"Suddenly You Were Gone...."

"....from all the lives you left your mark upon...." - Rush "Afterimage"

How bizarre is it to have a bunch of friends you've never really met?

I have been a member of the Bicycling Magazine Love forum/cult/clique/dysfunctional family for seven years now. Forum members have come and gone over the years (in some cases their leaving was a GOOD thing....) but there's a core group that, through our exchanges of postings, dirty jokes, emails and sniper fire, we have come to know each other fairly well.

The postings are all pretty short, many of them inane, crass and/or in questionable taste, yet from them, we seem to have come to know each other pretty well. It's like a bizarre little family.

Still, it just seems so odd to me that, when someone on the forum celebrates a milestone, or loses a pet or a loved one ,that everyone can actually care about someone they never met.

Some time ago, one of our forum members posted about going through a divorce - and he was taking it very badly. The outpouring of support was incredible. The post went on for pages and pages. Poster after posted offered advice, and support: "...don't give up, it WILL get better....".

Sadly, he didn't seem to listen. He told us he was going away from the board for a while and asked the moderator to remove the post.

He basically just shut down.

Next thing we heard was that he was killed in a head on car crash with a semi.

Folks on the board were just devastated.

Poof! Just like that, one of the biggest goofballs on the board was gone. The guy who was famous for his gaudy shades and his love of anything yellow was no more. No more would I wake up early here on the East coast, only to find that 007Webgod on the West coast had already filled the entire first page of the forum with nonsense posts like "There's a Donut On The Counter - Should I Eat It?" Time after time, I took some good-natured potshots at him and he took it with grace and aplomb, not getting upset, just dishing it back.

This was probably a month or so ago, yet it still upsets me.

So now I have a little yellow tape on my bikes, eat blueberry Clif bars and think about him often when I ride...

...all for a guy I never met.

I hear the echoes

I learned your love for life,

I feel the way that you would

I feel your presence

I remember

I feel the way you would

I feel the way you would

I feel, I feel the way you would

This just can't be understood

Tried to believe but you know it's no good

This is something that just can't be understood

Godspeed, Webby....and wherever you are, may it be nothing but sunshine, tailwinds, downhills and old, lazy, toothless dogs.

I Said Goodbye to an Old Friend Today.

I know I "threatened" to sell it last year, but this spring I actually wrote the ad and put it in the Swap Sheet.

The phone has been ringing off the hook, so the odds are very good that it will be sold shortly. I have a very interested buyer coming to look at it tonight.

Granted, it's a Honda GoldWing and they're pretty much bulletproof, but it IS still a 21 year old bike. The luster has worn off; it needs some TLC, and some money thrown at it. 68,000 miles is not a lot for a GoldWing, but she's not what she once was. (But then, neither am I). Some of the aluminum is pitted, the paint is faded, it needs mufflers and tires (to about the tune of  $1000). I don't use it much anymore - not like I used to- and it's become one more thing that adds to my "to do" list: Oil changes,  tune-ups, winterization, registration, insurance.... The amount I use it these days just doesn't justify the headaches.

I am probably the LAST person on the planet who attaches any degree of sentimentality to an inanimate object and, in my little world, if something doesn't get used and/or becomes more headache than it's worth, it gets the heave-ho. No muss, no fuss.

So why do I feel like shit about it?

I feel like I'm turning my back on an old friend or that I'm selling off a huge chunk of my life and part of myself - all for 30 pieces of silver.

That bike has seen me through about 15 states, a couple provinces of Canada, 20+ years of Americade rallies, club rides and 54,000 miles. Wind, sun, rain and even a little snow. It never let me down.

More importantly, though,  it was my escape pod through some of the toughest years of my life. Mile after mile passed under those Dunlop Elite tires as I rode, often  just to ride, just to be in motion. The further my personal life went down the toilet, the more I rode.  I'm not sure if I was running away from something or running toward something, but I lived by these words:

"See it used to be I was really free 

I didn't need no gasoline to run

'fore you could say "Jack Keroac"

You'd turn your back and I'd be gone

But nowadays I got me two good wheels

and I seek refuge in aluminum and steel

Ah it takes me out there for just a little while

and the years fall away with every mile.

I'm back out on that road again

Turn this beast into the wind...."

(Steve Earle - "The Other Kind")

My bike was my companion at the absolute lowest point: I was riding home from work and was caught in a thunderstorm. The storm was so close, you could smell the ozone from the lightning strikes. For a few moments, I panicked  - "I'm going to DIE"- I thought. Then a strange calm came over me as I realized I didn't care. The bike got me through that, too.

When things began to take a turn for the better, the bike figured prominently in that too. I rode a lot, but this time, not alone. 

Life still revolved around the bike: rallies, group rides and just general enjoyment of the bike, the scenery, the motion and, now, the company.

So what happened?

A lot of things, not the least of which was that for the first time in 20-s0me-odd years of motorcycling, I hit the pavement. A stupid little accident - I hit a basketball rolling across the road - no real damage to me or the bike. My confidence was the biggest casualty. Prior to that, I rode with joyous (not stupid) abandon. I had several people tell me that they "had no idea you could do that on one of those". The bike and I were one and we rode for the sheer joy of flaunting the laws of physics.

No more. 

All the joy had been sucked out of riding. My bike and I were now uneasy companions, neither one trusting the other - like two dancers who don't know each others moves anymore. 

My whole life had revolved around riding. Riding was all that really mattered. Vacations were planned around rallies, my friends were other bikers. Winter was an excruciatingly long interval of ride deprivation and after that first ride of spring, it took two weeks to wipe the grin off my face. Riding a motorcycle wasn't just something I did, it was a huge chunk of who I was. I was a biker - not just because I owned a bike - but because I "lived to ride and rode to live".

In the years since, I've ridden progressively less and less, either making excuses or just not having the time. There's still a big part of me that's proud to be called "biker", because I put in the miles and earned the label (not just because I dressed like an extra from a Brando flick or have the requisite tattoo, chrome and flames). 

Part of me hopes that the bike won't sell. Part of me is looking at another, newer bike.

....to be continued....?

Dell Continues To Elude Us...

…or is that “delude”?

Despite hours of research and reams of data uncovered, we’re no closer to knowing what happened to Dell than we were when I first wrote this.

All the other players in our little drama have been largely accounted for, their lives spelled out in official documents and newspaper articles.

William C Powers finally settled down and married Callista O’Dell, living first in New York City, then spending the remainder of his days in Syracuse NY. Settling down was no small feat for Will. Will had, what is known today euphemistically as “a zipper problem”. Many  details of this have come to light – the newspapers then, as now, seemed to delight in the foibles of the wealthy. He was successfully sued by Sadie Eakins in London for breach of promise. It seems he'd asked her to marry him and bought her an engagement ring and everything. The only fly in the ointment was that he was still married to Dell. He was later sued by another woman for the same reason.... while he was in Japan, living with yet another woman. That's on top of Rose Phelps who he disappeared with earlier, while married to Dell.  William died in Syracuse in 1935.

Daniel D Powers was living in Colesville NY in July of 1896 with Dell’s newly discovered relatives when she wrote the letter to her cousin that touched off this whole “investigation”. Ten years later, he turns up living in NYC, boarding with someone we believe to be a family friend. We suspect that he was going to college, but have, as yet, been unable to verify that. After that, he listed his address with William and Callista,in Syracuse but was only there sporadically. He worked for a time as a draftsman at “the auto works” in Syracuse NY (possibly Franklin).  He continued his nomadic lifestyle, taking work as an engineer in a power plant in Watertown NY, (where he lived with his cousin Fred) a paper mill in Oswego NY, a paper mill in India, and Shanghai China. When his father died, his stepmother moved back to Watertown (where her family roots were). He went with her. He eventually retired to Culpeper VA, living at the Lord Culpeper Hotel for a time before buying his first and only home in Culpeper. When his health took a turn for the worse, he sold his house and ended up at the Hill Haven nursing home in DeWitt NY, near his cousin Fred, who presumably looked after him during the last year of his life. He died a bachelor November 4 1971.

Dell’s mother Sarah Pratt and her father William A Morgan continue to be a bit of a mystery. We believe Sarah’s first husband E Orlo Reed went West for the gold rush and “forgot” to come back, eventually remarrying. When William Morgan came into the picture, and whether he actually married Sarah remains unsure. We do have a census entry from 1865, showing William, Sarah and Dell living in Colesville. The census lists William’s birthplace as Schoharie County NY and we found a very likely candidate in the 1860 census listing for a “William Morgan” of the right age, in Richmondville NY. What’s extremely curious about the 1865 census entry is that Sarah lists “marriage” and “children” as “one” each, completely overlooking her marriage to Orlo AND her other child - Dell’s stepbrother Henry (who was living with Sarah’s parents at the time). Very shortly after Sarah’s death, William took Dell and moved on, despite making a good living as a “farmer and sawyer”. Given that Sarah’s father “neglected” to include either Dell's birth OR William and Sarah's marriage in the family Bible records, it’s quite possible there was bad blood there. 

Dell herself continues to remain a cipher. Her last confirmed whereabouts was the Morello Hotel in NYC from where she wrote to her cousin in Colesville. In that letter, she stated that she would be coming “home” (her choice of words) for the 4^th of July and then would be going on a trip to “England and then Buenos Aires”. 

Then she disappears.

The only further clue is that in August of 1900, she or someone, sold the eight grave plots she had purchased in 1895  in the Mount Hope cemetery in Rochester NY.

Somewhere, between July of 1896 and August of 1900, something of great importance happened. Try though we may, we still don’t know what that was. The only reason you sell a grave plot is because you don’t need it. This means either you’ve died and are buried elsewhere or no longer wish to be buried there – you have other plans.

I can’t help feeling that the little smirk on her face in this picture is at least in part, directed towards those of us on the trail of what happened to her. I have a feeling she’s taking great delight in all this.

....It USED To Be A Fun Place To Work...

In twenty years at one place I've seen a lot of changes, I've seen a lot of people come and go, and I've watched it slip from a place I cared about to a place I'm ambivalent about, at best.

When I first started there, the boss was probably the biggest asshole I have ever worked for. Not only did he run the place with an iron hand, he was the biggest perfectionist/nitpicker I have ever known. No matter how well you did something, he always managed to find fault with it. If he couldn't find fault, he just said nothing. No "good job/nice work", not even a "thanks". Worst came to worst, he could always tell you you did it too slowly.

He was a very prickly person and a bit of a loose cannon. He thought nothing of telling the company president that something was stupid, even if it was the CEO's pet project. He also was known for being merciless on someone he perceived as "weak". (He "rode" one of the guys to the point where one of the other guys went home and told his wife "Y'know, if John kills Andy, I'm going to have to testify in his defense...") I know at least three guys who quit because of him and another who actually picked him up by the throat....

BUT, he wasn't one of those people who couldn't walk the walk - he's probably THE best toolmaker I've ever worked with. If he said he could do something better/faster, chances are he probably could. You've got to at least respect that. He also pushed me to do the best work I've ever done.

Then, they screwed him over on a couple of raises, and he began realize that being such a taskmaster wasn't getting him anywhere and he started to mellow. We also learned how to "handle" him. I made a pretty profound discovery one day when he was chewing my ass for screwing something up: he said: "...WHY DID YOU DO THIS????"(Like I did it on purpose). In exasperation, I said: "TO PISS YOU OFF!" He stopped, said, "...yeah, you probably did..." and walked away. I stopped him in mid-bitch! After that, I realized if you just let him rant and acted like you didn't give a shit, he backed off and left you alone. Apparently if he couldn't make you cower or fight back, it was no fun.

We had a really good crew of six in the shop. Everyone worked well together and we had FUN. It was the biggest crew of ballbusters I have ever worked with, but it was all in fun. (Recently, my son's girlfriend's brother worked in a department just outside mine and he asked one of the other guys in his department "What do they do in there?" The response was "Oh, don't go in there - they'll make you cry!")

I have never seen pranks taken to the level of finesse they were with this crew:

One of the guys was known to eat sardines. My buddy George waited until he (Stanley) threw his sardine can in the trash and then went and got it and stashed it in the boss's office. Guess who got blamed? He did that once or twice, and then, realizing it would be obvious someone was trying to get Stanley blamed if he did it again, took the can out of the trash and set it on the floor in front of the garbage and said "Watch this...." Sure enough, the boss came in, saw the can on the floor and started yelling at Stanley "Can't you even put this thing in the trash????"

Stanley took an air cylinder, submerged it underwater and pulled the piston back (like a hypodermic), then hooked it to the supply cabinet door. His only miscalculation came because he's taller than me - when I opened the door, the water shot harmlessly over my shoulder.

There were multi-part, reciprocal pranks too: Stanley had a plastic gallon jug of pennies on his bench. George had a box under his bench for his empty soda cans. Stanley used to put his cans in there, too, but he'd leave a little soda in the cans, to make a sticky mess in the box. George caught on and took to waiting until Stanley wasn't around, then going and dumping the little bit of soda in Stanley's pennies. (I also "donated" some leftover epoxy to the penny jug). I almost pissed myself the day I walked in and saw Stanley pounding a basketball-sized chunk of pennies on the floor, trying to break them up....

The maddest I ever saw the boss was the day they took the pins out of the hinges on the supply cabinet door. He went to open the door, it fell off and hit him in the head. He took the door, threw it in the corner, put his coat on and went home.

I came close - one time the boss had an ad for a machinery auction on his desk, that he'd torn out of the newspaper. I "replaced" it with a section torn out of the gay personal ads in the Syracuse New Times. I'm glad I wasn't in the room when he found it - I wouldn't have been able to keep a straight face. They said he came storming out of his office, threw the ad, stomped back in the office, came storming out, picked it up and threw it again and stomped back in his office.

I also had him pretty worked up when he had a cassette player in his office - he had some sort of financial seminar on tape he was listening to and I switched it with some Ronald McDonald cassette my kid got in a Happy Meal.

Sticking stuff on people's coats was the rage for a while. Take a chunk of the cotton wadding our cores come packed in, a bent paper clip to make an "s" hook and some tape and you have a very nice little bunny tail to hang on someone's belt loop. I also know "somehow" that if you do a little judicious Xacto knife surgery on the lettering on the side of a box of Butter Lover's microwave popcorn, you can make a big, bright, yellow sign that says "Butt Lover". I also "heard" that ideal time to place this on someone's coat is lunchtime on Thursday - that way everyone waiting at the time clock to punch out AND THE PEOPLE AT THE BANK, get to appreciate your handiwork.

"Buttercup" made the mistake of leaving his umbrella in the shop unattended. Stanley tied tampons all around the perimeter and tucked them in.  Didn't get to see it, but it must have looked like one of those Mexican hats, when he opened it....

One of the guys was never without a toothpick in his mouth, so "someone" took several of them from his box, ran them through a jalapeno a few times and put them back in the box.....

Greasing machine handles got passe so I elaborated a bit: grease one handle, and then remove all the rags in the vincinity except one.... and grease the hell out of the rag.

Got a bag (lunch, whatever) you're taking home? Don't leave it out, or someone will "add" something to it, preferably something you'll need and have to lug BACK in....

And so on.... 

This kind of stuff was constant, but never mean, never destructive. Always fun.

So what happened?.....

A few whiners, and a whole lot of Kool - Aid drinkers.  That's all it took. 

Used to be, if you got pranked, you didn't whine about it, you just got revenge. If you weren't sure who did it, you just took the shotgun approach and got them all.  All it took was one person, who whined to HR when he took some guff, whined to the company president that he was being picked on.  Now the games took on a nastier edge.

All it took was a few people to drink the corporate Kool Aid, to believe the Corporate Bullshit being handed out in quarterly meetings, which were more and more straight out of Dilbert every time. 

Game over. 

Y'know, This Stands All On It's Own.....

The Midlife Crisis Continues......

As I chew through what I want to be when I grow up, the question I've naturally asked myself is "What's important to you?"

(Hey! Maybe someday, I can write a book to share my job/life change adventure - I can call it "Who Sabotaged My Parachute?")

Anyway, before I digressed - awright, who's the wiseass who just said "you can cross "writer" off your list "???? - I was attempting to explain how I came to the conclusions I have reached so far.

First and foremost, I decided that, while money was an obvious concern, it is definitely secondary. Number one has to be "doing something you like". Drinking beer while web-surfing probably isn't a career option, so I've thought about other things that might actually pay the bills.

Much to my surprise, when I took my part-time, seasonal job in the bike shop, I found out I like working with people. I actually LIKE retail - even the occasional customer who makes you weigh the drawbacks of a sentence for manslaughter vs. putting up with them for one more minute... I realized that what I liked about it was sharing my enthusiasm for cycling and helping people. I actually enjoyed sharing my knowledge (limited, though it may be....)

Fast forward.

I'm pretty sure no one here remembers way back to January of last year, but I actually decided to try working with a personal trainer. That was the start of my journey into the world of fitness ("fatness?"). The more I looked into it, the more fascinated I became with it. The more I read and learned, the more I realized that there are probably at least six other people out there, like me, who would like the same information. I very seriously considered becoming a personal trainer myself. I hesitated, because I thought I needed to get my own house in order before I started telling other people what they should or shouldn't be doing. I figured I'd have to do that first, before I could even think about learning the nuts and bolts of personal training. Then, the other day, I had a bit of an epiphany: As I go through the process myself I AM learning. Who better to help people figure out what works for a middle-aged person -who wants to get in shape, but has to juggle a career, a family and other responsibilities- than a middle-aged person who wants to get in shape, but has to juggle a career, a family and other responsibilities? I can honestly say "Dude, I've been there, done that....". I know what it's like.

So, to that end, I just started the educational process to become a personal trainer. No, I don't expect to get rich at it, - I don't even see me doing it anything more than on-the-side but it's a step in the right direction. Let's see where it leads. With the economy circling the drain, it'd be pretty stupid to bail on my day job, but I can at least lay the groundwork for the day when I can Johnny Paycheck my boss.........


(I just got this cool plug-in that inserts what I'm listening to as I type this drivel, so now you can get an even better idea of what shitty taste I have in music...) This post was brought to you by:
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Mark Knopfler - Speedway at Nazareth
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Low And Sweet Orchestra - Pencils and Shades
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Dio - Rainbow In The Dark
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Los Lobos - Will The Wolf Survive
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Kaiser Chiefs - I Predict a Riot
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Finger Eleven - One Thing
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John Mellencamp - Void in My Heart
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Dropkick Murphys - Worker's Song
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Matchbox Twenty - 3 A.M.
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Motörhead - Ace of Spades
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Diesel - Sausalito Summernight


(This post was also brought to you by Monkeyrider who actually gave me feedback on this blog - via the untraditional method of the telephone.... So go buy a book from him.)

Are they "Antiques", "Old Junk" or "Grave Robbing" Spoils?

I spent some time in an antique shop yesterday. (Wasn't my idea).

I already have a shitty attitude about such places - some time ago, someone broke into my camp and stole a whole bunch of "antiques". This has left me with the bad attitude that all antique dealers are fences in stolen merchandise. Not true, I know, but no one and I mean no one, can carry a grudge as well as I. (And, truth be told, had I found any of my stuff in there, there would have been violence...).

As I wandered about, looking at the "stuff", aside from my initial reaction that it was just a bunch of junk, I eventually came to the realization that, at one time or another, all of that stuff belonged to someone. Now it was just something to be sold for a profit, with no regard for the previous owner(s).

At least in museums the items are displayed with a degree of reverence. This was all just strewn about, with little-to-no respect.

Since I make my living with tools, I was particularly moved by the tools they had there. I realized that a great many of those items were in someones hands, every day - through good times and bad, just like mine. I wondered about the fingerprints - both figurative and literal- that were left on those items.

Saddest of all, I think, were the photos and portraits, with no names. Since I do a bit of genealogy, I wondered if someone, somewhere wouldn't be delighted to have those pictures... if only they knew they existed. I was almost overcome with the urge to spend the rest of my life researching those pictures and reuniting them with someone who they really meant something to. I looked at the faces and wondered "Who were you"?"What were you like"? "What are your stories?" A most appropriate Eric Bogen (or Dropkick Murphys, if you prefer) lyric came to mind as I looked at the pictures:

"....Or are you a stranger without even a name

forever enshrined behind some old glass pane,

in an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained

and faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?"

Yeah there were a lot of items that the previous owners would have gotten a chuckle out of seeing sold for outrageous prices and, yeah some of it was just kitschy junk that no one cared about. There were even items that I remembered from my childhood and thought "That's considered antique? But.....but.... I remember those!" Most, though, were pieces of people's lives, cast off and priced to sell.

I left there, still angry at antique dealers in general, but sobered by the realization that we don't really own anything, ashamed at the vulture-like aspect of the antique business and saddened by how much has been lost.

Needless to say, I wasn't exactly a ray of sunshine for the rest of the day.....