The Snail’s Eye View It’s been unusually rainy here the last few weeks. I say that even though I have never been here for an extended period and certainly not at this time of year, but I think I’m on safe ground saying that. We have had a few days like yesterday when it rained cats and dogs as they say. It was a rain that would have made people in the tropics wonder what…
Had a Car Like That Once Myself Today I saw a ray of hope that life as we know it may still go on. I bought a BMW R1250GS Adventure motorcycle from a friend up in Dutchess County. As I have written, he had a bad accident and has to sell an almost new motorcycle that he can no longer ride (technically, his wife says he can no longer ride). Since he is getting around…
The Mask of the Old Lone Ranger In 1961 I was seven years old and intended to start second grade in that Fall at the Spring Harbor School in Madison, Wisconsin. We had moved that summer from Turrialba, Cost Rica and I was going to transition from a one-room schoolhouse on the grounds of the Institute where by mother worked and we lived, to a middle-American suburban grade school during what has come to be…
Fast and Furious I keep two motorcycles out here in San Diego. My primary bike, as it has been since 1987, is a BMW. Beemers always start and rarely have problems. One time about seventeen years ago, on one of our May trips through Utah, the drive shaft rear end differential on my KLT bike shit the bed and caused me to let the group ride on to Durango while I waited in Moab for…
Doctoring-in-Place I went to my new doctor for an introductory visit today despite all this Coronavirus hullabaloo. As a recently moved senior citizen, I thought it was important to get set up with a new GP because you never know when you might need a doctor, right? I am not a guy who goes to the doctor with every little ache or pain, but I am also not adverse to going to see the doctor…
Bubbling Away in Coronaville It’s Monday morning of the first day of the rest of our lives. I like to say things that are indisputable and I think that ticks the box. It already feels different. I have called all three of my kids in the past twelve hours and checked to see that they and the grandgerms are OK. The initial report is that one had a skirmish with his wife over a family…
The Tea Tree Time I’m sure that herbalists and Aborigines will find this hilarious, but I have only recently discovered Tea Tree products. Somehow over the last year, probably when Kim was away somewhere, I was forced to do the unthinkable, go out into the commercial sector (in this case a Duane Reade Pharmacy) and buy my own shampoo. Can you imagine? I inadvertently bought some sort of Tea Tree shampoo and as soon as…
Social Distancing Damn, the lingo dictionary is expanding almost as exponentially fast as the Coronavirus is expanding. In one segment on MSNBC alone I heard them use the terms Social Distancing, Hand Hygiene and Respiratory Etiquette. Hand washing is well understood, though I recently saw a Facebook video explaining how to wash your hands properly and diligently and find that I’ve been doing it wrong all these years. That might explain a lot. As for…
It’s Always Something For many years I have been saying that if I ever get a yacht, I plan to name it Always Something. This was intended as a cheap bit of humor since I had and have no intention of ever having a yacht. If I was serious about it I would have called my house here in San Diego Always Something, but instead I called it Casa Moonstruck after my favorite movie. I’ve…
Lynching in the White House As you may have seen this week, the House of Representatives passed a bi-partisan bill to make lynching a Federal crime. I must admit, the issue had never occurred to me even though I am told that it has been a controversial issue in Congress for 150 years and has been voted down something like 200 times. This time there were only four holdouts (strangely enough, including Justin Amash of…