk to stop at a smorgasbord when you’re riding. I managed to restrain myself, since this was a good day to eat lightly.

I was disappointed to find out that they were simply going to ride back to Columbus via a nice but fairly direct route. That just wouldn’t do. It was an absolutely perfect day. It had warmed up to the low 50s, which is about as nice as you can expect this time of year, and the roads were in perfect condition as well with very little crud. There haven’t been any winter treatments yet either. So I elected to press on on my own.

There are a few roads that I’ve been missing intensely since I moved up to Michigan, and I was determined to see as many of them as I could. There weren’t any other riders along to have to coordinate or synchronize with, so I stood a good chance of hitting more than a few of them. I headed east out of Coshocton on a couple of narrow, twisty county roads that led me over towards Tuscarawas County. My immediate goal was Route 258, which threads among the knobs and hilltops of the southeastern edge of Ohio’s Amish country.

I took a few pictures from the moving bike along here. Probably wasn’t the best idea, but the camera is tiny and, by wrapping the strap securely around my wrist, holding the camera upside down, and pressing the shutter release with my thumb, I was able to fire off a few decent shots without unduly endangering myself or others. Not that there were many others to endanger, other than an occasional buggy and a couple of young Amish children walking along the road. You hardly ever encounter traffic along here.

At Freeport I picked up Route 800 south, which was once a major route south out of the Cleveland/Akron area. Interstate 77 has picked up all this traffic, and I’m sure most folks who remember the old road are grateful. It is relentlessly twisty for its entire length from New Philadelphia until it runs into the Ohio River in Monroe County. It is now a sport rider’s dream, even more so now that it’s sporting brand new pavement. The upper end is mostly linked sweepers rather than really tight technical curves, although there are quite a few of those too.

One set of those tight curves, strangely enough, is right in the center the former town of Sewellsville in Belmont County. I say “former town” because there are a dozen or so old homes quite close to the road that are obviously abandoned, with broken windows and overgrown yards full of saplings. There is only one noticeably not-abandoned home in Sewellsville, one of those 1970s underground homes that is built into the side of a hill. Apparently it isn’t healthy to have your home sticking up out of the ground around here.

After about thirty miles of this, I pulled up parallel to I-70. I used the slab to jump across the Ohio River into West Virginia and then cruised down a dozen or so urban miles to Moundsville, named for the huge Adena-era ceremonial mound that once dominated the town. My goal was US250, another sport rider’s dream road. This is a much tighter, much more technical road than 800 is. It’s strung along a 30-mile-long ridgetop that traverses some of the most steeply pitched land in West Virginia. Most of the development happens on the ridgetops here since the valleys are extremely narrow and the hillsides are steep.

Unfortunately, it is also a fairly heavily trafficked road. There are few places to pass even if you have a fairly liberal interpretation of what constitutes a passing zone. Still, this was the only time all day that traffic got in my way, and slow cars invariably turn off within a mile or two. I stopped to apply some electrical tape to my shield to make a temporary sun visor. Even though I was heading east, technically, this road is so curvy that the sun is still quite often in your eyes. The road jumps from hilltop to hilltop and often the road itself is the crest of the ridgeline, with the land dropping away steeply on both sides of the road. Now that the leaves are off the sightlines are much better; you can see the road a few curves ahead of you as well as more distant views.

The early Euro-american settlers in this area appreciated the commanding ridgetop views as well, as evidenced by the historical markers that appeared regularly every few miles along Wind Ridge. Each marks the location of a frontier fort or “station” where local settlers could gather and defend themselves from the other folks who still maintained an interest in the area. I ruminated on just who needed protection from whom as the road gradually descended from the ridge and I crossed into Pennsylvania. The shadows were getting a lot longer, and eventually my sabre-shadow was riding along right beside me. Time to head back towards home.

There was still light and time for one more of my favorite routes, the PA18 / PA218 combination that bears northwest through Greene and Washington counties through picturesque countryside. These roads are largely streambottom roads, but old ones with pre-motor-vehicle alignments. Old roads don’t take up any space that could have been used for a farmer’s fields and gardens so they generally stick to the lower hillsides. There is a lot of vertical relief to these roads even if they are valley roads. Lots of fun.

When you’re in the valleys in western Pennsylvania, you’re in what probably used to be coal country. Every few miles there is a "coal patch," a clump of similar-looking old houses surrounding a store and a closed gas station. Adjacent to the patch is a large open area where the mine used to be, now used to park rusty machinery and old coal trucks picked clean of usable parts. You don’t see this stuff when you’re up swooping among the hilltops. The faded coal patches are a reminder of how the regional economy has changed since the Pittsburgh coal gave out forty years and more ago. Ironically, the towns carry such optimistic names as Amity and Prosperity, though the name of the nearby village of Good Intent is probably more accurate.

The rollercoasterlike 218 finally straightens out just in time to meet the I-70 oasis of truck stops as you reenter the 21st century. Now that I could actually see the sky and horizon again, I noticed that we were about to get a really nice sunset. I merged onto the interstate heading straight west into it. I briefly thought about heading farther north and getting the direct route back to Michigan via the turnpikes, but the weather was still relatively warm, the sunset was spectacular, and I remembered I was running short back home of whole bean coffee from my favorite roaster, Stauf’s in Columbus. One hundred fifty slab miles later (nearly half of which was framed by that fantastic sunset), I pulled into Grandview Heights and had a very tasty cup of Americano at Stauf’s as I restocked my coffee stash. I’d been anticipating that cup each of the previous hundred miles.

As I packed two pounds’ worth of Kaldi’s Blend into the sidecases, I remembered that several of my friends frequent a nearby smokehouse/brewpub on Friday evenings. I called W’s cellphone and sure enough, he was at Barley’s. I asked him to order me a sandwich, and it was set up on the bar just as I walked in about ten minutes later. It was actually pretty funny, since W and I had had lunch together at Coshocton about seven hours earlier. I ate with as much leisure as I could afford, still being two hundred miles from home after dark. It was nice visiting with W and his wife P, though; I don’t get to see them nearly as much as I used to.

Time to head north. I was pleased to find unleaded for $2.02 a gallon at the Flying J, so this was the cheapest of the five tanks of gas I ran through the Sabre on Friday. It was a fairly sedate trip back to Ann Arbor. There really wasn’t much traffic and I was able to light up the landing lights frequently. These really make a huge difference; they put out so much light on a focused beam that you can see fully twelve seconds ahead of you, and that makes for a lot less fatigue riding at night. On the downside, you sure do see more deer this way.

It was an uneventful trip back. I pulled back into the driveway almost exactly at midnight. I’d been gone almost fifteen hours and ridden 764 miles in four states, including a couple hundred high-quality twisty miles in three of them. It was about as good a ride as one can hope for this time of year. The elderly 96,000-mile Sabre performed flawlessly all day. Also about as good as you can expect of a twenty-one year old bike.

Saturday was a day for home maintenance and leaf raking. The weather was even better than Friday, and xtatic1, elizilla and I managed to squeeze in a late afternoon ride to the Dexter Cider Mill, where we had fresh doughnuts that were still warm and cider that had been squeezed an hour or two earlier. We stashed a couple gallons of cider in the bike and then followed elizilla as far as Hell, and then turned back for home. Probably not more than fifty or sixty miles all told, but it was a great ride just the same, and a nice change from riding by myself. North of the 40th Parallel, any November ride is a gift.

enjoy da rally, eh?

2005-07-12T17:33:44Z

Over the years I've heard stories about the famous Sportbike Rally held at Parry Sound, Ontario. I'm really not much into the group motorcycle event thing (with the exception of SabMag events, of course), but this sounded like fun. Besides, when the emphasis is so often on the cruising side of the spectrum at these events, one that focuses more on sportbikes would be a nice change. There was also the potential of an educational experience, in learning what normally mild-mannered Canadians do when they let their hair down. I wasn't disappointed on either count.

I've been through Parry Sound a couple of times: once with the family in the mid-1970s and once with Mike Stewart, back in 1997 as we were on the way to the first Sabmag Great White North event in the western part of Michigan's upper peninsula. Back then it made perfect sense to go around Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Huron to get to the south shore of Lake Superior from western Pennsylvania. Well, Mike was in training for the 1997 Iron Butt Rally, so I think that was the excuse. It was a pretty ride as I remember it; nice scenery but only so-so roads. There's a significant amount of bad weather up that way during the colder months to heave the pavement, and glaciation often does a number on the topographical features that make riding fun and interesting for me. I was pleased to find that this impression wasn't correct either.

Both my running Sabres need tires, and elizilla generously offered up one of her spare bikes. She wanted to take her Yamaha TDM850 which, like her V-Strom, is sporting a new Wilbers suspension. Switching off between bikes would give her the opportunity to ride a less tiring bike than the TDM when fatigue began to set in. She couldn't leave until 6pm Friday, and by the time that departure hour rolled around thatguychuck had signed on for the trip. The three of us headed off to the northeast, dodging thunderstorms, to the border crossing at Port Huron / Sarnia via the Blue Water Bridge. Fortunately, that was the last rain we saw all weekend. We were treated to a beautiful sunset that shot rays of orange between ranks of thunderheads.

We weren't making particularly good time. I was having some initial ergonomic issues with the V-Strom; elizilla has installed an MRA windshield with an adjustable laminar-flow wing, but with my height it only modulated the intensity of buffeting to my helmet. She's changed the gearing too, so the speedometer is wildly optimistic, and she had to assure me that we really weren't doing 85mph in Detroit traffic. I eventually adjusted.

So we were only in the outskirts of Toronto by the time we were ready to call it a night. We found a relatively cheap truckers' motel that was surprisingly clean and quiet, one that also promised a quick getaway in the morning with a co-located restaurant. Per K's instructions, we turned the clock to the wall and opened the drapes to allow the morning light to wake us up. With no clock, we would wake up cheerfully without knowing how stupid-early it really was.

Gotta love a truck stop restaurant with an omelette chef making eggs to order. We were stands-up by 8am and, due to a generous tailwind, we were on the outskirts of Parry Sound by 9:45. You can make pretty good time in Ontario without fear of imperial entanglements. I discovered that this, coupled with the V-Strom's speedometer error, allowed me to convert mph to km/h at a 1:1 ratio.

I thought we had it bad in the States with our fuel prices. Even after factoring in the difference between $CAN and $USD, Canadian riders are paying three dollars a gallon. Price for a liter of fuel was between $.85 and $.95 per liter. At the current exchange rate, the upper level is almost exactly $3 US. On the balance, though, nearly everything else is cheaper: food, lodging, and other goods.

You have to make lodging reservations way in advance if you hope to have a room at the rally. This part of Ontario is known as "cottage country," and it's a favorite destination for vacationing Canadians on any summer weekend--and 5,000 additional motorcycling tourists make for a lot of no-vacancy signs. elizilla had planned our stay at a municipal park about 7 km from Parry Sound.

We had no more than pitched our tents than we began to realize that this campground was hooligan central. We had unwittingly set up near a dust hole on the entrance road, in which every passing rider obligingly spun his or her rear tire, sending clouds of dust towards our tents. I regretted my choice of wearing contact lenses almost immediately. This was but a prelude to that evening's menu of activities at the campground.

With accommodations established, we headed into town. The rally was set up at another centrally-located park and community center named for local hockey hero Bobby Orr (I started to feel really old when I had to explain to thatguychuck who he was). There were a couple rows of vendor tents and manufacturer exhibitors, and a dyno set up behind the main building. It was pretty warm that afternoon, and we sat in the shade near the dyno watching the sportbikes run.

I should probably let thatguychuck tell this part of the tale in detail. The enterprising dyno operator had set up different classes (V-twins, V-fours, 750s, 1000s, 1000 modified, 1100+ modified, etc.) to foster a sense of competition. He had run a couple of Yamaha V-maxes on the dyno, but apparently none had been able to do any better than 105 hp. We watched one with a 250-section rear tire and a nitrous bottle do only 88 hp. Kind of surprising, but we know what a decent V65 will do, and it's in the same neighborhood as the top V-Maxes. So C signed up.

It was pretty comical. Here is a whole herd of sleek, new sportbikes, and there's thatguychuck's rat, complete with a whole spring's worth of road grime, adorned with such performance bling as a tank bag,camelbak, and Givi racks. To say that it wasn't getting much respect is an understatement.

If you've never seen---and heard--a first-generation Honda V-4 get strapped to a dyno and flogged, it is a sensory experience to remember. It is not at all like running a modern sportbike, which bears more resemblance to a clinical exam than a performance test. There's a little shrieking when the thermometer is inserted, but that's about it for the drama.

Not so with the V65. There is much bellowing, bucking, shaking, and roaring. Suffice it to say, after the smoke had cleared--literally--the crowd was clapping and Grey Wolf had posted the record dyno run for V4s at 110.2 hp. If the clutch hadn't slipped, there's no telling what it might have pulled.

Boy, was thatguychuck ever preening and strutting. Take that, V-Max guys! Amazingly, the record stood most of the afternoon. Much later, a V-Max beat him by a measly one-third of a horsepower. Given that V-Maxes are supposed to put out 145 hp versus a mere 121 for the Sabre, it sure seems like they lost a lot more power than the Sabres did between the showroom floor and the dynamometer.

After a couple more laps of the vendors we went looking for lunch. elizilla managed to run the TDM out of gas on the way out. For some reason, that tailwind that helped us get to Parry Sound so expeditiously that morning had, paradoxically, cut twenty miles off her expected range. We encountered a series of friendly and helpful Canadians who lent us fuel and pointed us towards lunch. I am altogether impressed by average Canadians. They manage to be reserved and outgoing at the same time.

We split up and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. I climbed the observation deck on Tower Hill, which affords a magnificent view of the sound and surrounding area. Though I was a good two miles from the rally, I could still hear bikes getting flogged on the dyno. I went back into town and enjoyed an ice cream cone and met back up with K and C.

Back into town for the parade. One of the rally traditions is a parade lap through town, and the locals come out to watch. I've been in enough parades so I elected to watch, but thatguychuck and elizilla decided to participate. C seems to have had the most fun, since he got stuck behind a comely SV650-mounted hooligan lass named Eliki who was deftly demonstrating her backfiring technique, sending clouds of smoke into C's face. Each time he'd snap his visor down just before the smoke plume enveloped him, to the amusement the crowd.

It took almost ten minutes for all the bikes to pass. The RAT (Triumph owners club) contingent seemed to be the best-organized, with club chapter flags and Canadian flags carried proudly. They rented out the whole Travelodge downtown and were otherwise easily identified by their interesting choice of riding gear, more often than not consisting of a kilt. Even some of the women wore kilts, or at least tartan boxers. The UtiliKilt seems to be a popular choice for riding duty. These guys sure seem to know how to have fun.

We got in an evening ride after canvassing some of the locals for the location of good roads. Earlier I'd tried out a couple of nearby candidates and found, as is so often the case, that there are good roads hiding nearly everywhere just off the boring main highways. A couple of the RATfolk had emphatically recommended Muskoka 13, which was a good 40km away. We made the attempt, but it was getting towards dark and K and C had left their daytime visors at the campground. They bailed back for the four-lane just as we were approaching the good stuff. I stubbornly pressed on. I was justly rewarded with one of the best roads I've ever found, anywhere.

Let me explain. As you go farther north into Ontario, the rolling hills and temperate forests give way to dense boreal thickets and craggy rock formations. You know you've changed ecosystems when you start seeing Inuit inukshuks, little stacked-stone human effigies, perched on the rocks over the road. They've morphed from an ancient symbol of trailmarking and welcome into a popular roadside meme, apparently.

The region is dotted with glacial kettle lakes. But the predominant feature is rock. This is part of the precambrian shield, which covers much of this part of Canada--the oldest exposed rock on earth, between one and two billion years old. It makes for poor farming but nice scenery and, in places, some excellent riding. Building roads up here is a non-trivial exercise. You have to blast an awful lot of rock out of the way.

The junction of Muskoka 13 and Ontario 169 is at a place called Torrance, and a few kilometers south is a place known as the Torrance Barrens, which is mostly a huge expanse of rock, a series of smooth-surfaced low ridges separated by peat bogs and kettle lakes, undulating and changing level constantly. It's cleft with furrows and gullies by the precambrian forces that created the geology here, followed by a billion or so years of erosion and a few million of glaciation. It's so far from civilization that it was declared the first Dark Sky Reserve for astronomical observation, affording a 360-degree view of the night sky unmarred by light pollution.

The engineers who laid out Muskoka 13 didn't bother trying to blast any of the rock out of the way. They just paved over it. The result is the closest thing to southeastern Ohio roads that I've seen anywhere else. The roads twists and dips and flies and whoops and dips and jumps some more. To say I was having a blast is an understatement.

But it was getting dark and it was time to head back. After a while the ubiquitous deer crossing signs don't really register as a hazard; after all, they depict a graceful buck jumping clear of some obstacle. On the other hand, the moose crossing sign depicts a sinister, hulking, thick-bodied monster. With the "Night Danger" legend below it, it hints at an altogether much more ominous hazard. Definitely an unsettling warning to this sub-boreal dweller. Fortunately, I had no encounter with these malevolent creatures on the way back.

The party was well under way when I returned to the campground. In fact, I had to thread my way through the tire smoke and stunting hooligans to get to my tent. Was glad to see K and C had made it back safely, but I feared that sleep was not going to come easily. If you've ever camped at a major racing event, you know what I mean.

Canadian hooligans seem particularly fascinated by rev limiters. Until the events transpiring outside my tent melded with my dreams, I heard sportbike engines, one after another, throttles held wide open, stuttering off their rev limiters. Following each demonstration of rev-limiter technology, there arose volleys of cheers. This seminar evolved into a comparative exchange, with each panelist clearly having a partisan entourage of peer reviewers.

I don't know what consensus was eventually reached, for despite my rapt attention I somehow drifted off to sleep fairly early. I hadn't unpacked my alarm clock on purpose, so it wouldn't tell me how stupid-early it was when I got up Sunday morning. Still, the sun awoke me before six. Meshing K's waking-on-the-road philosophy with my own (i.e., there are three things worthy of waking early: skiing, fishing, and riding), I got up and broke camp.

Strangely, neither K nor C seemed willing to repeat the successful exercise of the previous morning, and I could rouse neither. So I headed into town and partook of some coffee and crullers at Tim Hortons (travelers note: some of the best road coffee anywhere). There and at the gas station, I polled a number of Canadian riders on their favorite roads and got something of a consensus which, fortunately, seemed to trend in the direction we needed to head. Many Canadians are quite proud of their roads, preferring them to anything in the States.

Back at camp, elizilla and thatguychuck still hadn't risen. They must have inadvertantly worn their watches to bed. I reluctantly gave up on taking advantage of the prime Sunday morning riding hours and helped them break camp as best I could. I had some more coffee and chatted with some Iron Butt Rally veterans I know while they soaked up caffeine and carbohydrates. It was pretty close to 10am when we finally hit the road.

There sure are some great roads in this part of Ontario; really, a very nice concentration of them. They are generally narrow and don't have the best surface, but the scenery is outstanding and they are, for the most part, plenty challenging. We stopped at a nice cafe in Rosseau for a break and some more coffee and soda, where we met more RATfolk, a couple who live there. The woman is a cop who rides a Daytona 1200 with MFP decals (pretty funny, really), and the guy, wearing the obligatory kilt, rides a T-bird Sport and works at the cafe. We put on about 160 miles total before we arrived at Bala ("the Cranberry capital of Ontario"), where we'd been the previous night before splitting up. I wanted a break before we ran 13 again so I pulled off in a parking area near a series of short waterfalls that drained one lake into another.

Pulling up beside me, thatguychuck managed to high-center on a chunk of the precambrian shield and neatly perforated his oil pan. The oil was gone in seconds. Obviously, a major problem. Suffice it to say that we had some time to kill in Bala that afternoon. Fortunately, we reached a nearby Sabmag listmember--the only nearby member--who, even more fortunately, had time, a trailer, and a spare bike to lend. Two and a half hours out, Chris was on his way.

We walked up to a little cafe in Bala for a late lunch, where we ran into Eliki the hooligan lass yet again. We compared notes on nice roads, and it turns out she hadn't heard of my new favorite road, only a couple of klicks away. In turn, she inspected thatguychuck's holed oil pan and clucked sympathetically. We swapped emails and will probably hear from her soon.

We then took a few laps on Muskoka 13 on the remaining bikes. C rode two-up with K on the way out and with me on the way back. It was his first time on the back of a bike that was being ridden briskly through twisties and it seemed to make an impression on him.

We consolidated luggage and while C took a solo lap, K and I checked out the Bala Bay Inn, an old three-story brick hotel (very reminiscent of the SMW St. George hotel in Volcano) that is in the process of being restored and revived. The proprietor described it as "very moderate," which I suppose is a nice way of saying "slightly tatty." But it has the advantage of being in the middle of the best riding Ontario has to offer, according to both our empirical reviews and those of riders we talked to, and since it just reopened it wasn't booked solid for the rally, so maybe that's where we'll stay next year. I definitely want to do this again.

Chris arrived about 5pm and we loaded thatguychuck's bike, still dripping oil, onto the trailer. It was an unremarkable trip back, other than fighting the Sunday afternoon traffic that we eventually bypassed at Barrie via two lane backroads. It took us quite a while to get to Kitchener this way. By the time C traded his bike for Chris' V65 Sabre and dusted it off it was well after dark, with more than four hours left to go.

At this point I elected to ride on ahead, as I was getting tired and cranky and I can make somewhat better time with no cats to herd. I was getting increasingly fidgety as my available sleep time before work next day evaporated. Fortunately, Ontario is a place where you can make advantageous time-to-distance performance when necessary. I sailed through customs with only a couple of perfunctory questions (tip: always take off your helmet so you can hear and be heard clearly and the customs agent can see you're not a terrorist) and was home at about 2am.

Great trip. Many thanks to elizilla for her usual wonderfulness and to thatguychuck for maintaining his humor in a difficult situation. I can definitely see doing the Sportbike Rally in the future with a larger contingent. Next year it's the weekend of the 14th/15th of July, so mark your calendars. This event gets my endorsement.

Third time's a charm

2005-03-21T17:24:18Z

I'm still keeping my fingers crossed, because stuff did go wrong this late on the last house--but it looks like we finally found our new home. Recap: we were outbid on the first house, and we decided to withdraw our offer on the second one after a particularly educational and enlightening inspection. The inspector is definitely on our Christmas card list, and he'll be presiding at the next round, currently scheduled for later this week.

Pictures here.

Not a very big house; in fact, it's only two bedrooms, but the space is well used and the basement is nicely finished where it needs to be. It's been well kept. Hardwood floors, woodburning fireplace, new windows, new furnace, new interior and exterior paint. The kitchen is small but well organized and features a gas range. The garage is an order of magnitude smaller than the last candidate, but there should be room for most everything after I thin the bike herd a bit. There's a lot of lawn. We will be shopping for a good lawnmower.

There are a few signs for caution. The roof isn't anywhere near new, and there's some evidence of water occasionally coming through the foundation. Fortunately, the house is on a grade and there are indicators that the soil is well drained, especially in comparison to some of the other houses we viewed.

Here's a good indicator of that. We are to be the custodians of an absolutely magnificent specimen of bur oak, quercus macrocarpa. This is a very old tree which clearly has dominated the canopy its whole life, and it quite likely predates euro-american settlement in this area. It's about 40 inches in diameter at breast height (dbh is a standard mensuration value in forestry; 4.5 feet is high enough on most trees to eliminate basal flare from the measurement), which would give it a circumference of about ten and a half feet. I will be taking a tape and a Biltmore stick to it for sure. It is at least as wide as it is tall.

Bur oak is the star species in the oak opening (or oak savanna) ecotype, a transitional zone between forest and prairie. In many places this zone is associated with glacial beach ridges that drain well. Settlers looked for bur oaks as indicators of good soil for agriculture; In fact, Ann Arbor was named partly for the bur oak openings that were then prevalent in the area. Agriculture and fire prevention almost completely eliminated the oak openings within a decade or two of settlement, so it's kind of neat to have this survivor of a nearly extinct ecotype outside our windows shading us--and it's a reminder that even though our house is more than 50 years old, it's still a newcomer to a very old neighborhood.

Time to pack!

So what the heck is an Ypsilanti?

2005-03-15T15:40:14Z

Since I'm to become a resident of the Michigan city bearing this odd name beginning early next month and, well, since it's something that I just have to know, being who and what I am, I set out to find out.

According to elizilla, it's a Greek word meaning "can't afford Ann Arbor." We did shop for a lot of houses in the area and, while we determined that she is factually correct in this matter, I figured there might be a better explanation.

And I found it. Directly beneath the landmark downtown water tower is a statue dedicated to an actual historical figure of that name: Demetrios Ypsilanti, the only successful scion of a Phanariot family of prominent but unfortunate Moldo-Walachian hospodars and dragomen.

I am not making this up. Let's deconstruct that last sentence: Phanariots were the wealthy and connected residents of Fanar, the Greek quarter of Constantinople, now Istanbul. Moldavia and Walachia were Danubian principalities in the early 1800s; Walachia is now part of southern Romania and Moldova is once again an independent state after a long stint as a Soviet republic. A hospodar is a governor/prince, and a dragoman is a minister.

The resolutely nationalistic but hapless Greeks were whipsawed back and forth between the Turks, the Austrians, and the Russians during this era while attempting to establish a political identity to match their cultural heritage. Brave men, no doubt, but it didn't pay to be an Ypsilanti in the early 19th century.

Demetrios' grandfather, Alexander, found himself enmeshed in the Russo-Turkish War of 1787-1792, was captured and imprisoned by the Austrians, and was executed for alleged conspiracy by the Ottomans in 1807. His father, Constantine, fomented an unsuccessful anti-Turkish rebellion in Serbia in 1807. He fled to Russia where he died in exile. His brother Alexander led a disastrous revolt at Iasi, Moldavia, in 1821; he was captured and imprisoned in Austria, where he died some years later.

Which brings us at last to Demetrios Ypsilanti, who escaped his brother's fate at Iasi and did similar work in the Peleponnesus, helping insurgent Greeks capture and hold the Turkish fortress of Tripolis. For a while it looked like he too was to suffer the family fate, but he persevered and triumphed over the evil pashas. He died a hero in his early 40s. One out of four isn't bad, I guess. Especially if you get a city named after you.

Collectively, these struggles represented the beginning of the Greek War for Independence, an event clearly worthy of commemoration by the founders of the Washtenaw County village a few years later. So the answer to my question is: the name "Ypsilanti" represents a Jacksonian-era tribute to a revolutionary hero of the culture most closely associated with the development of democracy. I'm sure it was a resonant sentiment in the years of the Early Republic.

So next time someone asks you what an Ypsilanti is, you can tell them it's "a freedom-fighting Phanariot family of Moldo-Walachian hospodars and dragomen."

"No, really."

Eventually they'll have to believe you. How could you make up something that outlandish? Sometimes history can be more fantastic than mere fantasy.

An era passes

2005-02-21T08:19:05Z

Hunter S. Thompson is dead.

I've been rereading HST over the past several months. I recently finished his second collection of letters, Fear and Loathing in America; and right now Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 is on my bedside table. A screwup for sure, albeit an incredibly talented one. One of the most distinctive prose stylists of the twentieth century, he was heir to the grand tradition of American invective, in the footsteps of Ambrose Bierce and H.L. Mencken.

However, his career was, at best, uneven. His battles with editors and publishers are legendary, and he may well have been America's most famous recreational drug user. In recent years he returned to his roots, as a sportwriter for ESPN.com's Page 2. His first job, fresh out of high school, was as an enlisted U.S. Air Force sportswriter at Eglin Air Force Base. In the interim he chronicled, in his wholly unique fashion, the inherent ironies of American culture in the last half of the twentieth century. Never content to be a mere observer, he famously defined the parameters of participatory journalism, though the result often bore no resemblance to the traditional craft.

Thompson's thing for motorcycles is what brought him to my attention in the first place, as he infiltrated the Hells Angels in 1965 and lived to tell and sell the tale. Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga launched his career. He spent the rest of his career trying to find a niche, although he invented the one for which he's best known, "gonzo journalism." Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner essentially subsidized HST's perfection of this form of performance art, which almost incidentally defined 1970s drug culture with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey into the Heart of the American Dream. Thompson's meticulously detailed accounts of nearly incomprehensible levels of substance ingestion still spark discussions of whether the book was fact or fiction, and his body of work continues to confuse book store clerks when confronted with having to choose a genre under which to shelve his books. Fiction? Journalism? Politics? Literary criticism?

His writing covered all those bases, and more, often in the same book. Throughout his work, Thompson cultivated a finely tuned sense of outrage based on, however improbable for a man one of his biographers labeled "the greatest degenerate of the twentieth century," a very conservative set of values and ideals concerning what this country is supposed to be about. He predicted the rise of both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, who supplied him with years' worth of material. Indeed, he dedicated one book to Nixon, "who never let me down."

HST's most notorious legal passion was for firearms. His last column, from Tuesday, detailed a proposal for team shotgun golf. The manner of his self-directed death is surprising only in that he didn't die of gross cumulative substance abuse at nearly any point in the previous forty years. As Hunter would have said, cazart. Selah. Res ipsa loquitur.

Back to the motorcycle connection. For some reason, there is some sort of persistent existential disconnect between the modern literary mind and the ability to render the motorcycling experience in prose. A mere handful of people have ever been successful in enunciating, however tangentially, what it is about motorcycling that is so deeply and sublimely engaging and satiating--its soul, if you will--and HST is one of them. A couple of passages in particular stand out in my mind: his postscript to Hells Angels--"Four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise"-- and his essay, "The Song of the Sausage Creature," that appears in The Art of the Motorcycle. An excerpt:

Some people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba....

[ ... ]

We all love Torque, and some of us have taken it straight over the high side from time to time – and there is always Pain in that.... But there is also Fun, in the deadly element, and Fun is what you get when you screw this monster on. BOOM! Instant takeoff, no screeching or squawking around like a fool with your teeth clamping down on your tongue and your mind completely empty of everything but fear.

No. This bugger digs right in and shoots you straight down the pipe, for good or ill.

On my first take-off, I hit second gear and went through the speed limit on a two-lane blacktop highway full of ranch traffic. By the time I went up to third, I was going 75 and the tach was barely above 4000 rpm. ...

And that's when it got its second wind. From 4000 to 6000 in third will take you from 75 mph to 95 in two seconds - and after that, Bubba, you still have fourth, fifth, and sixth. Ho, ho.

I never got to sixth gear, and I didn't get deep into fifth. This is a shameful admission for a full-bore Cafe Racer, but let me tell you something, old sport: This motorcycle is simply too goddamn fast to ride at speed in any kind of normal road traffic unless you're ready to go straight down the centerline with your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat.

When aimed in the right direction at high speed, though, it has unnatural capabilities. This I unwittingly discovered as I made my approach to a sharp turn across some railroad tracks, saw that I was going way too fast and that my only chance was to veer right and screw it on totally, in a desperate attempt to leapfrog the curve by going airborne.

It was a bold and reckless move, but it was necessary. And it worked: I felt like Evel Knievel as I soared across the tracks with the rain in my eyes and my jaws clamped together in fear. I tried to spit down on the tracks as I passed them, but my mouth was too dry... I landed hard on the edge of the road and lost my grip for a moment as the Ducati began fishtailing crazily into oncoming traffic. For two or three seconds I came face to face with the Sausage Creature. ...

But somehow the brute straightened out. I passed a schoolbus on the right and got the bike under control long enough to gear down and pull off into an abandoned gravel driveway where I stopped and turned off the engine. My hands had seized up like claws and the rest of my body was numb. I felt nauseous and I cried for my mama, but nobody heard, then I wnet into a trance for 30 or 40 seconds until I was finally able to light a cigarette and calm down enough to ride home. I was too hysterical to shift gears, so I went the whole way in first at 40 miles an hour.

Whoops! What am I saying? Tall stories, ho, ho ... We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny. We shit on the chests of the Weird. ...

But when we ride very fast motorcycles, we ride with immaculate sanity. We might abuse a substance here and there, but only when it's right. The final measure of any rider's skill is the inverse ratio of his preferred Travelling Speed to the number of bad scars on his body. It is that simple: If you ride fast and crash, you are a bad rider. And if you are a bad rider, you should not ride motorcycles.

Truer words were never spoken. And that is the crux of Thompson's appeal; as he once said, the best fiction is truer than any form of journalism. If you want to get a more rounded flavor of his writing, check out The Great Shark Hunt, an excellent sampler of his work over the years.

In early 1995, I suddenly reacquired an interest the music of the Grateful Dead, a taste that had been dormant, for various reasons, since my college years. This interest grew as I collected and traded show tapes, and culminated in my attending one more show, at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Three weeks later, Jerry Garcia was dead. I hope I didn't curse HST by reacquiring an interest in him here of late.

Speaking of late ... [yawn] The irony of HST's life and death continues to grow in me. From the late Sixties to the mid-1970s, Thompson's often frustrated focus, or lack thereof, was producing a book for Random House with the loose concept of "The Death of the American Dream." Many of his essays during that period, including his forays into gonzo-land, were in search of a unifying theme to this concept.

It now appears that his biography may well serve that purpose.

the FNG

2005-02-19T09:05:52Z

That's Feline New Guy.

Actually, "new" is pretty relative. Beau is an ancient kitty. He's mostly blind, fairly lame (doesn't do stairs, beds, or anything that requires jumping), and he has grooming issues. His tummy's been upset since he arrived at Toad Hall as well.

But he sure is cute.

Distory: beware of Hollywood true stories

2005-01-04T06:35:15Z

J and I watched quite a few movies over the holidays. Most of them were pretty light and fluffy, but a few rose to the level of good honest entertainment, like Calendar Girls and The Goodbye Girl. At one point, we saw the trailer for a recent Hollywood epic, Hidalgo. It looked interesting and I picked it up on the next trip to the video store.

It's "based on the true story" of Frank Hopkins, a half-Lakota 1880s Montana cowboy, and his charismatic paint mustang who thinks he's a racehorse. Frank has a couple of sideswipes with history, as a messenger at the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890 and as a participant in Buffalo Bill's Wild West troupe, before the focus of the movie takes form.

A winner of "hundreds" of equestrian long-distance races, Hopkins is challenged to a 3,000-mile endurance race across the Arabian desert, a contest known as the Ocean of Fire. It's the ride of his life. Beset on all sides by challenging terrain, deadly climate, bloodthirsty brigands, and snarky competitors on supposedly superior horses, Hopkins and Hidalgo prevail by a nose at the end. Sorry for the spoiler.

Well, no, I'm not.

Being a historian seems to have equipped me with a finely-tuned BS detector, and one of the first rules of historical inquiry is to evaluate the credibility of your sources. In this case, the movie is a product of the estimable house of the mouse, Walt Disney Studios.

Uh oh. That alone is enough to set it off.

As much as I enjoyed my Disney movies and my faithful Sunday 7pm Wonderful World of Disney ritual as a child, I simply don't trust The Mouse any longer. Between their theme parks and their vast array of animated and live action movies, Disney has succeeded in thoroughly commodifying American culture. And don't even get me started on Bambi.

It doesn't matter if the stories aren't American in origin; any tale can be given a uniquely American spin. Disney can't faithfully render a children's classic without rewriting the whole script to reinterpret the tale in terms of Disney values. Cultural imperialism, American style. You will find no finer example.

After grinding scores of complex and ambiguous stories into their trademark formulaic pablum of easily-digested moral lessons over the mid-twentieth century, Disney planned to build a theme park based on American history in rural Virginia in the late 1980s. The ramifications of the further Disneyfication of American history are almost too awful to contemplate.

Regardless, with the aid of Northern Virginia's notoriously starry-eyed developers, the professional and academic historical communities' unanimous objections were well on the way to being steamrollered--until the Mouse made a fatal strategic blunder. Disney planned to build the park in the shadow of a Civil War battlefield. You simply do not (yet) mess with the memory of the Civil War, so the project died a widely-rejoiced death.

Hollywood has always had a shaky grasp on reality when it comes to portraying historical events, and it doesn't seem to be improving. Witness the wildly successful Braveheart of several years back, which purports to tell the "true story" of William Wallace and the ascent of the House of Bruce. It's a great love story--several, in fact--but it's a farce when it comes to the facts.

What Wallace was, was a medieval Scot. In the movie, Mel Gibson plays a medieval Scot, wearing a prehistoric Pict's war paint, fighting for Enlightenment ideals. "Freeeeedommm!" Similar severely ahistorical anachronisms marred the movie for anyone with a sense of British history; medievalists promptly dubbed the movie "Woad Warrior." (Woad is the blue war paint of the Picts.)

Of course, none of this bothered Paramount, or director Mel Gibson, or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who awarded it the Best Picture Oscar for 1995. I remember, when this movie came out, how offended the girls in the office were when I pointed out the numerous historical inconsistencies. Even when it flies in the face of logic as well as history, people prefer to believe in the Imagineered version. Sigh.

I have to admit that I enjoyed Hidalgo. Unfortunately, it took no time at all to debunk it.

Frank Hopkins was a true storyteller, it turns out, but next to nothing he claimed to have done can be documented, from his involvement in the Buffalo Bill shows (paradoxically, the movie's researchers were fastidious in attempting to portray Buffalo Bill accurately, even researching the kind of cigar he smoked) to his participation in any of the hundreds of races he was supposed to have won.

In fact, there is zero historical evidence of the occurrence of any of the long distance races, including the Ocean of Fire so meticulously "documented" in the movie. Hopkins' Lakota ancestry was similarly debunked.

What's worse, both the screenwriter and lead actor Viggo Mortensen continue to insist on the accuracy of their claims--Mortensen, most pathetically, by claiming that he got his version of Hopkins from a "94-year-old Lakota who spoke no English." Even Lakota scholars haven't been able to find one of those, and would most earnestly like to meet one. Viggo has not been forthcoming.

There are two possibilities and one inescapable conclusion: either the movie industry is tapped into ultra-rich sources of historical information not accessible by merely mortal historians who make their living doing this kind of work--or it's full of crap. Guess which explanation I favor.

But what the heck. It was a good movie. Right? Isn't that all that matters?

Death, fairness, lessons, etc.

2004-12-19T08:28:12Z

Last Wednesday night, as I was reading myself to sleep, I groggily noted the presence of a couple of Columbus police "ghetto birds" circling nearby. Orbiting helicopters are a regular feature of the weekend small hours here, out on the northern fringe of the the sprawling OSU sphere of influence. But this was a weeknight, so something unusual was happening. Still, I didn't give it any more thought. But sleep eluded me.

A couple hours later, still awake, I flipped the TV on to try droning myself to sleep. No such luck. Breaking news: a shooting at the Alrosa Villa, at least three dead. Well, that's definitely unusual, and it certainly explains the helicopters. The Alrosa is as close to a roadhouse as you're likely to find on this side of Cowtown, and it seems to have had its share of petty violence over the years, but three dead--that's a little more hardcore than its usual clientele.

Turns out the initial body count was a bit low. The guitarist for the heavy metal band Damageplan, a roadie, a bouncer, a fan, and the shooter all went down. Two others wounded, one critically. The quick-responding cop is a real hero. Two minutes after he got the call, he dropped the gunman with a shotgun--while the gunman had a hostage in a headlock--likely preventing another death or two. The shooter was a deranged fan. Have we heard that somewhere before--yes. John Lennon. Twenty four years ago, to the day.

I'd never heard of the band and the guitarist's name didn't ring a bell, though it was certainly distinctive: Dimebag Darrell. I wonder if he partied? Hmmm, said my inner cynic, looks like someone smoked that Dimebag. I haven't had much use for heavy metal since I was an inchoately angry 15-year-old (okay, maybe since I was an inchoately angry 20-year-old). That was the era of proto-metal, the first wave--when Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath et al. were the baddest dudes around. For young metalheads, this is the music their grandparents hated.

For my tastes, metal took quite a turn for the darker after its energetic rush through the 1970s had dribbled out, in the 1980s, into a hair-farmer treacle of poppy guitar rock. Its resurgence in the 1990s, though, was something else. Those guys, when they showed you their devil's horns, they meant it. By then my drugs of choice favored gentler music.

Very big news the next morning. I indulged into a little research. Turns out Dimebag Darrell had been the driving force behind Pantera. Now, them, I'd heard of. Skulls, tattoos, rebel flags, screechy speed metal. Do-it-yourself nihilism kits for $15.98 at your nearest record store. I remember initially thinking that it was no real surprise that one of their "fans" bought into the philosophy they were selling. But no one deserves to get snuffed on stage.

I tuned into a few blogs and message boards. Real grief, lots of it. A fair bit of denial, and a good bit of inarticulate rage at the shooter. I gradually became aware that "Dime" had been every bit as influential in his genre as, say, Eric Clapton or Bob Dylan had been in theirs. A virtuoso, even. Many mourners cited his distinctive riffs as the reason they picked up guitars and began to play, or noted that Pantera was the music that helped them through a rough stretch of adolescence.

Universally they expressed disbelief that something like this could happen. You use metal to help work out your aggressions, not culture them, they said. I guess that makes sense. I'd never looked at it that way. But it makes sense. The style may have changed since I was a kid, but it's still catharsis, even if you stand a better chance of getting a whiplash these days.

I downloaded a few of their more popular tunes. You know, I can see the appeal. Catchy. Sounds better the louder you turn it up. Still not my cup of tea, but I could hear some pretty skillful stuff going on with that guitar. Pretty impressive in its own way. I can see how in the metal community, this could very well be their 9/11.

I went by the Alrosa Villa on the way out Thursday afternoon and shot a couple of pics. Here's the best one. The band's name was still on the marquee at that point. This was apparently before the rush began; the makeshift shrine grew quickly and there was a huge vigil Thursday evening. Amidst the grief, a little bit of humor shone through. That's a Dead Guy Ale there front and center in the midst of the yellow roses. I think Dimebag would have appreciated that.

By all accounts, Darrell Abbott was a stand-up guy, very accessible and generous to his fans. A hard, hard partier, that's for sure. But a nice guy. No, it wasn't fair. But still, even if you don't have a destructive streak, the pace of the lifestyle will kill you sooner or later unless you have the constitution of Hunter S. Thompson or Keith Richards. It's all over in the blink of an eye either way.

Ultimately, it could have been a good career move. Once the grief passes, his dramatic on-stage murder--hell, he died with his guitar in his hands!--is sure to become the stuff of mythic rock legend. Sure beats drowning in your own vomit in a bathtub. I give it a year, two years tops, before Dimebag Darrell Abbott is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

But culture of nihilism or not, it's still not right. RIP, Dimebag. \m/, as they say.

Unbeknownst to me at that point, there was another death that evening. This one was much closer to where my head lives, if not my body. Longtime SabMag listmember Ed Rogers collided with a car driven by an 18-year-old woman at a busy intersection in New Brunswick, New Jersey at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. Severe chest and leg injuries. He died at the hospital 2:30 a.m. Thursday morning. Luck of the draw, huh? He was on a motorcycle. Everyone knows they'll kill you. I'm sure a lot of people aren't a bit surprised.

Well, Ed was not a typical biker, if there is such a thing. He was a motorcyclist who took his sport seriously. When I say Ed was a safe rider, I don't just mean that he wore safety gear and had safe riding habits, which he did. He was an outspoken proponent of proactive riding safety in our forum, sometimes to the detriment of his popularity with the go-fast crowd. Didn't bother him a bit. Ed's convictions showed in deeds as well as words--he trained hundreds of riders as a Motorcycle Safety Foundation rider coach. In a parallel vein, he served in the mobile ministry that is the Christian Motorcyclist Association. He left his mark.

A software engineer, husband, father of four, including three young children. A profoundly faithful Christian. I hope his family's faith will bring them some measure of peace. It's certainly brought a too-familiar outpouring of grief on the Sabmag list, as well as an oddly familiar sense of denial that this could happen, especially to Ed, no doubt one of the safest riders we know. But Ed's exposure was greater than most of ours; he was a four season all-weather rider. I don't believe he used a car much. Hundreds of thousands of miles.

Ed is the sixth known Sabmag rider to die in action in as many years. As others have pointed out, they represent a wide spectrum of experience and riding styles. The fellow who died in March of this year was probably statistically overdue. I didn't know Ed well, but enjoyed his perspective and common sense when he shared it. I did get to visit with him in the midst of the hectic Mid-Ohio events this past summer. A stand-up guy. We'll miss him. And it's definitely not fair. Godspeed, Ed.

So two guys, about as different as could be, died violent and unexpected deaths between Wednesday night and Thursday morning. I suppose there are lessons to be drawn from both. Neither fits very well with my view of the way the world should be, but I've proven to myself time and again that that view has little to do with cold fate and reality. At any rate, I hope that anyone who sees Ed's death being as predictable as I saw Dimebag's is capable of moderating their views a bit.

oh yeah, the name

2004-12-16T04:45:28Z

The nom de plume I've chosen comes from the memorable character in Kenneth Grahame's 1908 classic Wind in the Willows, which was inevitably turned into a Disney movie in the mid-20th century. Following the dictum that all great themes will be turned into theme parks, Disney duly installed amusement rides at Disneyland and Disney World commemorating Mr. Toad's motormania.

After I graduated college and followed my friends to Atlanta to seek my fortune, I bought a sleek new Japanese sports coupe, the latest thing in light weight and volumetric efficiency. It handled great, too, as I enjoyed demonstrating to my friends on our frequent trips back to Asheville via the Georgia and South Carolina highlands. The car became Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and I, naturally, was Mr. Toad. I didn't particularly care for the name then, but I've learned to recognize similarities in our personalities, especially when it comes to obsessions with mechanical objects and a sometimes less than useful singlemindedness.

Disney closed the ride at Disney World a few years ago in the face of much protest. Ironically, it was replaced by an attraction based on Disney's interpretation of another British children's classic, A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh, that had also been illustrated by the inimitable E.H. Shepard. The reasons were never made clear. Perhaps Mr. Toad's unDisneylike descent into hell frightened too many children, or maybe the Pooh story wasn't as full of ambiguity and other unreassuring complexities as the Grahame work.

At any rate, neither Eisner's nor my own Wild Ride exists today. The memories do still remain. But I haven't had a car nearly as capable of frightening either passengers or passersby since.

debut

2004-12-16T03:27:52Z

Seems like as good a time as any to make an entry and test the system. Hi folks. If I've suddenly appeared on your friend-of list, it's probably because I've been reading your posts and, well, it seems fair to let you know that. I have no idea how I'll actually be using LJ, but it's probable that it will be more of a way to keep track of what you all are doing or thinking than self-expression on my part. It usually takes something of a distracted, irritated, or otherwise negatively motivated frame of mind to prompt me to write down personal stuff, but on the other hand those seems to be states in which my mind resides of late. Other forums in which I've participated in the past hold less interest or relevance for me these days, or I feel otherwise inhibited in using them. So, who knows. I'll probably also pass along things or links of interest that I see in other places.