I’m driving home listening to NPR, a show called The Infinite Mind and today’s episode was part II about a disease called Aspberger’s Syndrome. Oh, my God, what an uncanny sense of “Whoa…” it was. The link to the audio program (part II) is Here
Without repeating my comments, this sure sounds like a really plausable explanation for all the hassles I’ve had. It just strikes me as a voice from my past.
Sorry for the lack of updates the past few days. 12 hour shifts with no blog connectivity really don’t make for happy blogging love.
Driving home this morning, listening to NPR on WAMU, The Writer’s Almanac pointed out that on this day in 1937, JRR Tolkien first published “The Hobbit”, and the title of this post were the first words written on the story in 1928.
It was on this day in 1937 that J.R.R. Tolkien published his first novel, The Hobbit. He was a professor at Oxford, and in the summer of 1928, he was in the middle of grading a stack of student papers when he wrote the sentence, “In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit.” He had no idea where the word “hobbit” came from. It had just popped into his head. He later wrote: “[Hobbits] are (or were) a little people … inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow naturally leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it).”
Thank you, Mr Tolkien, may you look down and smile. Thank you, NPR, for the reminder 🙂
Some very special Gypsy got this old wolf one of his own prints for his birthday. Not only did she get the print, she got it on the canvas instead of photo paper, something I’ve been meaning to do for some time. I haven’t priced it out yet, because I hadn’t seen a sample. Of course, now I have no further excuses… but it sure does look neat. Here’s the picture in question :=)
Today’s is Madeleine L’Engle, author of “A Wrinkle in Time”, “A Wind in the Door”, and “A Swiftly Tilting Planet”. For myself, I grew up dreaming of tesseracts and visiting Patagonia someday :=)
The interesting juxtaposition of the death of Luciano Pavoratti and the spectacular eruption of Mt. Aetna both of which were coverred on CNN late last night…
And I’m currently watching news reports a little more closely… a LOT more closely… Glad I elected not to go through Kansas for starters. Mile-wide tornados? Odessa just got pummeled on Wednesday with upwards of 4 feet of flooding… according to Krys, in about 45 minutes., and softball sized hail being reported in parts. Here’s for hoping I don’t have to ride through anything like THAT. I don’t think my headlight protector would stand up to hitting ice-softballs at 80mph.
So pre-trip jitters are starting… “What am I riding into?” Well, it’s going to be an adventure no matter which way it goes 🙂
I think I’ll figure in mornings for music, afternoons for weather radio reports. At least till I get through the plains. Mountain weather is unpredictable, sure… but it doesn’t have time to get REALLY horrible! It may be boring and repetitive, but it could very well save my life, my bike, or my wallet. Thankfully, I had the foresight to purchase a little am/fm/wr from radio shack…
Well as of tonight, I’ll be absolutely 100% ready. The highway pegs work exactly how I wanted them to, I’ve got all my toiletries and foodstuffs received, purchased, and ready to be packed. The bike has been serviced, has new tires, is running at 110% of BMW perfection, and is chomping at the bit to get going. She knows. I can tell.
The only thing that remains… a few color-coded keychains to identify one bag from another for convenience, and about 10 more caribiners to make the packing job easier. I was thinking about picking up 4 of the dual caribiner strap thingies from REI, but they are 10-12$ each and climbing grade… I can snap 3-4 caribiners together at $1/ea for what I need and save myself 30$…
Truly, whoever invented the caribiner deserves every dollar they ever made for the invention.
4 days, 12 hours… getting closer. A LOT closer.
Here’s a nice little play picture of the bike taken up at Kirsten’s:
Too bad there’s no real solid way to attach it! Ah, well…. maybe I’ll find a more solid one on the road somewhere.
Well, in addition to all of my flight arrangements, emails, phone calls and 12 hour days at work, I managed to get 4-5 more prints up on TerraWolf and get a pretty good stab at a major site makeover. Feel free to peruse the new look of the site at http://www.terrawolf.com
There’s still quite a bit to do there, and quite a bit of html to write into it, but the hard part, basically, is done. Now it’s just the -tedious- part… writing help&information documents. Somewhere in the middle of this, I’ll of course be doing the fun part.. preparing and posting awesome photos of… well, everything.
Soooo last night, after some gyrations between myself, Garmin, and my desktop, I told Misty about the trip. All my routes, waypoints, and maps have been finalized, downloaded to the unit and posted up online on the routes page. Huzzah!
Everything I needed except the highway pegs have been recieved. Huzzah!
Tire decision has been made, and I’ll have a set of Annakee’s put on Wednesday. Huzzah!
Had an interesting reflection on the way to work that was partially related to a conversation I had with someone earlier… but this trip was planned, conceived, and thrown together as a single man, and it feels strange doing it as a not-quite-single-man-anymore man. Born of an idea to just -ride- it remains just that… but.. well. Just finding myself wishing I had more room on the back, and someone else had time. Probably for the best though, there’s going to be some LONG days on the back. On the plus side, I think the Gypsy will be as addicted to riding as I am, all the signs are there… so it looks promising for future two-bike trips 🙂 She’s just gotta learn how to ride….
All that said, I’m beyond ready to go… nervousness has been replaced by excitement… and the rush of realising that a few months worth of prep is about to be synthesized into a wonderfully fun summer. Assuming my tusch holds up, of course, but looks like it won’t be a problem, if it is, it will go away after I get to Bill Mayer Saddles in Ojai.
Well, I’m down to the last 3 things on my list, and all 3 have been ordered. I got sick of it raining inside my left side bag, so I ordered a few packs of desiccant (silica gel for the uninitiated) to toss in my bags and keep things nice and dry. Second, being relatively unimpressed by the camp foods that I tried, and remembering being rather impressed by the MRE’s I’ve had, I ended up ordering a case of MRE’s from the source… will probably toss 5-6 of them in the hard cases for legs 2, 3, and 4… better than bland alfredo and crunchy beans. Anything else, I’ll just buy there, ya know? The last piece was a pair of highway pegs for the hepco-becker bags, to keep my legs from sliding off the heads when I’m relaxing.
Now it all just needs to make it here before 7pm, Tuesday, May 8…
You know, it’s kind of funny, but it just hit me… next week is my pre-trip maintenance. The last oil change before I leave, fresh plugs, fresh tires, and a good once-over from stem to stern. The Friday following, my last ride to work before I leave. Monday night, I’ll be packing the bike. Tuesday night, I ride to work fully loaded. And Wednesday morning, after some chicken fried steak and eggs at work…. I’m gone. I can do the math in my head… how many hours left… 369 hours. Tick.. tock… tick… tock…
