Coop's Corner: Skills?

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Skills?

This fellow has them, at least he's got this one nailed down very well.......

Very Skilled

Dave shared this with us at Coffee yesterday morning.....go ahead, watch it more than once, we all have. I can sometimes seem to make curved lines with a a straightedge, can't imagine how he can make properly curved lines freehand. After the many lies and less serious fabrications around the big tables at Diamond's, some of us made our way downtown to Scooterville for Cabin Fever 2016.

A good crowd coming and going, anything for many of us to break winter's spell and dream of riding in the open, much warmer air. Back a few years, I'd ridden a couple of times with the Minn-Max Twin Cities Scooter Club and many of their members drifted in and out while I was there. The previous owner of my Morphous among them (he's still got his Scarabeo for sale).

Jonathan mentioned the yellow Grom in the shop, so I had to poke my head in there to see that.

I had a pink one just like this Buddy.....and I do miss it......the whitewalls were a bit more demanding cleaning-wise than ol' Coop was comfortable with though.

Note the Corazzo sign..... items were all marked down and I hadn't paid much attention to anything on the racks for the first couple of hours that I was there. Then and I have no idea why, the brown leather jackets caught my eye. I so wanted to be Just Like David but it was not to be....nothing on the racks fit me. I'm sure my checkbook was much happier that I walked out of the establishment with only the Hepco/Becker saddlebag units and w/o that very fine, so wonderfully soft and luxurious leather riding jacket too. At this point, I'm STILL not in the Corazzo club and I was thaaat close.

Today's most exciting development has been the late afternoon turkey migration. The birds have literally spent a good part of the day on a piece of the lawn that I plow to prevent snow drifting over the driveway. It's essentially a grass parking lot and the birds, when they weren't picking the crab apples out of the tree, were out there foraging.

The first ones were quite orderly because they hadn't yet noticed me in the window.

Here are a couple of fliers, more in the middle of the pack, they decided the gate opening a bit too restrictive, flying over the fence instead.

This last one is in flying form, ready to taxi, landing gear almost up.

This afternoon I see that we've got a single row of turkey tracks ......on the garage roof.

8 comments:

Dar January 25, 2016 at 1:16 AM
Wow that was pretty amazing! Hell I can't even paint my nails withput making a tragic mess.

Love the orange scoot. Have you checked online anywhere for a javket in your size? I like brown leather more than black, it just looks softer somehow classier.

Thats a lot of turkeys if you want to scare em away do you open the window and holler "Roasting pan, stuffing & cranberries!!!" I think if I heard that & I was a turkey I'd be gone. ;)
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redlegsridesJanuary 25, 2016 at 10:38 AM
Yep, definitely a cool skill to have that....seen similar videos of Beemer gas tanks getting similar lines....
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RichardMJanuary 25, 2016 at 12:30 PM
Time to start practicing...

I've been thinking of painting the Beemer but I would lose all of the cool pinstriping. That's where everything stops and I don't think about it again for another year...
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TrobairitzJanuary 26, 2016 at 12:24 PM
The Groms are interesting. While I think they might be a hoot to ride, I wouldn't want to ride them far.
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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)