Coop's Corner: A Busy Weekend

Friday, June 15, 2012

A Busy Weekend

This weekend at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds our Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club is joining forces with the Viking Chapter of the Antique Motorcycle Club of America for their annual Bike Show. I've got the little 1962 Honda C105 55cc trailbike loaded and will be at the fairgrounds tomorrow, hoping for a chance to win "Oldest Bike" at the VJMC judging Saturday afternoon. There are older Japanese bikes around but not that many. Of course the Antique Club has machines that go back decades older. We're all counting on great attendance and a huge number of bikes to be on display.

Tomorrow evening our son is coming home for a couple weeks on Leave from his home base of Camp LeJeune. In early July he's being deployed to Africa and naturallly we're very anxious to see him and do all we can to maximize our time together before he heads off to foreign soil. His presence at home is going to be all the Father's Day giving that I need.

Last night's 4" rainfall was more than our driveway slab could handle. The slab's condition has been deteriorating over time, in place since the early 50's when my uncles poured it across the dry run our driveway crosses. I knew we were in for trouble last night when I looked out and saw the ponds that were forming in our very sloped fields and my concern was enough to prevent a good night's sleep. We've wondered before but this time I just knew deep inside that this morning would present a very unpleasant picture and it did.

Due to schedules and vehicles needed by the rest of the family, I intended to ride one of the bikes to work today. Hopping on the TranZalp this morning, it was the bike with tires able to cope with the 6" of lovely loam that was on the driveway and that should have STAYed on the cornfield. We were fortunate to avoid the drift-logs that so often have accompanied our valley's floods but I'd have taken the logs in preference to the broken up, displaced and upended chunks of slab that I encountered. I navigated through the mess, then turned around to help Peg navigate her way through so that at least she could go to work. There was barely room for a single vehicle to slowly ease through the deep muck and still avoid the huge holes but we got through it. I drove up to the road, Peg took over and headed to Minneapolis.

I walked back and started the tractor (still had the winter plowing snowchains on) so that I could attempt to move one huge chunk of slab so the girls would be able to get out this afternoon. I did nothing with the mud, deciding that getting it dried out would only be a good thing. Since it had been months since our non-snow winter demanded the tractor's running, I was relieved that the tractor started so easily. Bouncing down to the ditch with the chains on and then quickly getting the slab moved enough to provide a pathway out went reasonably well. Back up the driveway, off the tractor, got myself suited up again for the bike ride in and still made Minneapolis by 7AM.

So, a relatively big issue to deal with but for the time being, this weekend at least, it's more motorcycles, time with our Marine and Father's Day.

Inside the Pavillion with mostly Viking Chapter Antique Club bikes. For the most part, the VJMC machines were outside, some under the tent while many were out in the parking lot.

Our driveway under rushing water, just over 9" in 7 days.....

1 comment:

Erik RJune 30, 2012 at 7:23 AM
I just watched the driveway video. Wow, that's a lot of water!!
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Others say....

"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)