Excellent Adventure Number-Three

BAM!

The so-called “old guy” with the dreaded and utterly reprehensible Nikon D100 with flash.

So here we are walking the dog this afternoon (Thursday, January 31, 2008) at the so-called elitist country-club.
I start out, walking about three-fourths of the route with the dog, so that cancer-lady isn’t walking him that much. I used to walk the entire route.
After three-fourths cancer-lady takes over to finish the walk. —About two years ago it was the other way around.
We start down the long hill that bottoms out across a gully, and suddenly KA-BOOM; Killian has seen a critter of some sort.
Our fancy-dan retractable leash (pictured), which is about 4-5 years old, can’t take it any more. The cord breaks, and Killian is loose, running down the hill.
Uh-ohhhhh; ISP ALERT! Or it was our toothpaste.
Killian runs into the woods, dragging his leash-cord merrily behind him.
“I’m Loose! Yippee! FINALLY! You can call all you want, but I’m a hunter, and I ain’t comin’ back.”
Killian disappears into the woods — completely out of site.
Ten years old, but still able to break the leash.
We start calling. Probably another fevered search all around the park.
We continue up the other side of the gully, and up the road toward the parking-lot. No sign of the dog at all.
I turn around, looking through the woods, and here comes the dog, cantering up behind us.
“Well, lookity who,” I say; “a dog that doesn’t wanna be abandoned in these woods.”

RE: “Old guy with the dreaded and utterly reprehensible Nikon D100.......” —My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston, who is 13 years younger than me, calls me “the old guy” as a put-down (I also am the oldest). I also am loudly excoriated by all my siblings for preferring a professional camera (like the Nikon D100) instead of point-and-shoot. This is because I long ago sold photos to nationally published magazines.

Our dog is “Killian;” a rescue Irish-Setter. We don’t know his exact birthday.

“The so-called elitist country-club” is nearby Boughton (“BOW-tin”) Park, where we walk our dog. It was called that long ago by an editor at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, where I once worked, because it will only allow taxpayers of the three towns that own it to use it. We are residents of one of those towns.

My wife is “Linda.” She has lymphatic cancer. It’s treatable— she will survive.

RE: “About two years ago it was the other way around......” —Two years ago I was experiencing dizzy-spells, but am not any more. They’re why I retired.

RE: “ISP ALERT! Or it was our toothpaste.” —ISP equals Internet-Service-Provider; in our case RoadRunner via the cable. Last July my macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston visited, and set up a wireless Internet connection to my wireless router. His Internet reception was spotty, so he loudly blamed our Internet-Service-Provider (ISP). Now anything untoward (like the dog getting loose) is due to my ISP. —I also am loudly excoriated for using Colgate toothpaste instead of Crest.

“Marcy, it’s everywhere....”

The morning-man at the classical-music radio-station out of Rochester we listen to plays short segments that aren’t music; usually short interviews or expository pieces about history, writing, humor, or what qualifies as music in other parts of the world (usually strident screeching).
Mr. Artsy-Craftsy, a man in his 50s or perhaps early 60s, is interviewing a gushy lady about pet-therapy, I guess; that is, therapy for pets as opposed to pets for people.
The person being interviewed usually gushes all over the interviewer, full of themselves that their petty pursuits are being taken so seriously.
Interviewee gushes something about “animal enhancement toys.”
It stopped me in my tracks.
“WHAT?” I said. “They have to be kidding. What, pray tell, is an ‘animal enhancement toy?’”
We have a dog.
I suppose his many stuffed ducks are “animal enhancement toys.”
All I could think of was “Marcy, it’s everywhere.”
Marcy is my number-one Ne’er-do-Well.
She worked next to me at the mighty Mezz, so for whatever reason I started e-mailing her the utter insanity I post to FlagOut, and she loved it.
She started saving everything in a folder on her ‘pyooter hard-drive.
“Grady, how do you see this stuff?” she’d ask.
“Marcy, it’s everywhere,” I’d say.
Here we are, other side of the continent, navigating deepest, darkest La-La-Land, the land of the great governator, Ah-nald Schwarzenegger.
It’s the crack of dawn in Bakersfield, and we are driving east in brilliant sunshine, except the ground is overlaid with a thick layer of pea-soup about 15 feet thick; smog I guess.
I’m going the wrong way, so have to turn around.
I turn into a suburban tract development,
It’s late October and approaching election.
Small lawn-signs are foresting front lawns — e.g. “I support the governator.”
I notice a lawn with a giant billboard out front. It looks like a theater marque.
“I support the governator,” it says.
I swear it’s 10 feet tall and about 30 feet long; the mother of all political lawn signs.
“Marcy, it’s everywhere.”

“Marcy” is my number-one ne’er-do-well — she was the first I was e-mailing stuff to. Marcy and I worked in adjacent cubicles at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired. A picture of her is in this blog at Conclave of Ne’er-Do-Wells. Marcy married Bryan Mahoney (ex-reporter from the mighty Mezz), and together they live near Boston.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired two years ago. Best job I ever had.

“FlagOut” is our family’s web-site, named that because I had a mentally-retarded kid-brother (Down Syndrome) who lived at home, and loudly insisted the flag be flown every day. “Flag-Out! Sun comes up, the flag goes up! Sun goes down, the flag comes down.” I fly the flag partly in his honor. (He died at 14 in 1968.)

“La-La-Land” is California.

“Grady:” (See at right.)

From the Photoshop is such fun file........

Photoshop is such fun......

“Jack Hughes” is my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston. He noisily badmouths everything I do or say. He is the self-declared Porta-John expert, and notes that he had written work filed in the Library of Congress. He majored in Porta-John engineering, and is therefore vastly superior to me, a mere History-major. He works at an electrical generating station near Boston, where his main responsibility seems to be to protect his beloved Porta-Johns from Al-Qaeda attack.

“slipped the surly bonds of earth, and touched the face of God”

Every once in a while at the mighty Mezz we’d get an obituary saying the deceased had “slipped the surly bonds of earth, and touched the face of God.”
After saying “Aw man,” I’d puke in my wastebasket and then read the obituary to all-and-sundry.
The so-called Hasidic Jew would stop what he was doing, turn around and glance at me with an utterly stunned look, ugh in agreement, and then go back to what he was doing.
I was flying these things on the newspaper web-site, and before that I was assembling the daily obituaries for publication.
I didn’t actually do the obituaries — they were done by the classified-ladies (mainly “obit-Sally”) since the obits were paid. What happened is the funeral home would write the obit, often with input from famblee members; and then fax (or e-mail — I would have been advocating for e-mail) the obit. The classified-ladies thereafter retyped the fax (or copy/pasted the e-mail obit text) into the vast Messenger ‘pyooter-system.
My input was to electronically transfer what they had typed (or manufactured) into a single file of all the day’s obits so it could be put on a page.
Since the obits were paid, they could say whatever they wanted; including “slipped the surly bonds of earth, and touched the face of God.”
An obituary was comprised of three things: -1) the headline — the name, -2) a sub-head (what we called “the blurb:” e.g. “1935-2005,” “loving wife and beloved mother,” or “resolute father” [I suggested “flaming idiot”], and -3) the body-text; e.g. the visitation-hours, funeral time and location, cemetery/burial, or “arrangements by Pratt Disposal and Flint Landfill” and all surviving relatives — usually including “Snuffy,” the deceased’s beloved bloodhound.
Sometimes “slipped the surly bonds of earth, and touched the face of God” would be the blurb; other times it was in the body-text.
This morning (Monday, January 28, 2008) dreaded “liberila” Garrison Keillor included “slipped the surly bonds of earth, and touched the face of God” in his daily “Today’s Writer’s Almanac,” which gets broadcast on the Rochester classical-music station we listen to. Today is the 22nd anniversary of the Challenger disaster, and Ronaldus Maximus, who was prez at that time, said in a radio-address that night: “We will never forget them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”
We’ve never thought much of Ronnie, but this has to be one of the classiest things he ever did, right up there with revisiting the site of the D-Day invasion 60 years hence.
“Slipped the surly bonds of earth, and touched the face of God” are an abbreviation of a poem titled “High Flier” written by John Gillespie Magee, a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in WWII. He came to Britain, flew in a Spitfire squadron, and was killed at the age of 19 on December 11, 1941 during a training flight from an airfield near Scopwick, Scotland. “Slipped the surly bonds of earth, and touched the face of God” are the first and last lines.
Apparently Reagan was familiar with the lines, as they were engraved on a plaque (“Somebody say ‘plaque?’ Remember, there is no plaque in the Dental Hall of Fame.”) at his daughter’s school. Those lines were also recited at the return of fellow actor Tyrone Power from fighting in WWII — a party at which Power recited “High Flight” from memory. (When Power died, the poem was read over his grave by Laurence Olivier.)
Apparently also familiar was Reagan’s speechwriter Peggy Noonan, so that if he suggested it she knew what he was talking about.
And conversely if it was she that suggested it, Reagan knew it fit.
WHATEVER; let’s hope so. We’d like to give him credit. He introduced the American electorate to theatrics in their politicians; “What are my lines?” he’d ask, and Nancy would prompt.
Of course, now we have an even worse prez: Alfred E. Newman.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired two years ago. Best job I ever had.

The “Hasidic Jew” is my good friend Dave Wheeler, an editor at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper. My sister in south Floridy, ever the paragon of tolerance and tact, loudly declared he looked like a Hasidic Jew.

RE: “Arrangements by Pratt Disposal and Flint Landfill.........” —Pratt Disposal is a large private trash-collector in our area. It deposits its trash at “Flint Landfill.” “Arrangements” are usually by the Funeral Home.

“Liberila” is now how my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston noisily insists “liberal” is spelled. (Used to be “liberial.”)

“Ronaldus Maximus” is Ronald Reagan.

March of Dimes

We are in receipt of a rather incredible package from March of Dimes; a solicitation to march in “the Mothers’ March.”
It lists all our neighbors, that we should line up pledges.
One, of course, is Marguerite Habecker, who died; and it doesn’t include 2435 at all — which is to say, before and after 2435, but no 2435. (It also doesn’t have 2395: our neighbor to the north.)
For this, per usual, we got a deluge of preprinted return address labels, as if we haven’t already put March-of-Dimes address labels through our shredder, usually every week.
As I recall, March of Dimes was initiated in 1938 by president Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was paralyzed himself, and involved putting actual dimes in a slotted cardboard placard.
That was back when a dime was actually worth something. Woolworths was a five-and-dime.
Now even a dollar isn’t worth anything.
Go to the Dollar-Store and they want five to 10 dollars.
Maybe they should rename it the five-and-ten.
“Hey, lookit this,” AnMari says long ago at the mighty Mezz.
“First-class postage is goin’ up to 37¢. I remember when it was 7¢.”
“I remember when it was 3¢!” I responded.
Now it’s 41¢; soon to ratchet up yet again.

We live at 2403 State Route 65.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired two years ago. Best job I ever had. “AnMari” Linardi was a photographer there during my tenure.

This morning’s dream

This morning’s (Sunday, January 27, 2008) dream was not about bus-driving, but since it makes no sense, and doesn’t follow a logical order, I must report it SO THE BLUSTER-BOY WILL HAVE SOMETHING TO FOAM ABOUT.
It’s a variation on the old anti-smoking dream; except SuperTuesday is coming, and Linda gets to vote, whereas I can’t.
As Linda says: “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” (It’s an old Will Rogers line.)
In other words. she’s registered as a Democrat, whereas I’m not registered as anything — not even Independent.
Yet if it comes down to Hillary-Dillery versus John McCain, she’ll vote for McCain; AS WILL I.
Chuck Norris, a shill for Huckleberry, suggested McCain was too old.
McCain had the perfect response, probably held for some time for just such a criticism, but perfect none-the-less.
“I guess I’m gonna hafta send my 95-year-old mother over to wash his mouth out with soap.”
So here we are, up in the West Bloomfield Town Hall to vote, although I can’t.
Carroll Shelby, founder of Cobra Cars, is trotted out as a leader of the anti-smoking lobby.
My wife puts down she doesn’t smoke.
“Surely you must smoke, Mr. Hughes,” a nurse says.
“Absolutely not! Never have. Never will. It costs too much, and ruins your health.”
Every time some health-provider asks me that, that’s the response they get.

RE: “Not about bus-driving.......” —For 16&1/2 years I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, N.Y.

“The bluster-boy” is my all-knowing, blowhard brother-in-Boston, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say.

“Linda” is my wife of 40 years.

“Hillary-Dillery” is Hillary Clinton; “Huckleberry” is Mike Huckabee.

We live in the town of “West Bloomfield,” N.Y.

Sports-Center

Another day (Friday, January 25, 2008) of working out at the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA; another day of, horror-of-horrors, Sports-Center.
One of the most depressing side-effects of the gigantical exercise-gym expansion at the Canandaigua YMCA is the wall-mounted plasma-babies.
Thankfully they are close-captioned — no sound — which means no strident bellering.
Used to be when you worked out on an elliptical your distraction was Route 332 out front, and seeing if the pedestrians could avoid getting hit.
Now quite a few of the exercise-machines have “cardio-theaters,” small flat-screen TV displays. —Which I don’t play.
And gigantical flat-wide-screen plasma-babies are mounted on the wall.
There are three: one is tuned to the weather-channel; and one to CNN.
At first the third was tuned to the local ABC-affiliate, so got never-ending soaps. —Some old gray-head ambling into a hospital-room waving a .357-magnum.
And the hospital-bed is occupied by young male eye-candy with a bloody compress on his forehead.
If it wasn’t that it was another hospital-room with a dyeing young sweet thing on oxygen with her eyes closed.
Macho Aiden pleads with her (“I loves ya, babes”), and then waves his .357-magnum.
Why is it every soap-scene involves a hospital-room?
I’m almost 64, and have been in hospitals maybe five times.
And why is someone always wagging a pistol?
I’ve never seen a pistol in my entire life!
Aging tart strides in; lots of makeup and cleavage. “I have bad news, Luke,” she says. “The fertility-clinic made a mistake. It wasn’t my egg. It was Hannah’s.”
“That baby is Hannah’s son.”
“Why are we doing this?” Luke asks.
“Because it’s in the script,” I always say.
“And the reason young sweet thing is dyeing in the hospital is to write her out of the show. She got another job.”
But they changed the channel on that plasma-baby. Now it’s Sports-Center.
There’s too much insanity to relate, so I’ll only report two things: -1) the 10 greatest moments in sport, and -2) Mike-and-Mike.
-A) We’re watching an ice-hockey game. A team is zooming down the ice toward the opposing team’s goal, what is called a “power-play,” I guess.
Suddenly the puck-mover stumbles over maybe four opponents and slides prone past the goal and headlong into the wall.
He ends up out cold on the ice, while a bloody opponent is led to the penalty-box.
But he managed to get the puck in the goal, and I guess that won the Stanley-Cup.
A greatest moment in sport; yessirree; number five.
Looked like the average hockey-move to me: utter mayhem.
-B) We’re watching a football game; it’s the final seconds. Boston College Quarterback Doug Flutie drops back and fires off his gigantical Hail-Mary pass that beat Miami in 1984.
Well yes, I guess that’s a greatest moment in sports; I think they had it as number-eight.
-C) Shaq blasts a pack of tangled opponents under the basket, knocks over a few, and slam-dunks a basket.
“I’m just like you,” Shaq says, pushing Icy-Hot.
Except the average person isn’t seven-foot-one at 325 pounds.
Number three, I guess.
And then there was Mike-and-Mike. Apparently Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg on an ESPN radio program.
There they are, shouting into their mics, making fevered pronouncements on all-and-sundry, fronted by bobbing bobble-heads and football helmets of the Pasties and the Giants.
Is Brady going to play the “Supper-Bowl” with that injured ankle? A You-Tube video of Brady delivering flowers to his girlfriend plays; Brady wearing a walking-boot.
They noisily interview some “authority” about “the greatest football dynasty of all time;” “e-mail us at mikeandmike@espnradio.com to tell us what you think ‘the greatest football dynasty of all time’ is.”
I can just see my brother-in-Boston redirecting is work laptop, even while his beloved Porta-Johns disgorge raw sewage all over Crapo St., to vote for the Pasties.
The commentator had the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to say it wasn’t the Pasties. He said it was the 1979 Steelers, for crying out loud.
I try to watch 332 outside, but there’s that plasma-baby, Mike-and-Mike yammering. They yammer so fast the closed captioning can’t keep up. It scrolls by so quickly I only get snippets: like “you have no idea what you’re talking about,” and “I didn’t think you were old enough to have ever seen the 1979 Steelers.”

RE: “Plasma-baby......” My all-knowing macho brother-in-Boston calls all wide/flat-screen high-definition TVs “plasma-babies.” There are other wide/flat-screen high-definition technologies beside plasma, but all wide/flat-screen high-definition TVs are “plasma-babies.”

“State Route 332” out front of the Canandaigua YMCA is the main drag through Canandaigua; an undivided four-lane street with lots of traffic.

“Supper-Bowl” is how my macho blowhard brother-in-Boston noisily insists “SuperBowl” is spelled. Tom “Brady” is the Patriots quarterback — he has a sprained ankle.

“Pasties” are the New England Patriots. My macho blowhard brother-in-Boston noisily claims they are the greatest football dynasty of all time; since they are from his area. Members of my famblee called them the “Patsies,” which he misspelled “Pasties.”

My macho blowhard brother-in-Boston’s onliest daughter lives on “Crapo St.” He is a self-declared Porta-John authority; his greatest responsibility is protecting his beloved Porta-Johns from al-Qaeda attack.

Shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower

Off yet again to the great land of the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower.
For those unknowing, my wife’s 91-year-old (almost 92) mother lives in a retirement community in De Land, Fla. in “the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower.”
AirTran has a direct flight between Rochester and Orlando (nearest to De Land direct). But the one down is late afternoon (used to be morning — we’ve done that), and return is very early in the morning.
I knew JetBlue also had a direct flight and it’s departing at 8 a.m. and return departs at 11:20 a.m. (a yo-yo).
Flight-time is almost three hours. AirTran would get to Orlando near 6 p.m., which is asking for trouble.
As always, the dog is the biggest problem.
I could stay home, and thereby not put the dog in the slammer.
But that would render Linda the insanity of having to get around a strange, faraway place.
She’s done it before. There is a prearranged shuttle service to cart you from the Orlando Airport to a De Land motel and back via minivan.
But it wastes 89 bazilyun hours, and like all transit can go awry (although it hasn’t yet).
We’re a team; I try to offset her foibles, and she mine.
I don’t want cancer-lady having to field possible transit insanity.
Linda’s mother was worried about the cancer Jones, but thankfully in no condition to drag butt all the way up here to fill in.
Linda’s mother also needs to be apprised that Linda is not at death’s door.
We also have to visit Linda’s mother before they put her in a Hefty bag — although Linda’s brother Jerry’s wife suggests she only deserves a generic. (“Hefty is a national brand. ‘Top Care’ or ‘Best Yet’ for her.”)
At the mighty Mezz I once suggested an obituary: “arrangements by Pratt Disposal and Flint Landfill.” “Don’t do that!” they said. “It would probably go into print!”
So the itinerary is Monday, February 25, Flight 673, depart Rochester at 8 a.m., arrive Orlando at 10:50 a.m.; return Thursday, February 28, Flight 674, depart Orlando at 11:20 a.m., arrive Rochester at 2 p.m.
All reservations were made online with FireFox on my dreaded MAC over our supposedly wonky ISP — including the rental-car reservation. —This despite being advised by my good friend Tim Belknap at the mighty Mezz that ‘pyooters are a “waste of time.”
I think this reflects that he is somewhat technically-challenged. He also has the same opinion about cellphones.
Well, to my mind dickering with a ‘pyooter was a lot better than holding 89 bazilyun hours to fiddle Preferred Care by phone.
And here I am years ago driving back from Sand Patch, and I stop in a motel with no phone to call Linda.
I go to a truckstop restaurant next door, and see a trucker call his wife on his cellphone. “Gee wilikers,” I say; “freedom from the landline network. I gotta get me one of them there cellphones!”
We’re at Wilmot Cancer Center; my wife getting a chemo. She’s almost done; so calls me up on her cellphone. An old geezer in there for chemo lights up. “Whoa! Gotta get me one of them there cellphones.”
Yet Belknap says, and rightly, “what good is a cellphone when I’m at the bottom of a wilderness gully with a broken leg in the Adirondacks with no service?”
My response to Belknap is that some people are intrigued by ‘pyooters, and some aren’t. Don’t take it personal, but I am. When I saw a word-processor could toss my mistypes, a light came on. I could still shovel — just like college. And a word-processor is letting me shove text all over the place. Who knows how many times I had to retype stuff on my Smith-Corona for City/East?
Plus my humble ‘pyooter is also making my bookkeeping (and billpay) a lot easier, and allowing me to slam-dunk my taxes.
Plus there’s all the dorking around with digital images. Photoshop sure beats a darkroom.
So off again to the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower. The onliest problem is putting the dog in the slammer; and he is terrified.
Plus we’re there two full days — I bet the ancient typewriter gets dragged out again. (“The ribbon won’t advance.” “Mother; can ya toss that thing in the dumpster?”)
Here we are twiddling our thumbs when our poor dog is mortified.
And we probably will get taken out to eat at the Laotian buffet — married 40 years (or was it 100; we got 100 smackaroos).

My wife of 40 years is “Linda.” She has lymphatic cancer. It’s treatable — she will survive.

RE: “In the slammer......” Our dog thinks of boarding as prison, and that we’re abandoning him. —He already been abandoned by two previous owners. He’s a rescue dog.

RE: “To fill in......” —Linda’s mother takes over; very bossy.

RE: “Hefty bag.......” “When I finally die put me in a Hefty bag and put me out at the curb. I don’t deserve no funeral.”

“Pratt Disposal” is a private residential trash-collector, who deposits its trash in the “Flint Landfill.” “Arrangements” are usually by the funeral home.

RE: “With FireFox on my dreaded MAC over our supposedly wonky ISP.......” —I use FireFox as my browser instead of Internet-Explorer, and an Apple MAC. All my siblings use PCs, and Internet-Explorer, so therefore I am reprehensible and stupid. “ISP” equals Internet-Service-Provider; in our case RoadRunner via the cable. Last July my macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston visited, and set up a wireless Internet connection to my wireless router. His Internet reception was spotty, so he loudly blamed our Internet-Service-Provider (ISP).

Tim Belknap is an editor at Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper (“the mighty Mezz”), where I once worked. Best job I ever had, and like me Belknap is a car-guy.

“Preferred Care” is my new health insurance. It replaced Blue Cross, who no longer was offering the plan I was in.

“Sand Patch” Tunnel is a long railroad tunnel under the Allegheny Mountains in southwestern Pa. on the Baltimore & Ohio railroad-line to Pittsburgh. It's a railfan pilgrimage-stop, although I didn't see it because it was on a private dirt road.

Wilmot Cancer Center in Rochester is where my wife is being treated.

RE: “When I saw a word-processor could toss my mistypes.......” —I had a stroke October 26, 1993, which made my typing sloppy.

During the ‘70s, I was Motorsports Editor for “City/East,” a small weekly newspaper in Rochester.

RE: “I bet the ancient typewriter gets dragged out again.......” —My wife's mother is always wanting us to fix her typewriter.

New BuildMark garage-door opener

The Keed with the dreaded D100 with flash.

New BuildMark garage-door opener.

Our electrical garage-door opener finally gave up.
Actually, I was expecting the garage-door would give up first.
Our 94-year-old nosy neighbor had to replace all his garage-doors last year.
A panel on one went akilter and jammed the whole kabosh.
It also didn’t help he had rammed a door with his car.
He has three doors, each about eight feet wide by seven feet high.
Ours, only one door, is gigantic: 8' by 16'. The builder wanted to install two doors, each 8' by 7'. (“Looks right that way.”)
Nothing doing!
With two doors I gotta shovel out both sides. With one door I can jimmy both cars out one side.
(This happened after a few years during a gigantical blizzard.)
I also had to have eight feet high to clear the E250.
Plus the E250 wouldn’t thread a single eight-foot-wide door. Too wide over the mirrors.
And I wasn’t changin’ the oil on that sucker outside in the snow any more.
So it’s a gigantical 16 by 8 foot door; the largest residential garage-door available at that time.
From what I can see, the door still works pretty good.
We had to open it manually in place of the failed opener, and it still tracks fine; although it’s monstrously heavy (needing two people).
I’ve had to make a few minor repairs over the years.
The hinges are screwed into the stamped aluminum panel-casings with sheetmetal screws — a failure waiting to happen. (The panel-casings are filled with Styrofoam.)
Regional Transit installed garage-doors constructed this way on its bus-garages — they lasted about four months.
That door-replacement project was bid out by my old railfan friend Chip, and I told him that construction would never last.
Them doors are being worked 10 or more times a day, so I knew the hinge-attachments would pull out.
I had already relocated hinges on my residential door.
Mine kept pulling so much I finally through-bolted the whole kabosh and seated with fender-washers.
I think I’ve done that with a third of the hinges.
The sheetmetal screws also rust; and are steel in aluminum.

The Keed with the dreaded D100 with flash.

New BuildMark garage-door opener.

But they ain’t the opener.
It would hesitate when lifting, so I have a hunch it had a nylon gear inside which had stripped.
After all, it’s lifting a heavy door, and the unit is 18 years old.
I wanted to pursue this repair myself, for once; despite my difficulty speaking.
And I suppose it was just as well. They suggested a standard door-opener for a single 8 by 7.
“Oh no,” I said. “This is a huge door: 16 by 8.”
They ramped up to a larger, more powerful unit; saving a service-call where they could conclude the smaller unit wouldn’t suffice.
They also wanted to give me only one remote.
“Well, I need two,” I said.
Like Jack’s Denali, the Bucktooth Bathtub has an integral door-trigger. But why go to all of the trouble of programming that thing when an extry remote is only $20?

“The E250” is our 1979 Ford Econoline van, “250” because it was rated at three-quarter tons. Probably the neatest vehicle we’ve ever owned. Old Henry (Ford) would have been proud.

For 16&1/2 years I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, N.Y.

“Chip” is my friend Charles Walker. He worked at Regional Transit in management, and like me is a railfan.

“The dreaded D100” is my Nikon D100 digital camera. (My siblings don’t approve; they noisily insist I should use point-and-shoot like them.)

RE: “I wanted to pursue this repair myself, for once; despite my difficulty speaking.......” —I had a stroke October 26, 1993, which slightly compromised my speaking.

“Jack” is my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston (Jack Hughes) who noisily badmouths everything I do or say. He has a GMC Denali. “The Bucktooth-Bathtub” is our 2005 Toyota Sienna van; called that because it’s white and like sitting in a bathtub, and appears to have a bucktooth on the grill.

Preferred Care

EXHIBIT ONE

The Preferred Care info page.

Yesterday (Tuesday, January 22, 2008), to avoid an arduously long phonecall with an 89 bazilyun hour hold time, we set about fiddling Preferred Care online.
Mysteriously, despite providing Preferred Care with my Primary Care Physician (“PCP” — doctor) when we switched to them (Blue Cross was no longer offering my RTS retiree health insurance, so we had to switch)......
....We had to add the PCP to my Preferred Care coverage. Preferred Care allowed only me to institute this; Linda could not. So either an 89 bazilyun hour phonecall, or online.
First, as always seems to be the case with web-sites, I had to register, including a password.
This is always a potential hairball: will the site accept my registration?
It did, after fixing a few invisible typing errors — invisible because they were all asterisks.
Okay; now log in.
The intent is to change from “no PCP provided” to “Vincent Yavorek at Bloomfield Famblee Practice.”
First we had to search Yavorek; Preferred Care wanted his license number. (Preferred Care provides a search function.)
Okay, we find Yavorek — then what?
Nothing to switch from “no PCP” to “Yavorek.”
We ended up doing the Yavorek search again — end up in the same place.
Around and around we go.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I see a ‘select’ button off to the side here. It ain’t on the info page, but on the Yavorek page.”
So I tried it.
VIOLA! Suddenly the info page (pictured) appears with Yavorek’s name on it.
“Hooray, hooray,” we said.
“Why is everything always so difficult?” the old ‘pyooter programmer asked.
That “select” button was off to the side, and no indication it was resetting the PCP.
FireFox on a MAC over my supposedly wonky ISP.

“Linda” is my wife of 40 years. She was a computer programmer when she retired.

RE: “FireFox on a MAC over my supposedly wonky ISP.......” —I use FireFox as my browser instead of Internet-Explorer, and a Apple MAC. All my siblings use PCs, and Internet-Explorer, so therefore I am reprehensible and stupid. “ISP” equals Internet-Service-Provider; in our case RoadRunner via the cable. Last July my macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston visited, and set up a wireless Internet connection to my wireless router. His Internet reception was spotty, so he loudly blamed our Internet-Service-Provider (ISP).

Donner Pass

For the past couple days, ever since I finished my Three-Stooges DVDs, I have been viewing a DVD of Southern Pacific Railroad’s crossing of Donner Pass.
It’s an old Video-Rails video. Video-Rails tanked long ago, and was bought out by Pentrex, the premier producer of train-videos, and I am a long-time customer. This was despite Video-Rails producing some incredibly good stuff, although their announcing was overdone.
I still think Pentrex’s first video was their best — it has pacing of the old Santa Fe Railroad along parallel Cajon (“ka-HONE”) Boulevard, plus cab-ride footage of Tehachapi (“Tuh-HATCH-uh-pee”).
The video is early ‘80s: Cajon Pass and Tehachapi Loop — part of the reason I’ve been to both places. (Both are railfan pilgrimage stops.)
Southern Pacific is no more. It was taken over by Union Pacific Railroad. But the video is old enough to be Southern Pacific.
Donner Pass is an incredible railroad; part of the original Transcontinental. It was built by Central Pacific, which was taken over by Southern Pacific. (Union Pacific was the eastern half of the Transcontinental, so now it operates the entire line.)
Donner is a very difficult route east from Californy, but less likely to be storm-damaged than the easier Feather River route, later used by Western Pacific (taken over by UP, to ease access to San Francisco).
Donner is a pass through the Sierra Nevada mountains, named after the infamous Donner party who stalled there in a blizzard in 1846, and had to resort to cannibalism. It also is the route of Interstate-80.
The climb to Donner Summit, 7,017 feet above sea-level, is horrible: mile after mile (105 miles) of continuous 2.4% grade (although it eases to 2% toward the top) — comparable to Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s dreaded West End, B&O’s original line to the Ohio River.
In fact, B&O’s West End was used as a standard for comparing construction of the original Transcontinental.
No impossible grades. The West End was challenging, but not impossible.
Theodore Judah laid out the Donner Pass crossing, and across the Sierra Nevadas.
Up and up it goes — a 7,000+ foot climb — twisting and turning through tight clearances, just like B&O’s infamous Seventeen-Mile Grade.
Donner also gets incredible weather; huge snowstorms from the Pacific.
One of these snowstorms is what snowbound the Donner party. It also marooned a premier Southern Pacific passenger-train (“The City of San Francisco”) January 13, 1952.
There was so much snow the railroad had to cover much of the line with snowsheds.
Snow-removal is a gigantic winter-long effort. Sometimes the drifts are deep enough to drag out the rotary; a giant snow-thrower — although it ain’t like the typical snowblower. It doesn’t use rotating horizontal tines to move the snow toward an impeller.
Instead it has a huge railroad-wide rotating chew-disk that chews through drifts and throws the snow 150-200 feet. It leaves behind a channel through the snow a railroad-train can negotiate.
(Ya don’t see rotaries much any more. The snow can usually be managed by lesser equipment. But when drifts tower to 12 feet or more, the rotary gets dragged out. —Donner may be the only place ya need ‘em.)
Snow-fighting technology has gotten better, reducing the need for snowsheds.
Some are left, but are concrete. The first ones were wood, and could catch fire.
Even the roundhouse and turntable at the summit (Norden) had to be built under snowsheds.
Sadly, I’ve never been to Donner. Tried in the ‘80s, but missed — used a scenic-route that wasn’t Donner or even Feather River. It would be hard to view; Interstate-80 is often in a different location. I have topo maps, but no Jeep.

“Santa Fe Railroad” equals AT&SF (Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe), the main route into southern Californy. Not too long ago it merged with Burlington Northern Railroad, becoming Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF).

“Cajon (“Ka-HONE”) Pass” is where the Santa Fe railroad came down out of the high desert into the Los Angeles basin. It’s a pass through the San Bernardino Mountains. I-15 to Las Vegas also uses it.

“Tehachapi (“Tuh-HATCH-uh-pee”) Pass” was originally Southern Pacific Railroad. At the south end of the mighty San Joaquin valley, that splits Californy, are the Tehachapi Mountains. No one thought a railroad would ever be built through Tehachapi Pass, linking the San Joaquin with the high desert above Los Angeles, but in 1874-1876 a railroad was built up the mountains — so difficult it required a loop over itself at one point (Tehachapi Loop). The grade is 2.5% (quite steep), and there are many tunnels and sharp curves.

“Seventeen-Mile Grade” is a 17-mile-long westbound grade on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, up and into the Allegheny Mountains. It’s quite steep, and has very tight clearances. It’s out in the middle of nowhere. Carved out of a mountainside that likes to wash out. (I’ve seen it; it’s a railfan pilgrimage stop.)

IT150

Last night (Sunday, January 20, 2008), in my amazing fit of getting things done (which was probably from not walking the dog at the park, since it was too cold), I had the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to attempt to ballpark the New York State income-tax.
This is so we know how much to deduct from Linda’s pension deposit, which also includes a deduction for federal income-tax.
Last year nowhere near enough was deducted for the federal (thank ya, fabulous bluster-boy tax chart), so we had to significantly increase the federal withholding, to offset six months of it being too low.
Withholding for the N.Y. income-tax had been way too high; so we had to make it peanuts.
The end result is that now our federal withholding is way too high, and our state withholding too low.
So a couple weeks ago I ballparked the federal income-tax, and we were able to significantly reduce our federal withholding. Now I had to ballpark our N.Y. state income-tax to get our N.Y. withholding high enough.
True to form, New York has revised its income-tax forms yet again.
Two years ago two pages (front and back of one page) became four (front and back of two), and the poor harried taxpayer had to start filling in all the mysterious codes the minions in tax-land had been doing.
It was a confusing mess, and probably had the tax-minions pulling their hair out.
So now we’re back to only one sheet (two pages, front and back), and a new form IT150 for the average taxpayer.
“Do you use IT150? Start here:”
“—1) Were you required to file form 1040 for 2007? -If yes, next box; if no, do not pass go, do not collect $200.”
“—2) Was your federal adjusted gross income over $900,000? -If no, next box; if yes, IT201 (naughty-naughty).”
“—3) Did you file form 1040EZ, or could you have, except your federal income was over $100,000? (Huh?) -If yes, next box; if no, IT201 (naughty-naughty).”
“—4) Are you claiming any of the credits marked by a triangle (see credit chart on pages 6 through 9)?” —Um, I majored in History, not Geometry.......
“—5) Were you a part-year resident of New York City or Yonkers? -If no, IT150; if yes, IT201 (naughty-naughty).”
On and on it went, including arrows that led to a green “do not file” box.
I successfully navigated the contorted chart, having perused all the triangulated credits, none of which seemed to apply, and deduced we could use IT150.
(Although if we install an Energy-Star rated furnace, we qualify for a triangulated credit — but not windows. [Our current furnace may already be Energy-Star rated.])
I’ve used IT201 in the past, but it looks like I should now switch to IT150. —I ain’t even sure IT201 is in our book; I didn’t see it.
(I did see a photo of circling shark-fins warning of predators on the Internet — wherein is N.Y. income-tax filed over the Internet not predatory?)
It looks like the minions in tax-land are wanting me to fill in the mysterious codes again — some are missing; what then? (Ice-flow for you, baby!)
But they’ve cut down from four pages to two; progress, I guess.
Codes mean nothing to a ballpark; all I’m trying to get is a tax-liability so I can figure a withholding. I can’t do the codes without 1099s. (Although I can do the ballpark, since I have my income spreadsheet.)
IT201 kind of duplicated 1040; but apparently IT150 doesn’t. 201 had you including your previous-year N.Y. state tax refund, and then subtracting it back out for the N.Y. income, but 150 doesn’t include that (apparently), so your gross income in both the 1040 and 150 will differ by the tax refund.
But the ballpark went quickly. Many of the income figures on 1040 transfer directly into 150. We increased the N.Y. withholding from $12 per month to $35.
I kind of doubt TubbieTax® could do a ballpark — in fact, I kind of doubt it could do the N.Y. state income-tax (although maybe they wrote an application; I can see them listing all the triangulated credits, and you answering all those questions [OVERLOAD ALERT!].)

“Linda” is my wife of 40 years.

“The bluster-boy” is my all-knowing, blowhard brother-in-Boston, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say. He loudly declared I could come up with my withholding from an IRS worksheet; and that I was utterly stupid and reprehensible to not use it. (I already tried, and it sent me astray. —That worksheet was what made my federal withholding way too low.)

RE: “I majored in History, not Geometry.....” —My college-degree was in History, making me utterly stupid and reprehensible to my siblings, many of whom degreed in engineering, which makes them superior.

RE: “But not windows......” —Last year we replaced many of the windows in our house.

“Ice-flow for you, baby!” is something my all-superior siblings say to me.

RE: “Since I have my income spreadsheet.....” —I have two Excel spreadsheets I made for income-tax: one is income, and the other is Schedule-A deductions.

A loud famblee argument has surfaced about “TurboTax®” (“TubbieTax®”). I don’t use it, so am utterly stupid and reprehensible; whereas all my siblings do — making me inferior to them, and “mentally challenged.” I tried TurboTax® two years ago, and it was quadrupling the time required to do my taxes, and asking me questions IRS doesn’t even care about.

Um.......

“Include items of income you included in your federal AGI attributable to, derived from, or in any way related to assets stolen from, hidden from, or otherwise lost to a victim of Nazi persecution immediately prior to, during, and immediately after World War II, including but not limited to interest on the proceeds receivable as insurance under policies issued to a victim of Nazi persecution by European insurance companies immediately prior to and during World War II, or as a spouse or heir of such victim.
However, do not include income attributable to assets acquired with assets as described above or with the proceeds from the sale of any asset described above. Also, do not include any income if you were not the first recipient of the asset, or if you are not a victim of Nazi persecution, or a spouse or descendent of a victim.”

THIS IS JUST ONE PARAGRAPH!

BINGO!

Explanatory prelude:

Exhibit A

For at least 17 or more months we have received a monthly pension deposit from Linda’s pension where they apparently did not deduct her medical insurance co-pay (Exhibit A).
This is apparently despite Linda’s authorizing the medical-insurance co-pay to be deducted from her monthly pension deposit.
“I worked that out long ago. Who ever knew I’d have to verify it? I thought my pension amount was after the deduction.”
Now all-of-a-sudden, effective January 1, 2008, the medical-insurance co-pay is deducted from the monthly pension deposit (Exhibit B).

So Linda calls her pension administrator (off-site, of course), and explains the situation.
“What we see is your insurance co-pay being deducted from your monthly pension deposit,” they said; “and it’s been that way since you retired.
“What you see on your screen is not what I have on my statement,” Linda said. “I don’t see any insurance deduction until January 1, 2008.”

Exhibit B

The issue was referred to the pension Research Department, after Linda ran them ragged for about 20 minutes.
Weeks of deafening silence passed — they did call once to say they were still working on it.
Finally a dude called back yesterday (Friday, January 18, 2008).
“Research says the co-pay was deducted.”
“Okay,” Linda said, throwing up her hands; “I did my part!”
“If you say so; thanks for the free gift. We figure about $700.”
Linda hung up.
“Of course they don’t wanna find their error,” she said. “What if we’re the tip of the iceberg?”
“Is this any way to run a business? No wonder we have a mortgage crisis.”

“Linda” is my wife of 40 years.

Alumni of Local 282

Wednesday, January 16, 2008 Linda and I attended a meeting of the so-called “Alumni of Local 282;” an organization of retired Local 282 members of Regional Transit Service.
The “Alumni” is only retired 282 members, not all of Transit, the vaunted “15 & 25-Year Club,” which included the mindless management minions, which did nothing but drive desks and collect their bloated paychecks (and fire people).
In late ‘92 I attended a Christmas party sponsored by the 15 & 25-Year Club, and the head PR honcho at Transit, who was getting paid over $70,000 per year back then, one Howard Gates, refused to even talk to me.
I had just started the dreaded “282 News,” so that he was now fielding phonecalls from local politicos, who funded Transit, along the lines of “what’s going on down there?”
As PR honcho, Gates was supposed to put out a house-organ every two months, yet that rarely happened, and we might go as long as six months before seeing that house-organ.
Yet here I was, working full-time as a bus-driver, cranking out a union newsletter, as an unpaid volunteer, getting one out every month.
“Just keep it positive,” he yelled at me as he disappeared into the mens’ room.
I was running circles around that guy. He accused me of being a “union activist.” Even the “mindless management minions” were impressed by what I was doing. I was also including long stories about the vagaries of the bus-biz; portraying some of the insanities we had to deal with. The Transit-biz had a voice — and it was me. (So it wasn’t just reportage.)
The point of this “Alumni” meeting was to detail a new dental-plan for union retirees.
Actually, it’s not dental-insurance. What has happened is the Alumni have negotiated lower prices for various dental procedures with a Rochester dental clinic.
That clinic bills Blue Cross for the dental-insurance we already have, and then bills us for the copay.
But since they’re charging less, our copay is less.
Under the current regime, Blue Cross pays its part as the primary, and we copay the rest. E.g. they pay a mere $10 for cleaning and $10 for exam, and our dentist bills me the rest, almost $60.
With the new dental arrangement, the total bill would be $57, and our copay would be $37.
Nice idea, but I’d have to use that clinic, which means a long drive into Rochester; so I don’t know if that’s worth $23.
Plus in doing so we’re switching dentists, which we had planned to do anyway, but mainly to go to a dentist nearby. (Our current dentist is a trip into Rochester; about as far as the clinic.)

We left the house at about 9 a.m.; the meeting was supposed to begin at 10 a.m. —I have to allow an hour for a trip into Rochester, since there may be traffic delays.
But apparently we had missed NASCAR rush-hour, since we were about a half-hour early.

The Keed with the dreaded D100.

Train-pik #1; CSX eastbound at the CutOut.

So we went directly to the CutOut.
The CutOut is where 44 and Bill and I (and wives) saw the Amtrak Niagara Rainbow blasting eastbound into the dawning sun. The Rainbow was the Turbo, and 44 was about five. I had him on my shoulders and we got the crew to blow the horn as the train blasted by at about 65 mph, throttle-to-the-roof, into the sun.
The CutOut is also where Jack took me shortly after my stroke. I was home from the hospital by then, but still off in the ozone.
The CutOut is where I took my first train-picture (above) with the D100. I drove up with my just-purchased D100, and told the camera this was what it was in for: 89 bazilyun train-piks. I had to jaw with hotties taking lunch with their cigarette-break. (It was warm; springtime.)
The CutOut is no longer what it was. I visited a few years ago, and the fans had installed a picnic-table, so they could set up and watch trains, or jaw at each other.
Now the whole area is fenced off and all overgrown with wild underbrush. Ya’d never know the place existed.
The CutOut was where the old Auburn branched off, and at the east end of the Rochester yard-entrance.
The Auburn is totally gone — not even the turnout.
But the old four-track NYC signal-tower is still there, and lights up when a train is in the block. (“Get out! Get out!” I shouted to 44. “It’s in the block!”) —Only three tracks now; and one is the yard-entrance.
The CutOut was next to the employee parking-lot of Harris Communications, so we went in there; but seeing the fence we went into the adjacent parking-lot of Best Motors (a Volvo-dealer), but that wasn’t it.
So we went back to the Harris lot, and parked at the fence.
A local was stopped adjacent, GP40-2 on the point and GP38-2 on the tail: waiting for a signal; so it could clear out of the yard.

The Keed with the dreaded D100.

Apparition.

The local left and I noticed a strange red apparition in the trees across the tracks — what appeared to be Santa Claus high atop two red fiberglass giraffes.
“What, pray tell, is that?” I asked.
Linda too was buffaloed.
Where is the all-knowing bluster-boy when we need him?
“If that’s Santy Claus, it sure don’t look like him. In fact, it looks like Godzilla,” I said.
We waited a few minutes, and seeing no trains, we set out in search of the apparition.
Turns out the old Farrell factory, which long ago went kaput, has been turned into a HUGE artsy-craftsy outlet, so a couple “artists” have done an “artpark;” which includes the apparition.
The whole thing is fenced off; what parent would want their children climbing all over trumpeting red-fiberglass elephants, bridged by giant red turtles, all lined up in a well-ordered row?
And Godzilla was on top, holding a flagpole with Old Glory that had been snagged by the trees. Disrespectful, I tell ya!
I photographed it and we went to the meeting.

Here we are at the meeting — first time Linda has ever been to the vaunted “Laborer’s Union Hall,” within earshot of the Water-Level on Railroad St. in Rochester. Screaming posters supporting Hillary-Dillery, and abstract water-colors of bare-chested smoking honkies shouldering large harrows* of mason-cement.
After introductions, the floor was opened to questions.
“What’s the difference between our current benefit and this new plan?” a member asked.
“Fifty dollars!” a retired fellow-employee snapped.
I turned around and said: “Colvin, will you please straighten up and fly right!”
“You’re fired,” I then said.
“Figures,” I thought to myself. Bus-drivers are always smarty-pants, people that get self-declared management superiors all bent out of shape.
“This job makes us who we are,” I observed. “Ya couldn’t interface with blowhards without becoming one yourself.”

* I ain’t sure “harrow” is right — but I’m sure the bluster-boy will loudly tell me. I look up “harrow,” and that don’t appear to be it; nor “barrow.”

For 16&1/2 years I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, N.Y.

The “282 News” was my union newsletter, done with Word.

“44 and Bill” are my younger brother Bill and his son Tom (Agent 44), both from northern Delaware. Tom is in his 20s now, recently graduated the University of Delaware, and employed as a computer-engineer at Boeing; but still lives with his parents. Like me, Tom is a railfan — his parents aren’t.

The “Niagara Rainbow” is an Amtrak passenger-train between New York City and Toronto. I think it still runs. In the early ‘80s it used Amtrak’s French “Turbo-train,” powered by gas-turbines.

“Jack” is my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston.

I had a stroke October 26, 1993.

My wife of 40 years is Linda; Bill’s wife is Sue.

The “D100” is my Nikon D100 digital camera.

A loud famblee argument has surfaced about “hottie.” I follow the old definition where “hottie” equaled a slut. But all my Christian-zealot relatives loudly declare that “hottie” has become a symbol of Christian virtue and attractiveness.

The “Auburn”-Road was the first railroad across the state into Rochester. It took a rather circuitous route, and is now largely abandoned. A more direct railroad was built east from Rochester to Syracuse, so the Auburn became a detour bypass. The direct route became the mainline of the New York Central Railroad, but NYC also owned the Auburn. (The direct route is now CSX.) The Auburn served many small farming communities, but the railroad became moribund as freight-carriage switched to trucks. Quite a bit is now operated by independent shortline Finger Lakes Railway, but the line into Rochester is gone.

“Turnout” is a railroad-switch.

A “local” is a short train of freight-cars to be switched into lineside sidings, or connecting-tracks to other lines (e.g. shortlines) — the opposite of a through-freight that bridges the entire line.

“GP40-2” and “GP38-2” are both “Geeps.” “Geep” is the nickname given to EMD GP road-switchers (four axles). Most railroad-locomotives nowadays are “road-switchers;” although mostly six axles — which don’t use the “GP” moniker. —The GP40-2 is turbocharged; the GP38-2 isn’t, and is of lesser horsepower. (I think the GP40-2 is 3,000 hp; and the GP38-2 is 2,000 hp.) Dash-2 implies more recent electronics.

“EMD” is Electromotive Division of General Motors, GM’s manufacturer of railroad diesel-locomotives. Most railroads used EMD when they dieselized; although many now use General-Electric railroad diesel-locomotives.

“The all-knowing bluster-boy” is my macho, loudmouthed brother-from-Boston who noisily badmouths everything I do or say. (He’s a construction-engineer, so should know the kerreck terminology [re: “harrow”]; and will loudly deliver it to score points.)

“The Water-Level” is the old mainline of the New York Central Railroad across New York State, now operated by CSX Transportation. Called “Water-Level” because it followed river-courses, and thereby avoided mountain grades. (The topography of New York State, north of the Allegheny Mountains, made transportation easier.) —It was once four tracks; but now is mostly two.

“Hillary-Dillery” is Hillary Clinton.

parking-garage roulette

So concludes the final installment of the strange and contorted anti-cancer CHOP-“cemo” regimen; CHOP equaling Cyclophosphamide, Doxorubicin (I don’t know where they get an “H” for this), Oncovin (trade-name for Vincristine), and Prednisone, a steroid.
Yesterday, Thursday, January 17, 2008, the final “cemo” infusion was administered.
There have been six “cemos.” There will be six Rituxans; two more to go. Four so far, so that altogether it is R-CHOP.
That means at least two more games of parking-garage roulette.
Wilmot, part of Strong Hospital, uses the attached Strong Hospital parking-garage; two bucks up to the first hour; more thereafter.
Wilmot gives us a coupon for a single visit so that parking is only a dollar.
So I use that for the first park, since that is usually the longest — there’s usually a doctor-appointment.
Second park is when I return to pick up my wife, at the conclusion of her treatment. That’s in-and-out, so in-and-out from the parking-garage. Sometimes it’s two bucks; other times it’s nothing. We think it depends on who’s manning the checkout. So every departure is the roulette-game: two bucks or free? (We wait with baited breath.)
The cancer, which was only lymphoma, pretty much disappeared after the first CHOP — as did the hair.
Well, no hair; but it’s still the same person I married: snide remarks, gutter comments; a “liberila” — and as such disrespectful of self-declared authorities and noisesome blowhards.
“Just because we’ve lost our hair doesn’t make us different persons,” Hairman’s wife commented. She has cancer too, although it’s worse.
“You’ve been an A+ student, Mrs. Hughes,” the nurse said. —They’re very pleased.
“Well, she was A+ before she started,” I said.
The nurse had to relate to my wife what I’d said.
“And ornery too,” I observed.
As is commonly misconstrued, this was taken as a negatory comment by the nurse.
Hardly. I wouldn’t be the person I now am had I not been “ornery” (bull-headed).
“Don’t forget I had a stroke,” I said. “But I didn’t want to be disabled.”
“Some people just don’t want to be sick,” my wife said.
So now we can visit the great land of the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower*, so that Linda’s mother can see that Linda is not at death’s door.
Whether I go along will be a function of whether we can find a pet-sitter for the dog, as I’d rather not put him in the slammer.
The lymphoma is not cured, just beaten into remission.
Checkup in April.
Freddy Thompson has lymphoma. He’s running for prez.
Maybe Linda should run for prez too —TUB-THUMPING CONSERVATIVES BEWARE!
But she ain’t Hillary-Dillery.

*I also benefit from this, by not having my life turned upside-down by the passing of Linda. So does the dog. I doubt I could take care of him alone. I also doubt I could I could take care of myself (and a house) alone, due to the stroke. — We work as a team.

My wife is “Linda.” She has lymphatic cancer; it’s treatable — she will survive. —We just celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary.

“Cemo” is how my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston noisily insists “chemo” is spelled.

“Wilmot” Cancer Center in Rochester.

“Liberila” is now how my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston noisily insists “liberal” is spelled. Not long ago it was “liberial.”

“Hairman” is my hair-dresser in nearby Honeoye Falls, N.Y. I’ve gone to him at least 16 years.

Linda’s mother (almost 92 years old), lives in a retirement community in “the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower” in De Land, Fla.

“The slammer” is pet-sitting at the vet. The dog thinks of it as prison.

“Freddy Thompson” is presidential candidate Fred Thompson.

All my siblings are “tub-thumping Conservatives;” merrily goosestepping to Rush Limbaugh. Anyone who disagrees with them deserves the ice-flow.

“Hillary-Dillery” is Hillary Clinton.

Transit dream

This morning’s (Thursday, January 17, 2008) dream was about bus-driving, as is often the case.
After all, I drove transit-bus for 16&1/2 years, and experienced all the insanities of the transit-biz.
—Like trying to keep junky equipment with bald tires between the lines on slick pavement.
Sometimes it would be so icy a stopped bus would start sliding and end up against the curb; like the slowly sliding trucks you see on TV occasionally.
But this dream was different because it had Bob Matson (Houghton ‘80), so-called “BossMan” at the mighty Mezz, as a road supervisor.
Unlike some of the I-D-10-Ts at Transit, like the infamous Dippity Dawg, BossMan was fabulous, eminently reasonable and sensible.
Unlike some bosses, who seem to be on a superiority-kick, BossMan led by example.
Being reasonable, and above-all respectable, he managed to extract high performance from his subordinates. High performance was worth doing for BossMan. His was a merry ship.
The issue was the confusing signage on our old 400-series Park-and-Ride buses.
As I recall, our earliest Park-and-Ride buses, which weren’t even 400s (our 400s were unturbocharged 8-71; our earliest Park-and-Ride buses were unturbocharged 6-71) had the same two-part roll signs (curtain signs) as the city buses, so it was possible to have the signage say: “30-Webster/via Creek St.” or “22-Penfield/via E. Roch.”
The 400s had a one-part sign, so that it might say “30-Webster” or “22-Penfield;” no indication of the route you took.
This could be especially confusing to late-night passengers, when the Penfield and East Rochester lines combined.
—Or someone wanting to get off on Creek St., when you went the other way.
What if an East Rochester passenger got on a Penfield bus earlier in the day, thinking it went through East Rochester, and it didn’t?
“Not my fault, man! I’m just following my route, which is in the schedule. That’ll be $1.75 please.”
BOP ON THE HEAD!
And of course, management’s first reaction to the confusing signage was to blame the driver. (“Don’t bother us! We’re eating free donuts!”)
Management’s enlightened response to the confusing signage was to copy a trick some drivers were already doing: placards in the front windshield. E.g. “via E. Roch.”
This got out of hand.
So many placards were needed for minor route variations it got ridiculous.
Ya might have three placards in the windshield, and it had to be daylight to read ‘em.
We had buses making tiny separate side-trips to employers out in the boondocks — ya needed a placard for that.
It was so bad the passengers paid more attention to who was driving than signage — “oh, that’s my driver; that’s my bus!”
It got so I’d tell everyone when I’d be away: “9-Jay at 8:21. Someone else will be driving. He may or may not have the ‘Hospital Laundry’ placard, but that’s the bus ya want to get to Hospital Laundry.”
So here I am in the dream driving a pre-400 Park-and-Ride bus with the two-part roller signs, and I’m supposed to make a 22-Penfield trip.
I scroll through the curbside part and no “22-Penfield” — nothing new.
But the other side had “via East Rochester,” so I set up blank (what I thought was blank) on the curbside, and “via East Rochester” on the other side — we had to do that often enough. I then drove up to the Midtown Plaza Park-and-Ride stop.
The signage was so terrible we had to depend on passengers knowing a Penfield bus (via East Rochester) was supposed to run at that time.
So here’s Matson, ever the class-act, not doing the Dippity-Dawg superiority gig, jumping up because my supposedly blank sign says “Al Sigl (SEE-gull) Center” (something ya’d never see except in a dream — that was a placard).
I hadn’t had time to jump outside to see what my sign said, and all we could do is make it blank.
Matson and I had to yell my bus was the Penfield bus. (I had to do that often enough.)
When I was driving East Avenue once I was changed-off and given a tired old city-bus.
My 6:15 passengers at Midtown missed my bus because I wasn’t driving my usual Starship.
The signage confusion ended with the electronical signs, but at first they weren’t bright enough. People would ask where I was going — couldn’t read the electronical signs.
Newer buses had brighter electronical signs, plus ya could change the electronical signs on the fly. All ya were doing was dialing in a code. With the roll-signs ya had to stop. —And they were cutting layover-time down to zero. Often I never got to stop. Out and back on East Main in one hour — utterly impossible. They had timed it with a car, and weren’t stopping for passengers.

“Houghton” is Houghton College, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it. Houghton is a religious college. Matson is Class of 1980.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired two years ago. Best job I ever had.

“I-D-10-T” is computerese for idiot. The ‘pyooter-fixer makes a service-call to put in the plug or something. They describe it as an “I-D-10-T” error.

RE: “Changed-off and given a tired old city-bus......” —What probably happened is that my bus crippled, or had a problem of some sort (like inoperative farebox), so I was given another bus: a “change-off.”

A “Starship” is the GM RTS model, probably the best styling job they ever did. They made a bus look pretty. Being very modern-looking, I called ‘em “Starships.” Ours were our 700, 800 and 900-series, 1979 through 1983.

Three things:

-1) Viewed on the wall-mounted plasma-babies in the exercise-gym at the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA:

Daddy is sitting anxiously at the dining-room table, surrounded by disheveled papers, chewing nervously on his pencil, working on income-tax.
Comely wife leans in from the kitchen: “How’s it goin’, honey?”
“I’m stuck. Stumped.”
“Well, maybe you oughta call somebody.”
“Can’t,” he says. “All we got is this box.”
He holds up the box the fabulous TubbieTax® software came in.
Wife comes in, takes the box, holds one end to an ear, and puts the other end to her mouth.
“Hellooooo,” she says. “Anybody home?”
At H&R Block you interface with a real person, not a box.

-2) We think the world of our cellphones.
They’re Motorola RAZRs, with big numbers and a display you can read in daylight.
You can even hear ‘em. I.e. ya don’t have to turn on the speakerphone in a parking-lot.
But they also have these buttons on the side of the case you can inadvertently hit when putting it away.
One turns the ringer off, and vibrator on; or everything off.
Well, that’s just great.
Hit that button by mistake, and ya gotta reset everything with the “tools.”
Otherwise the bluster-boy might go ballistical because my cellphone didn’t ring.
Okay, so be very careful putting the thing away.
Don’t grab it by the case.
“Be-boop!”
“Uh-ohhhhhh......... Unpardonable sin.”
“Gotta reset it again.”
Maybe them buttons should be somewhere other than the edge of the case. Who designed these things? An engineer?

-3) “Please hold during the silence......... Boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom-chicka!”
I had to make two phonecalls today (Tuesday, January 15, 2008): -a) the mighty Mezz to see if Randi Willard was still our newspaper carrier, and -b) Preferred Care; our new medical insurer (in place of Blue Cross), to see -1) if they had my Primary-Care-Provider (Bloomfield Famblee Practice — my doctor), and -2) if the things we received in the mail were our insurance-cards (they appear to be).
Both phonecalls went nowhere.
“All our representatives are busy with other customers,” said the mighty Mezz; “so please leave a message and we’ll get back to you.”
I did and they did.
Preferred Care was another story. I was warned by my wife: “expect to get put on hold for 89 bazilyun hours.”
“All our Customer-Service representatives are busy with other customers....... We value your call.”
(Yeah; so much ya won’t hire another Customer-Service rep.)
I went through four hold-cycles. “Thank ya for holding. We value your call. Please continue holding, and your call will be answered in the order it was received.”
After four holds I gave up. I got things to do!
This is kinna why I shop Weggers insteada Tops. Tops might have one checkout open out of 15, with 89 bazilyun people waiting in line. Danny (Wegman) hired enough people to open 89 bazilyun checkouts, so people (like me) preferred shopping there — i.e. not waiting in line was worth a 20% price penalty.

All wide-screen flat-screen high-definition TVs are called “plasma-babies” by my all-knowing, blowhard brother-in-Boston. Some are a different technology, but that makes no difference to an all-knowing blowhard.

A gigantic and noisy argument has begun in our famblee about TurboTax®. This is because all my siblings use it, but I don’t — making me utterly reprehensible and above-all stupid. I already have an Excel spreadsheet that gives me all the Schedule-A totals, so that I can do my taxes in about an hour. I tried TurboTax® two years ago, but gave up after already wasting four hours, and then it wanted me to individualize each charity-gift, whereas Schedule-A wants a grand total (what my spreadsheet gives me). La-dee-dah; enter everything in TurboTax® or a 1040 pdf. WHATEVER; you’re doing the same thing in each case, except TurboTax® would turn a one-hour process into 5-6 hours.

“The bluster-boy” is my all-knowing, blowhard brother-in-Boston, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say. He says my ability with cellphones is behind-the-times.

RE: “Who designed these things? An engineer?” —My loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston was trained as an engineer, and noisily claims superiority. I majored in History, so am therefore vastly inferior.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired two years ago. Best job I ever had.

My wife of 40 years is “Linda.”

“Weggers” is Wegmans, a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester we often buy groceries at. They have a store in Canandaigua. “Tops” Markets, another large chain based in Buffalo, also has a supermarket in Canandaigua. I shop Wegmans all the time; I’ve shopped Tops once. Wegmans usually costs more, but I know the store.

200 horsepower

BOBBER (MORE-OR-LESS)

Springer front-end, but no suicide stuff, and no tractor-seat.

Yesterday (Sunday, January 13, 2008) my sister-in-law made her annual Christmas visit.
That is, my wife’s brother’s first of four wives — Carol was also my wife’s matron-of-honor.
Included are Carol’s only daughter Debbie (who is approaching 39), her husband Kevin (almost 48), and their only daughter Christina, age 13.
Together they all live in Carol’s ancestral homestead west of Rochester she inherited from her parents.
“I don’t know how they can do that,” Linda always says. “I sure couldn’t live with my mother.”
Well, that’s Linda’s mother — “Who me, domineering? Well I never! Don’t you dare ever bring that up again!”
Kevin is heavily into the custom chopper Jones.
He’s now onto custom-bike number two. Number One was a gigantical Big Dog I once photographed.
Number One locked it’s tranny in second-gear, so he demanded his money back (50,000 smackaroos).
Number Two is more “old school;” springer front-end with suicide shifter and clutch, and a sprung tractor-seat (like the old Harleys): i.e. the clutch is by left-side foot-pedal (not hand-lever), and the gearshift is by tank-side lever (not foot-shift). (—Also like the old Harleys. Hand-clutch and foot-shift are current practice.).
Kevin loudly claims the motor gets 200 horsepower.
I always take these claims with a grain of salt.
I can see getting maybe a “hunderd” horsepower out of a big V-twin, but to get 200 horsepower it would have to hold together at 8,000+ rpm.
Too much weight flailing around a fragile knife-and-fork crank.
Although I can see it generating gobs of torque — but torque ain’t horsepower.
Ya also can’t enlarge a 45-degree V-twin too much. With that narrow a cylinder-spread, the cylinders cross up.
A long discussion ensued about what color to paint his “tins;” the tank, fenders, and other sheetmetal parts.
“That front fender weighs 70 pounds!” he bellowed.
(Um, with that much weight out there, and I doubt it weighs 70 pounds, how do you get it to change direction?)
“That front-end’s been extended 12 inches!”
“So how do ya get it to turn a corner — like into Ellis Drive?” I asked.
“Ya stop,” he bellowed.
“143 mph on the Thruway goin’ to Lake George,” he shrieked.
“Well, it better be on the Thruway. Don’t ask it to make a curve,” I said.
“Ape-hangers 18 inches high!”
“What are you, an ape?” reprising a question my wife’s Aunt Ethelyn would have asked. (That question was deftly avoided.)
“So what color, Uncle Bob?”
“Well, if ya can’t change the frame-color, and it’s black, maybe everything should be black.”
“How about white or silver? It’s got red rims.”
“How about red?” I said.
“It would be a fire-truck.” he said. “I don’t want no fire-truck.”
“It also would be cop-bait,” I said.

The Keed with the dreaded D100.

The “Sweet & Sassy” stretch.

“How about pink?” I asked, firing up on my ‘pyooter the pink stretch I photographed.
“Ugh!” Kevin said.
On-and-on the discussion went; hour after hour, even after I walked the dog.
I fired up various chopper web-sites; some blasting rancid rock-n-roll riffs among turgid pictures of grizzled road-warriors and big-boobed Baptist hotties displaying acres of deeply-shadowed cleavage.
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” crowed one site (VengeanceMotorcycles.com).
(“What would Jesus ride?” I thought.)
“Can’t you photograph my bike and change the color like they do at ChopperLand on TV?”
“It would probably be a lotta trouble,” I said. “I could probably do it with Photoshop, but I’d have to figure it out.”
“No pinstripes,” he said. We eyed a photo of a purple ElectraGlide bagger with no pinstripes in one of his many chopper magazines.
My Norton had a single gold pinstripe on black that looked pretty good.
Nothing was ever decided.
“I have to see the bike,” I said.

“Linda” is my wife.

“Tranny” equals transmission.

“Hunderd” is how my blowhard brother-in-Boston noisily insists “hundred” is spelled.

RE: “knife-and-fork crank......” Harley-Davidson uses the knife-and-fork crank: a crankshaft with a single common crankpin, and one cylinder has a rod that engages that crankpin singly (the knife), and the other cylinder has its rod that spreads into two parts (the fork) that snuggle around the other rod. This is so both cylinders can be inline, instead of offset. The “forked” rod tends to break — and the “knifed” rod has to be small.

My sister-in-law (and the others) live on “Ellis Dr.”

“Ape-hangers” are handlebars that rise high to the hand-grips; so that ya look like an ape. (Often seen on chopper-bikes — they render little turning leverage. Just “the look.”)

“My wife’s Aunt Ethelyn” died a few years ago at age 97. She was very cool.

I’m actually only “Uncle Bob” to my niece, Debbie, my sister-in-law’s daughter.

“Sweet & Sassy” is a nationally franchised hair-salon for young girls. It recently opened a franchise in Rochester.

A loud famblee argument has surfaced about “hottie.” I follow the old definition where “hottie” equaled a slut. But all my Christian-zealot relatives loudly declare that “hottie” has become a symbol of Christian virtue and attractiveness.

A “bagger” is a motorcycle with rear saddle-bags.

My first motorcycle was a 1975 850 “Norton” Commando.

Monthly calendar report

Photo by Peter Vincent.

The 1932 Ford Three-Window owned by Keith Cornell of New York, raced at Bonneville Salt-Flats in 2003.

My January 2008 calendars aren’t especially extraordinary, but most extraordinary is the 1932 Ford hot-rod pictured.
It’s a real hot-rod: raw and basic, totally unlike the dream-world creations of Chuck Foose.
I tossed my Oxman hot-rod calendar because it was all Chuck Foose.
It had a gussied-up ‘54 Chevy, for crying out loud.
The ‘53 and ‘54 Chevys are probably the turkiest cars ever made, although the ‘54 looked marginally better than the ‘53.
(I learned how to drive in 1961 in a 1953 Chevy; the so-called “Blue Bomb” [it was navy-blue]. It had the original shocks and brakes when it finally failed inspection in 1963 at 100,000 miles. The brakes were worn clear through to the backing-plates — the shocks were spaghetti: ka-BOING, ka-BOING.)
This ‘32 was driven to Bonneville Salt-Flats in 2003 and raced; it has a 312 cubic-inch Ford V8 Y-block.
The Y-block was introduced in the 1954 model-year; Ford’s first V8 motor since the hoary old FlatHead, which was introduced in the 1932 model.
It was called the Y-block because the engine-castings were taken down along side the crankshaft bearings; a nice idea, but it made the motor heavy.
And compared to the mighty Chevrolet Small-Block introduced in the 1955 model-year, it was a boat-anchor.
I remember a guy drag-racing a ‘55 Ford Y-block at Cecil County Drag-o-way against ‘55 Chevys tuned by Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, and the Ford kept getting creamed. (Jenkins went on to become a drag-racing legend himself.)
The Small-Blocks would rev much better than the Y-block. They had much lighter valve-gear with ball-stud rockers; while the Y-block still had rocker-shafts.
The calendar car ain’t much to look at: flat-black primer with hand-applied racing numbers.
But it’s real — much more real than a Foose dream.
And it’s a three-window coupe, BAR NONE the prettiest ‘32 Ford ever made.
Too bad the motor ain’t a Small-Block.

Photo by Anthony Paci on slide-film.

A Norfolk Southern freight-train moves out of Washington, N.J.

The January 2008 entry in my Norfolk Southern Railroad calendar is pretty fair, but not as good as last month.
NS conductor Anthony Paci of Jersey City is out in the snow capturing a Norfolk Southern freight negotiating a woody cut near Washington, N.J.
They’re four-axle Geeps, but not the high-hood version Norfolk & Western had.
Norfolk & Western eventually merged with Southern Railway, buying into all those chop-nose Geeps Southern had. And NS has since expanded even more, ending up with all the old Pennsy portion of Conrail.
So high-nose NS Geeps are pretty rare any more; although you see them occasionally.
One wonders what line this actually is — perhaps the old Erie.
Norfolk Southern’s line across the Southern Tier of western New York to Buffalo is the old Erie.
(The light tells me the train is heading north.)

Photo by Otto Perry.

Pennsylvania Railroad 2-10-4 “J” eastbound at Horseshoe Curve, 7/15/53.

The January 2008 entry of my black & white Audio-Visual Designs All-Pennsy calendar is a J 2-10-4 steam locomotive rounding Horseshoe Curve in 1953.
The J is Pennsy’s war-baby, and Pennsy’s only SuperPower steamer. Most noticeable is that it’s not a Pennsy design. As such, it lacks the trademark Belpaire firebox, a feature on almost every Pennsy steam-engine.
A Belpaire firebox isn’t round at the top, following the curvature of the boiler courses.
Connection of the firebox to the boiler has always been a challenge. That connection was prone to cracks and leaks, and could fail over time due to vibration.
Of course, the bottom of the firebox had to be flat to accommodate the fire grate, and the roof of the firebox might also be flat, but the boiler-top over the firebox was round.
With a Belpaire firebox, the boiler-courses over the firebox-top were also flat, inviting difficulty where that area met the boiler.
But apparently Pennsy thought well enough of it to use the Belpaire design on just about every steam-engine. —Plus they engineered reinforcement into the design.
But Pennsy didn’t really do steam-locomotive development during the ‘30s — primarily because of electrification and the surplus of steam-locomotives it produced.
Had they, they might have designed a counter to SuperPower, perhaps along the lines of Norfolk & Western’s 1200-series A-class 4-6-6-4.
Pennsy never really got into articulation, but something like the A would have been well-suited to Pennsy’s mountainous terrain.
So when WWII came along, with its extraordinary traffic demands, Pennsy was stuck with tired old steamers from the ‘20, like the I1 Decapod (2-10-0).
The War Department didn’t allow development, and Pennsy didn’t have time to prototype, so Pennsy had to shop.
The J is the Chesapeake & Ohio T class, with slight adaptations to make it look like Pennsy.
In some ways the J was poorly suited to Pennsy — slogging up The Hill out of Altoona at 30 mph was sort of a waste.
The J was a SuperPower engine: designed for 50-60 mph running on flat terrain. It had the power to slog up The Hill but that was misusing the design.
Many Js found their way to a line in Ohio, where they could run 50-60 mph on flat terrain.
But a J was better than a Decapod running out of steam climbing The Hill. The steaming ability of a J was prolific.

Photo by Philip Makanna.

Supermarine Seafire.

The January 2008 entry of my Ghosts calendar is a Supermarine Seafire, an aircraft carrier version of the fabulous Supermarine Spitfire.
But apparently the Seafire didn’t do very well as a carrier plane for two reasons: -1) it could only be flown for 90 minutes, which wasn’t much time to do anything, and -2) it had a narrow landing gear, which allowed the airplane to tip over and dig a wing into the carrier deck on landing — and landing on a heaving aircraft carrier is a slam-bang proposition.
U.S. naval aircraft carrier airplanes had much greater range, and wider landing gear.
You don’t see much mention of the Seafire, yet exploits of the Corsair and the Hellcat, among others, are legendary. Then there is the Douglas Dauntless dive bomber — not that fast, but it saw a lot of use.
Of course, the Seafire is the naval version of one of the most fabulous propeller fighter-planes ever made, the Supermarine Spitfire. I has a Rolls-Royce Griffin V12 of 1850 horsepower; comparable to the Packard-Merlin V12 in the P51 Mustang. A Rolls-Royce engine was in the Spitfire. —The Packard-Merlin is a slightly modified Rolls-Royce Merlin.
—A fabulous airplane. Just not a good carrier plane.

Photo by Bill Volkmer.

Alco FAs at Enola engine terminal; 6/16/62. (They’re A-B-A.)

My All-Pennsy Color Calendar has Alco FAs at Enola, across from Harrisburg.
The Alco cab-units were the prettiest diesel-locomotives of all time; especially the PA passenger unit.
So it’s a shame they weren’t as successful as their plain-jane bulldog-nosed “covered wagon” rivals from EMD.
Alco is American Locomotive Company of Schenectady, N.Y., a long-time manufacturer of steam-locomotives. (Actually it was an amalgamation of earlier steam locomotive builders.)
Alco entered the diesel-locomotive business when the railroads began switching from steam to diesel.
Pennsy held out til the bitter end, and didn’t complete dieselization until 1957.
When they finally did, they had to buy diesels from anybody and everybody, so were saddled with unreliable diesels; particularly Baldwin and Alco and Erie-built Fairbanks-Morse.
Some locomotives had submarine diesels, which would break down due to railroad vibration.
EMD diesels would run forever; everything else might cripple.
The Alco FAs were pretty to look at, but crews abhorred them. They might cripple out on the mainline and tie up the railroad.

Two calendars remain: -1) my All-Corvette calendar, and -2) my Three Stooges calendar.

My Corvette calendar isn’t worth scanning, because it has a recent (C6) Corvette doing a nighttime pit-stop in the 2006 Daytona 24 Hours.
Ho-hum. Not much too look at, except there is also a small panned shot of the same car at speed, and the brake discs are glowing red through the wheels.
That probably should be the primary picture, and the pit-stop secondary.

My Stooges calendar is a replacement for my Howard Fogg railroad calendar.
Howard Fogg is the most famous railroad artist of all time, but I tired of looking at Colorado narrow-gauge.
Fogg was always doing artwork of Colorado narrow-gauge; you could figure on five or more per calendar.
My Stooges calendar is a reaction to Fogg boredom.
—Except standing artwork of the Stooges doesn’t come off as well as a Stooges video-clip.
I also have a DVD collection of all the Stooges shorts, which is probably what I watched as a kid, but doesn’t seem as funny.

“Bonneville Salt-Flats” is the salt-based dry lake-bed next to Great Salt Lake in Utah. It is so big (and flat) they can run ultimate speed-trails there.

The Chevrolet “Small-Block” V8 was introduced at 265 cubic-inches in the 1955 model-year. It was phenomenally successful, and is still in production, although it’s been enlarged and much improved. (The Chevrolet “Big-Block” was introduced in the 1965 model-year, and is much larger.)

“Cecil County Drag-o-way” is a long defunct quarter-mile dragstrip in northeastern Maryland. I went there often while in college during the middle ‘60s.

“Geep” is the nickname given to EMD GP road-switchers (four axles). “Covered-Wagon” is the nickname given to full cab-units: e.g. E and F-units by EMD, FAs and PAs by Alco. (Baldwin and Fairbanks-Morse also made cab-units.)

“EMD” is Electromotive Division of General Motors, GM’s manufacturer of railroad diesel-locomotives. Most railroads used EMD when they dieselized; although many now use General-Electric railroad diesel-locomotives.

RE: “High-hood” versus “chop-nose....” —All relate to the short hood in front of the cab of a road-switcher. “High-hood” goes all the way up to the roof of the cab; “chop-nose” goes about halfway up, and allows better frontal vision. The locomotives pictured are chop-nose.

“Pennsy” is the Pennsylvania Railroad, no longer in existence. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that went bankrupt in about two years. “Pennsy” was once the largest railroad in the world.

“Erie” Railroad.

“SuperPower” is special design from Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio; intended to maximize the steam output and high-speed power of railroad locomotives. Lima sold many SuperPower locomotives. The engineering was promulgated in the late ‘20s and into the ‘30s.

With “articulation” a railroad steam-locomotive usually had two driver-sets, both powered by a single boiler. With “articulation” the front driver-set was hinged to the rear driver-set, so the engine could negotiate sharp turns (like switch turnouts). The rear driver-set would be solidly attached to the boiler, but the front driver-set was hinged to the rear frame. (E.g. 4-6-6-4 or 2-8-8-4, and others. The Pennsy T [4-4-4-4] wasn’t articulated.)

RE: “Pennsy held out til the bitter end...” —primarily because they carried so much coal, and steam-locomotives burned coal.

“C6” is the current iteration of Corvette. There have been five earlier iterations: C1 through C5. (Earlier Corvettes didn’t go by that nomenclature.)

“Narrow-gauge” is three feet between the rails — standard-gauge is four feet 8&1/2 inches. You hardly see any narrow-gauge any more; almost all railroads are standard-gauge. Narrow-gauge could allow tighter curvature (it has smaller equipment), so it could be built more cheaply than standard-gauge, especially in challenging areas like the Colorado Rockies. (There are other railroad gauges: like meter-gauge, and five feet. The original Erie was six feet.)

“Woops!”

I’m at the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA.......

.....blasting away on a treadmill.
I’m right next to a virtual bicycle. —I should explain virtual bicycles.
A virtual bicycle is a bicycle exerciser that attempts to duplicate riding a real bicycle — that is: -a) it has a flat-screen video-display driven by a ‘pyooter; -b) the handlebars duplicate a bicycle handlebar: i.e. ya steer; and -c) there is a gear-toggle, so that you can shift gears. (It ain’t the same as a bicycle-shifter; but up is upshift, and down is down-shift.)
Someone is riding the virtual bicycle. It’s playing a course through a redwood forest — one of 25 courses ya can select.
“Sure is nice peddling through this redwood forest, but I gotta watch where I steer so I don’t hit any trees.”
“Woops! I just rode it on the median.”

ZR1

ZR1

The first ZR-1 Corvette was 1989-1995, and I think was the 32-valve double-overhead-cam V8 designed by Lotus and assembled by Kiekhaefer (“KEY-kay-fur”), the builder of Mercury outboard-motors.
It wasn’t an offshoot of the vaunted Chevrolet Small-Block, but was rather a ground-up redesign. It also was aluminum, and I think the Small-Block was still cast-iron.
The new ZR1 is the Small-Block redesigned yet again, although little is left of it since introduction in the 1955 model-year.
About all that’s left is the basic architecture: bore-centers 4.4 inches apart.
The motor is also cast-aluminum, and long-gone are the siamesed exhaust ports, replaced by port-order similar to Ford: intake-exhaust, intake-exhaust, intake-exhaust, intake-exhaust versus exhaust-intake, intake-exhaust, exhaust-intake, intake-exhaust.
This equalized the heads and porting for each cylinder, and can equalize fuel-charge with fuel-injection.
Over a V8, carburetion could make end cylinders run too lean, and center cylinders too rich. (Carburetion is also sloppy.)
But it’s still two valves per cylinder with valves operated by pushrods and rockers.
A four-valve head would breathe better, but would upsize the engine package and probably make it heavier. Four-valve heads and overhead cams also cost a lot.
So the Corvette continues with a two-valve head, and to make it generate 625 horsepower they supercharged it.
It’s a variation of the old Callaway twin-turbo trick.
They tried twin-turbos at first, but their test-mule caught fire and burned to the ground. —Back to the drawing board.
So what we have is a belt-driven Eaton Rootes supercharger nestled between the heads, more-or-less the same principle that supercharges fuel dragsters.
Force-feed a two-valve head and it breathes like a four-valve head. (One wonders about force-feeding a four-valve head, an idea ya see in motorcycle drag-racing, but it was ruled illegal in car drag-racing.)
So 200+ mph. Where do you get that kind of speed other than in the desert — or perhaps a racetrack?
My dentist saw I was reading a Car & Driver Magazine article about it and said “ya gonna get one?”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “Where do I put the dog? Where do I put the groceries?”
It’s only 6.2 liters, but that’s 100 horsepower per liter. Estimated base price is 100,000 or more smackaroos.
They should be hogging out and supercharging the NorthStar.
The Chevy Small-Block was revolutionary in its time, but engine design has leapfrogged it.
Recent inline four-cylinder motorcycle engines sound better than the original Formula-One Ford Cosworth V8.

The “Chevrolet Small-Block” V8, introduced in the 1955 model-year at 265 cubic-inches, was a breakthrough design that put everything else on-the-trailer, and prompted copy-cats. I went through various enlargements, first to 283 cubic inches, then 327, and finally 350 cubic inches. It was also produced in other displacements — like 302 cubic inches for Trans-Am racing. The basic architecture is still in production.

Callaway, of Old Lyme, Conn., is a specialized manufacturer of hot-rodded Corvettes available through affiliated Chevrolet dealers.