Monthly Archives: June 2010

Stupid Is What Stupid Does

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Can you spell o-u-c-h or b-u-r-n with permanent leg damage? Not to mention broken ankle territory? The sneakered foot of the passenger was this guy’s daughter. (Great example Dad set for daughter, huh?) Pic was taken yesterday of someone on a motorcycle ride with which I was involved.

This manner of dress on a motorcycle: How sad, how very silly. Dumb. Stupid.

Okay, catharsis over. Check back tomorrow for more regular stuff.

Life is short, ankles and legs are burnable and not expendable: WEAR LONG PANTS AND BOOTS!

Did You Ever Want to be a Cop?

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Many little boys, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, say, “a firefighter” or “a police officer.” These professions are admired for the honorable and hard work that they do. They get into tough situations, save lives and property, and do honest public service for pay that often is not commensurate with the challenges of their high-risk profession. They rise to a higher calling to care for others and protect public safety. They put up with a lot of crap from the public who think only about themselves, not for others’ safety, or don’t think anything bad, like a home fire, could ever happen to them.

As I was growing up and considering my options, I moved toward education with a focus on public safety. That’s what I do. That’s what I know. That is where I have been trained, and have assumed various leadership positions to pass on skills and knowledge to others to help them be better at what they do.

Why not be a cop? Well, for one, when in high school and college, I was still a very klutzy, non-athletic kid. To this day, I still trip over shadows and non-existent obstacles. Some of the guys I knew who entered respective police or fire academies were naturally athletic. That left me out. I honestly didn’t think I could pass the physical tests that new recruits had to go through. (I watched a cousin go through his physical tests for the police academy, and even though he was “Mr. Jock” in high school, he still had trouble with those tests.)

My high school friends who entered law enforcement had a respect and an interest in guns. I didn’t. I still don’t. They each had to demonstrate that, if in the appropriate and justified circumstances, they could shoot someone. I just don’t think I ever could point a weapon at another human being (or an animal, for that matter) and intentionally hurt them. Does that mean that if someone were coming after me with intent to do harm that I would roll over and let them? Of course not; I would defend myself as best I could. However, I never want to be in such a situation so I did not consider entering a profession that would require carrying and perhaps using a gun.

In my civic life, I work with a lot of law enforcement officers. Most of my work is in meetings, on topics like reducing the lure of gangs, preventing “tagging” (graffiti), and making our community a safe and secure place to live, raise families, and enjoy life. I don’t ride with motorcops daily, though I have had a number of times when I have been escorted on motorcycle rides by working motorcops looking after our safety.

I respect the law enforcement and firefighting profession tremendously, and do my part to ensure that law enforcement officers and firefighters earn the respect they deserve for the hard work that they do. From providing affordable housing, to advocating for pay and benefits, to helping to educate my neighbors and elected officials about hazards and how to be safe.

Some people have asked me, “you seem to like uniforms, so why wouldn’t you be a cop?” My response has been what I explained above. Plus, having spoken with a lot of law enforcement officers over the years, their “real jobs” are nothing like what television shows make them out to be. A lot of their time is boring… waiting… and hoping actually that they don’t get a call. To them, each call may mean trouble, and they would prefer that trouble not happen in the first place.

So that’s why I have spent most of my career in prevention and education. Let’s make that trouble “not happen.”

In summary, I have deep respect for firefighters and law enforcement officers, and play my part to help prevent trouble as well as support what they do. We work together in our community. I appreciate that. But did I ever want to be a cop? … well, probably when I was a youngster, I might have said that I did. When I grew up, I found my calling was elsewhere.

Life is short: support public servants!

Posted in Job

Got No Time

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Have you ever had those times when a song gets in your head and it keeps “playing”? Lately, the tune “No Time” by The Guess Who, which was released in 1969, keeps repeating. (BTW, one of my friends explained to me that “hearing a tune” and not being able to shake it is called an “ear worm.” Yuck… sounds like a creepy Star Trek episode… but I digress.)

The title of this song, “No Time,” is applicable to my life right now. You’d think since I’m not working at a regular job, I would have all the time in the world. Ain’t the case.

Somehow I signed myself up to help with two motorcycle rides each on Saturday and Sunday. I don’t know why I let that happen. I should know better. My partner whines about all the chores to do around the house and my absences for an activity that he can’t join me to do. I had to back out of one of these rides. I hate making a commitment and then not being able to carry it out. But if I were gone on both Saturday and Sunday, my partner would “not be pleased.” (Ummm… been there, done that… it’s not pretty.)

Further, I have picked up some contracts to do some work for some agencies and companies, which is great, because I can do this work from home and make some money on the side. However, all these contracts are on short fuses, meaning the deadlines are quick and require almost instantaneous response throughout the day.

My dear 95-year-old aunt is not doing well at all, so I am spending a LOT of time at her place helping out. Even though her son has been here this week (he left yesterday), I am still spending time with him to care for my aunt and help guide decisions for her comfort.

I am serving as webmaster for two contested local political campaigns, and each of my candidates have frequent requests to update their respective websites, send blast email messages, and so forth. It is not difficult work, but … it requires time.

Further, I made a dumb mistake. I have a very close friend who lives in Oklahoma whose husband died recently. She had bought her husband an extensive set of cast metal model vehicles over the years. She now needs money so she can move into an assisted living center. I offered (before she asked) to sell the models for her on eBay. She sent them to me … all 192 of them! OMG! I had no idea it was that many! I have to take several pics of each one, then prepare listings for auction, manage the auctions, ship the items… arrrgggh! How do I get myself into these messes, Ollie? (And it was another “not pleased” moment when my partner saw the volume of boxes that arrived. “Where are we going to put all that?” he ululated! [BTW, the verb “ululate” clearly applies in this specific instance].)

… then there’s this extensive “honey-do” list at home. These are all things that need to be done, and require time, work, and effort. I won’t bore you with the list, but it’s a lot.

So, I got no time…
… to ride
… to create videos or update my website
… hardly even to blog.

Wish me peace.

Life is short: too damn short sometimes.

Wesco Boots With Nowhere to Ride

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I pulled on a pair of lightweight leather jeans yesterday morning, and thought my good ol’ Wesco harness boots would be good for the motorcycle ride planned for the day. I tucked the ends of the leather jeans into my socks, pulled my socks up nice and tight, then pulled the boots on and “ta-da”, there I was, all Mr. Biker. (I’m not showing the rest of me ’cause it’s only a Harley t-shirt, a dime-a-dozen in my drawers).

I learned that with this particular pair of Wesco boots that I need to wear thin, not thick, socks. That way, my feet don’t get hot.

… then after making my partner’s lunch and kissing him goodbye as he set off for work, I turned on my computer and checked the weather. Drat — strong storms predicted. No ride today.

But I kept the leather and boots on. A guy at the grocery store asked me tons of questions about the boots. Okay, happy to answer! He was very impressed with the boots, to say the least. I think I met another Bootman-in-training! LOL!

Life is short: wear boots!

Getting Reacquainted with an Old Pair of Dehners

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Dehner Motorcycle Patrol Boots, called “Dehners” for short, are well-known and highly admired by many. Lots of motor officers around the country wear these boots. While there remains controversy in their price (about the highest of all patrol boots), and the composition of stock boot “Dehcord” plastic shafts is also causes many discussions, there’s nothing like the appearance and the feel of these boots on your legs.

The boots shown here are an old pair of all-leather Dehner Boots with Vibram big lug soles on them. They are “traditional” boots, with a bal-laced instep. I have had them for well over 15 years. They were getting tight on the calves, though, so I had to either fix them to fit me again, or not wear them any more. I didn’t want to give up a pair of boots like this, so I got out my boot stretcher. Over the past month, I slowly stretched the calf of both boots, and now they fit great again! Woo-hoo!

I spent some time shining them up with good quality boot polish and slow, steady strokes with a fine brush. The foot shows a little wear where my shifter of my old Harley rubbed against it, but to me (and some cops I know), that’s a sign of well-worn boots.

I’ll be riding my Harley with them on again in leather or breeches. Nothin’ like a good lug sole when riding the bike… great traction.

I was dressed in a pair of leather jeans tucked inside these boots with a sleeveless leather shirt when my partner got home from work last night. He thought the boots looked great and complimented me on being able to wear them again. He thought, though, that the full leather gear was a bit much. Even though it wasn’t all that warm, I did get a bit sweaty during my “greeting.” (LOL!) The smell of leather & sweat added something to what became a spontaneous sharing of tenderness and intimacy.

Whew… gotta find some more “old” boots and get them all shined and in good shape for more such “encounters.”

Life is short: wear boots!

The Trials of Replacing the Home Office Computer

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The “honey-do” list at home has expanded beyond belief. I spent much of yesterday morning planning home repairs. My partner was off work and he helped a lot. We spent much of the time acquiring materials from various building supplies retailers. Then it got so hot and oppressively humid, we retreated to the basement to keep cool.

I finally admitted to myself that my 8-year-old Gateway desktop computer had seen better days, when it took me better than an hour to get that thing working yesterday. I also have a laptop, from which I am writing. The Gateway performed well, but has become so slow and bogged down, and uses outdated software no longer supported that my partner offered to go “half-sies” with me on buying a replacement.

Man, it used to be fun to shop around for a computer, but nowadays, the systems are so complex and the options are so many from which to choose, it’s mind-boggling. I think I figured it out… and then spent about an hour hunting for coupons and other money-saving options. I was able to save about $100 by finding those coupons, so it was worth the effort, though exhausting.

Ahhh… the good old days before the internet, and using MS-DOS, … not like today when computers at home run so much background stuff that you have to find and turn off. Just give me the good old > prompt, and I’ll be happy. Um, I guess, until I need the internet LOL!

Wow, just to think, I wrote a whole doctoral dissertation on what I thought was a lightning-fast machine that had a 12mhz processor and a 1200 baud modem using WordPerfect 4.0. Man, I’m dating myself, aren’t I? I still can’t stand MS-Word, which is such a burden to use and to format documents correctly without it automatically changing fonts on you every two lines. Oh well, “progress” so-to-speak. The progress makes things much slower, in my book.

Life is short: fix things.

Live Free and Ride!

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Yesterday, I was involved with a charity fundraiser for the families of law enforcement officers who were killed in the line of duty. I led the pack, riding wing to the overall civilian event organizer. The wing position is second, to the right of the lead rider, who is on my left. (To make this very clear: I am not a sworn police officer. I was the lead Road Captain for a group of riders who belong to the same organized motorcycle rider’s group as I do. There was another man who was the overall event organizer for the supporters of this charitable fundraising event.)

What you see above is my view of the motor officers who escorted our ride. They ride ahead to stop traffic at intersections so the entire ride can ride through without stopping, and also to watch for our safety.

What you see to the left was my occasional view as an officer who had stopped traffic for us let the group ride past, then he rode past us on our left to catch up to the group of officers escorting us. So every now and then, we would hear a “whoop whoop” of a siren, and then see a motor officer whiz past us. Nice sight!

What you see below was a “behind me” view of what it looked like in my rear-view mirror. Pretty cool! I enjoy leading the pack, especially for a good cause.

For views of the some of the patrol boots that I saw, see last night’s post.

Life is short: live free and ride!

Yahoo Email Cut-Off

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For about the past eight weeks or so, I have been receiving spam only from Yahoo email accounts from people I know from the Boot world. They have put my email address in their respective address books on their Yahoo email. Then some hacker or spammer grabs the list by penetrating some vulnerability unique to Yahoo, and sends links that if clicked on, could introduce a virus, spyware, or other nefarious stuff.

I’ve had enough of that. It only seems to be associated with Yahoo email addresses from men in the Boot World, and nowhere else. Thus, I have blocked all email from Yahoo accounts except for just two email addresses from close friends (including my eighth brother). If you have a Yahoo account and try to send me email, don’t be surprised if it bounces back saying “recipient has blocked this email address.” Sorry, but this situation has gotten to be more serious and persistent, and I don’t have time to clean that crap up every morning.

I strongly urge Yahoo email users to abandon Yahoo and migrate to gmail, which has much stronger hacker resistance and anti-spam features. The email of old, on Yahoo, Hotmail, Lycos, Excite, and a few others, is not being maintained to prevent spammers from doing bad things. If you won’t give up your Yahoo email, at least change your password to a very difficult one that includes numbers, capital and lower-case letters, and special characters. Then run a complete spyware scan and virus scan of your computer. Yahoo email sucks, and if you won’t give it up, then in order to communicate with me, you’ll have to use my on-line “Write to me” page.

Life is short: advance with the times to a decent free on-line email service like gmail.

Good To Be Back Home

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All this past week, I was teaching at a federal government facility north of me. The students were great, the bureaucracy was typical, the paranoia was normal, the food was awful, the bed was lousy, but… it was good to be back teaching at this national facility again. Who knows, I may return. Keep my cred up.

I arrived home in the early afternoon. I grilled some steaks and caught up with my partner on our lives over dinner on our deck. It was peaceful, calm, and quiet: just the way we like it.

Last night, I curled up with my partner on the couch, snuggled close in his arms, and “tuned out.” We listened to some soft instrumentals, while getting reacquainted. Before I knew it, I was sound asleep with my head against his chest. He only woke me because his arm was falling asleep! LOL!

Life is short: cherish home.