1st September 1931: Swiss engineer M Gerder at Arles, France on his way to Spain in his ‘Motorwheel’, a motorcycle with a wheel which runs on a rail placed inside a solid rubber tyre. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)
Discovered at Weather.com
It was 8.58, and still raining, when I was ready to mount up after meeting a student at the Northgate Panera Bread. Too late to return the Netflix in the Givi tailpack without penalty. “Oh well, I won’t tell Mike,” I thought, because he hates it when a free rental winds up costing a dollar.
I backed the Transalp out of the parking slot, mounted up and pressed the starter, my mind more on the Netflix return than starting up. Sputter, sputter. Sigh. It’s been so long since this happened; must be the rain. Flip the engine cut-off switch off and back on. Sputter, sputter. Press the starter again. Rumble rumble!
At 9 pm in June in Seattle, it’s still not dark, even on a wet day like today, although visibility was, to put it kindly, limited. I merge into heavier-than-expected northbound I-5 traffic and make my way carefully over to the car pool lane.
No sooner than I make it over, the bike slows down.
Katie With Frisbee : 4 Aug 2011
I need an OT category. 
About 10 days ago, Katie exhibited signs of lameness, pain and possible dysentery, but we fairly quickly worked out that the problem wasn’t intestinal. It was her back.
I just got the results of the radiologist report. She has a narrowing of the spine at the lumbosacral junction. It’s not “definitive” but there appears to be some spondylosis as well.
She is responding to anti-inflammatories (vetprofen) and pain meds (tramadol). We started that routine on Monday. We’ve slowly decreased the pain meds, and today she ran up the stairs even though this morning she was not able to jump up into bed. (Yes, I know I need to discourage exertion – she took me by surprise.)
I’ve not ridden all year due to health issues. Mike borrowed the Transalp and picked up a nail. Oops! And we’re going to northern California in about 10 days.
The Avon Gripsters have lots of tread, so no need to replace the rubber. We just needed to pull the rear tire so we can take it in to get the tube changed. I’d never done this before. On any bike!
I love John Thaw. Mike loves John Thaw. We fell in love with this accomplished British actor in the BBC series Inspector Morse (1987-2000), and we watched the series, sequentially, thanks to Netflix.
We wanted more, and discovered Kavanah Q.C., where Thaw plays barrister James Kavanagh. As with most BBC drama, each episode is punctuated with stories from Thaw’s life (wife and two children, who become adults during the course of the series) as well as the lives of his fellow barristers (particularly Jeremy).
Organizing our viewing of “Inspector Morse” was straightforward because each disk was numbered. Not the case for Kavanagh Q.C. (1995-2001), where John Thaw plays a barrister. For anyone else who wants to watch these in order on Netflix, here’s the mapping. Note that two sets are not available on Netflix.
This arrived in my work email today. I don’t see a lot of spam or phishing email — Google does a good job of shuffling it off into a dark folder — but the Angel investor line in this one caught my eye. (Heh – I read it as “Apple” on first glance.) Helpful note to spammers: check your capitalization (and punctuation) if you are impersonating people who would be writing formally.
(more…)
Mike is halfway through replacing the heater core in our 1992 F150 (extended cab, 4×4). I thought I’d post with the resources we used for this labor-intensive but parts-inexpensive repair job. Note: he did not have to remove the dash; he’s done everything through the glove box.