Today the Dallas Independent School District announced that in one school, 60 percent of its seniors will graduate.
And they think this is positive news!
With all the money poured into this system, 40 percent of the seniors failed?
What a terrible waste.
280 miles down.
Load up on good food and good friends.
280 miles back.
Gorgeous riding conditions on the night run home.
70mph *average* on the way home.
68 degrees with a 30 mph tailwind. A MAGIC Texas night…as I said to some folks when I was leaving…
“This is one of *those* kind of nights. If I survive it, there *will* be something to write about.”
I was not incorrect, but that’s another story…
One HELL of a Saturday!
I needed that.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Gotta get on the road…headed for a barbecue today.
280 miles each way.
Yeah, well, it’s a really good barbecue! (and some of the best folks you could ever hope to meet)
I’ll see you on the road!
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
We almost made the Saturday evening news this weekend.
The news as in, “(at least) Two dead, (some number) injured in major accident.”
Me, the wife, and my Dad were headed to the Old Vic Saturday morning. I was driving the wife’s car (Crunchbird, da Altima). 60 mph (the limit) on a two-lane blacktop. Moderate traffic. Clear/dry conditions.
Suddenly, directly in front of us, an oncoming car quickly crossed the center-line taking up about 3/4′s of our lane. I saw the car start over and pulled da Altima hard/violently right. It was a split-second kind of a thing. There was *zero* time to brake or do anything else at all.
No finesse. Jerk the wheel or die. There wasn’t even time to voice a warning to my passengers.
Heck, there wasn’t even time to *think* the customary, “Oh crap!” or “This is gonna hurt.” Heh heh…somehow, I feel cheated by that! Every successful action under stress should have an appropriate one-liner!
We cleared the car by the width of my side mirror. I was really surprised that we didn’t make contact near the rear of the car anyway. That close. It was so close and so fast that I never had the “cycles” to be aware of the other driver…don’t know if they were texting or what…no idea how many folks were in it…I do know it was a light colored passenger car, but I got that from the rear-view after the incident.
Now faced with minimal shoulder and lots of trees in the ditch so I immediately pulled back hard left…
Both the hard right AND the hard left were violent enough that I expected to lose control of the car (I have every confidence that with sufficient road space I would get it back), but that didn’t matter…almost anything is better than a head-on between two 60-mph cars, and this *would* have been head on. At the very least, both drivers would have been killed. Nobody would have gotten by without serious injuries. After the head-on was avoided, almost anything is better than a ditch full of trees.
I have several principles that I try to adhere to in purchasing automobiles…
1) Buy good stuff. That means, “better than basic” in handling and ride.
2) Keep good tires on the good stuff. “Good” means high wet and dry traction rating (and in Texas, high heat-shed rating).
Those principles helped. It’s a sort of, “Luck favors the prepared” kind of thing. Motorcycle riding paranoia/awareness also helps (watching the road WAY in front of you, assuming everybody is gonna try to kill you, and always try to have a “way out”).
I knew da Altima handled well…we researched before we bought it and we’ve been driving it a while now (10 years? Gad!). I’ve also driven enough other vehicles in enough conditions to know that anything with a solid rear suspension would have broken loose…even as well as it handles I was really surprised we did not.
The car slid slightly but never truly broke loose. In a couple seconds we had pulled hard right, missed the errant oncoming car, pulled back to the left, bobbled just a hair, and then we were clean and green…60mph and headed down the road.
In the mirrors the errant car made it back to their own side of the road, and the car behind us by 20 lengths or so had cleared them as well, although with MUCH less violence required. I’m really glad there was nobody close behind us…they would have been toast I expect (we would have blocked their view of the impending doom…and it really was *that close*.
I don’t think my wife (front passenger) knows just how close it was…becoming aware of the issue only when I first swerved…I think my Dad (rear passenger side) saw how close it was though…afterwards he said, “Wow!” and a moment later, “Thanks.”
It’s a weird feeling…I am a passionate and emotional man, but when things like this happen all of that “disconnects” and allows *serious* focus on the needed action. It’s a moment in a microsecond of clarity, vectors, options, actions, and reactions…
A couple minutes later I was glad to have my hands on the steering wheel though…that way nobody saw the shaking.
I hope the other driver knows just how close to killing him/her self, me, and perhaps a bunch of other folks he/she came, and perhaps learned something. I don’t know.
Keep alert folks…you just never know.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Summary:
Evil. Pure evil. Estimates are that this end-game around capitalism will suck 4.2 billion dollars a year out of the US health care system. For those of you keeping track, that’s OUR insurance premiums and taxes screaming as they are raped yet again.
And then there’s the ones that *should* get the shots, that won’t due to the cost…
Grrrr.
The big bike grumbled beneath me.
“Hey boss?” She sounded forlorn.
“Yeah babe.”
“We’re gonna be together forever, right?”
Running into the night. Reveling in the wind. Hoping to clear my mind.
Problems I can’t solve. Plans I need to execute. Obstacles making me wait.
I was never very good at waiting.
And then the world shrugged and shattered thousands of lives in a far away place, demonstrating effectively the absolutely ruthless…and compassionless nature of, well, nature that we all eventually bend to.
Closer to home, I learned of an old friend who had finally succumbed to a long illness. Point driven home.
*Bang*…my problems put right into perspective.
Yet they still won’t diminish, the toxic mix of passion, frustration, and energy swirling about in my head and demanding my focus. That shames me.
Yeah…time for another much needed ride.
I set out into an fascinating mix of hot and cold…warring weather fronts…steamy gulf air contrasting with the crispy cold of a strong winter front. The turbulent conditions outside mimicking the raging of my own thoughts.
A half-moon occasionally punches through the rampaging overcast, but it only serves to highlight the motion of the skies and does little to penetrate the night. Shadows and darkness…dangerous conditions for the body and the soul. I peer into the meager cone of visibility cast by my headlights and hope it will be enough.
Skirting the lines, pushing hard into the turbulent darkness. Guiding the big machine northwest as the southern warmth has not retreated from the onslaught of the powerful northern front yet. When it does, turning and running to the south and east…surfing the front…will save me some pain.
I call it storm surfing…and I’ve done it before…more often than seems rational in fact. Done right, in the right conditions, and it can be pure magic.
Done wrong, it can mean misery.
The conditions outsmarted me this time. When the battle was finally won it was decidedly so. The warmth did not retreat. It simply vanished.
Cold again. I turned and fled southeast. The large cold raindrops just served to punctuate my mood.
I learned long ago that it’s not from the depths of hell my demons come…they haunt me from the cold places in this world…they are stronger there than anywhere else, and tonight I delivered myself firmly into their grasp.
Again.
Perhaps it’s the challenge that drives me. After all, what does not kill me…yeah…well…what does not kill me better damn well die trying…
The witching hour…and cold to the bones. Loping along in a distance run mode rather than a sprint. Fifty miles left, maybe a little more, before I could find some warmth and maybe some food. Fifty miles. Demons or no, fifty miles I can endure.
But always there are doubts. Particularly here…in the cold and the dark.
Yeah, I had needed a ride. Trouble was…this time I wasn’t sure it worked.
Forever?
Once I would have had no question, no hesitation. A hearty, “Hell yes!” and twist of the throttle would have been my response.
But there is a cost to experience. I’ve seen the far side of my endurance too many times. Old injuries, old pain, the memories that accompany them…all return unbidden when I approach that barrier now. The dark…trying to overwhelm the light.
I can imagine the day when I’m too tired for the fight.
I never could before.
“Boss?”
“Um…yeah. Sorry babe. What?”
“You and me forever, right?”
“Sounds good to me babe. It sounds good to me.”
I didn’t like my answer.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
We are builders. We are doers. It is in our nature to alter our environment and the world around us to suite ourselves. It defines us, it drives us, it sustains us. Architecture, agriculture, industry, medicine, art. We *are*.
Then the world shrugs and man and his works fall. Make no mistake…earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, fires…no matter how great or devastating they are to us, geologically and chronologically they are mere wiggles.
It is then left to us to fight to the last ounce of strength, and if overwhelmed, merely to survive. We will build again. We will create, we will come back…for that is our nature too.
Best wishes to those in the fight today.
Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, wildfires in Texas, flooding in the northeast...lots of fight today.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Really? I mean…holy crap guys! Get it right!
Okay, yeah, a rant. Y’all might recall the salmonella tainted peanut butter that was showing up around the nation a couple years back…
It was a bunch of different brands and companies, and it turns out they were all “outsourcing” their production to different manufacturing plants and often the source of a particular batch could not be traced. Really, really incompetent, and the companies outsourcing their product somehow figured since they were not monitoring the quality of their product that they were not responsible (facepalm)
Anyway, it took years to track it down and when they did, they ended up closing a plant in west Texas that was responsible for it.
Well, maybe. The problems have never really gone away. The FDA is blaming shelf life (as in, it has a LONG shelf life so people may still have bad batch around).
But…now the problems are back. Skippy is currently recalling several different varieties of their peanut butter in various regions…the entire thing is kind of nebulous about what and where, but hey, it’s not their fault they don’t know who distributed the stuff right?
“So,” the reader might ask, “Why the rant?”
Two reasons…
First…although many people think salmonella is not a big deal, it can be flat out dangerous to the very young and older folks, as well as anybody who’s immune system is compromised for whatever reason. Peanut butter is a very good, easily digestible, and inexpensive source of calories and protein and is often consumed by these very people.
Second and most importantly...
I’ve made peanut butter. (I am also a very good cook and actually a certified food handler).
Peanut butter is a COOKED and CANNED food. The very fundamentals of making it heat it more than hot enough to kill salmonella.
Canning (or bottling) is always done at cooking temperature into sterilized jars/lids.
Just the very act of creating the stuff insures that is is NOT contaminated by salmonella. Period! Contamination in the raw ingredients won’t do it.
In order to introduce salmonella to it, they must be completely ignoring the MOST SIMPLE, VERY BASICS of food and implement handling.
The fact that this is showing up in finished product (still, again) is an indication that the fundamentals of food cooking/processing are being completely ignored!
These are big companies doing this. It is not a hard or expensive prospect to adhere to the basics…hell, you HAVE to just to produce the stuff!
The consumer is right to mistrust the corporations at the moment. Any commercial food processor should have sanitation as their absolute goal, and for this to be occurring it must not even being paid lip service.
So frustrating. It’s not just peanut butter we need to be watching.
Rant over.
Super Good food or bacteria infested nastiness? Ya pay your money and take your chances.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Technology cannot replace experience…or customer service. I shouldn’t have to say it…
It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out…
What are we producing in our business schools? Do our business leaders really believe they can create a “system” or “procedures” that can effectively operate a business with “any monkey off the street”?
Yeah, okay. So I needed an oil filler cap…for the Left-handed Fargle-snorker. Somewhere along the way, I forgot to put it back on after adding oil (an easy thing to do, you have to climb a ladder to access it!).
Now, the Left-handed Fargle-snorker is, in mundane terms, a 1981 Ford F-600. Easy enough.
The oil filler cap that fits it is one of two or three types that together, will fit pretty much any American v-8 made before 1990.
I was running errands near the house and stopped in big chain auto parts place to pick one up.
“I need an oil filler cap for a Ford truck.”
What commenced was like a train wreck. Two employees trying every possible combination of searches in the computer to try and find my truck.
“Fords only go up to an F-350.”
“Not true, your computer only goes up to an F-350.”
Arguments ensued.
Yep, a train wreck. I couldn’t look away. They brought up pictures of power steering pumps and air-filters, asking me over and over, “Does it look like this?” and “Is it a Bronco?” and, “You’re sure it’s a Ford?”
The conclusion was they didn’t have it. “If it’s not in the computer we don’t need to know about it because we don’t sell it.”
I then walked down an accessories aisle and grabbed a carded chromed one off the peg.
Said oil filler cap:
The employees were mad at me.
The bottom line is none of the people staffing the store had experience or knowledge of cars/trucks, and feel they don’t need it. Talking to them sort of indicated that all their training is in operating the computers. The store’s philosophy is to try to replace experience and knowledge with technology.
Technology has a valuable place, especially with large inventory management etc…but it cannot replace experience and knowledge.
The way it’s going I’ll walk in for a quart of oil one day and:
(15 year old kid pokes at computer) “For what kind of car?”
(me, sighing) “A 1981 F-600″
(15 year old pokes at computer) “Nah, we don’t sell that.”
(me, pointing at quart of oil) “That right there!”)
(15 year old never looking up from computer) “No, that only fits a Honda Prelude.”
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Standing in the garage…not knowing why I had gone there, the keys to The Dragon dangling from my hand.
I shrugged, mounted the big cruiser, and stuck the key in the ignition.
…and the world exploded.
Dreaming men are haunted men.
-Stephen Vincent Benet
I found myself sitting on a large sand-colored rock in the middle of the desert, idly swinging my feet. A light wind caressed my bare arms and I could smell the night air approaching. The flaming reds, oranges, and yellows of the sunset painted everything in vivid surreal hues.
I had no clue how I’d gotten here, but remained unsurprised. The last thing I could remember before the garage was drifting off to sleep beside the wife in our bed that had to be a half-a-thousand miles from here…wherever here actually was.
There were only bits of scrub brush and cactus, and a few other rocks, all surrounded by undisturbed windswept sand for as far as I could see. No sign of man reached this place. No footprints. No roar of the highway. No sound of airplanes. Man and his machines did not reign here.
Shortly I decided that I’d been here before…and that here wasn’t actually anywhere. So. A dream then.
Perhaps.
I used to look forward to them. They’ve been coming few and far between lately. Nightmares have been far more common.
Resigned, I shook my head. I used to own the night. Grimly I sat there and waited for whatever was coming. I knew quite some time passed, even though the sunset never changed.
Eventually, a gruff voice spoke beside me. “Waiting is unlike you Rider.”
I jumped. I never saw him arrive. I only became aware of him when he spoke. One minute, nothing, then suddenly he was sitting beside me on my rock and staring out into the distance with his piercing yellow eyes. His muscles rippled under his fur and stature was such that his head was easily on the same level as mine.
Ah. The white wolf, an old companion. A guardian, or guide, or the subconscious manifestation of an instinct. Perhaps even, as one young lady once put it, “The delusional construct of an immature mind.” In her world apparently, there are things you are not supposed to see, much less talk to in the daylight…or even in your dreams. She lives in a smaller world than I…or so I believed.
My attention focused on the wolf. It had been a long time since we last spoke. Too long. I had to struggle to remember his name.
“You once counselled me to patience Lucious,” I slapped the rock we were sitting on, noticing for the first time the gouges left there in the past by another of my guides. It startled me that they looked a thousand years old. I gazed directly at the massive creature, “In this very place I believe.”
I recoiled as he growled and snapped as his head spun towards me, “And YOU were wise enough to know to abide me then!” his voice softened as he turned once more to look out into the desert, “And as importantly, when not to.”
Thoroughly chastised I said nothing. I didn’t know why I was here, but felt that I should.
We sat in silence and watched the unchanging sunset.
Eventually my hand brushed the gouges in the stone and I thought of my other guardians. I have always had powerful instincts in my life. The wolf. The owl. The dragon. Teacher, wisdom, strength. Together, sheer magic. Apart…they are lost.
Suddenly I missed them with an urgent foreboding.
I looked again to the wolf. “Where are the others?”
He spoke quietly, “They have faded. You’ve accepted the mundane and left no place for them here.”
My voice strained in anguish, “That was never my intent!”
He looked again at me…through me, “Intent? No. But it’s the easy path…and the one most take. They are everywhere, those just drifting though life. No direction. No hope. No dreams.”
“I have dreams!” I protested.
“That you do, Rider, but you must continue to act on them or they are naught but dust. You have lost your way, and it is a hard path to stay on. You know not how far you’ve strayed. Even I am not fully manifested any longer.”
I stared sharply at him. He was my scout…my teacher…that spark that tickles the wanderer’s soul. Not all here? What was missing? What was left?
With a shock I knew. The Lone Wolf. That was all that remained.. The burning drive without the direction. The intense experience without the lessons. The horrendous cost…without the pleasure.
Death, when first there was no life.
I’ve seen those people. I know their eyes.
I reached up to stroke his shoulder and mumbled, “That’s no way to live.”
My hand passed right through him as he faded to nothing. On the winds I heard his faint reply, “It’s your choice Rider.”
My choice.
Mine.
I have the dreams. I know the path. It’s just hard work to get there…and harder work to remember where there is. There are things that I have to change. There are efforts to abandon, and others I must redouble. Influences to embrace, and others to avoid.
I have work to do.
I looked around at my rock in the desert, resolving that I would pass this way again very soon…and that ALL my guardians would be here then.
Mine.
I snapped my fingers and my motorcycle appeared, the big machine gleaming in the sunset. Somehow I mounted her without disturbing the sand.
I found the keys dangling from my hand, and reached down and stuck the key in the ignition.
…and the world exploded.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
