Bueller? Bueller?

Text, Not Voice

A law passed in January 2006 will take effect on July 1, 2008, prohibiting people from talking on handheld cellular phones while driving in California. The solution is to use the cellphone's speakerphone feature (if available), or a hands-free headset (wired or wireless). Oh yes, another option being to abstain from using the phone altogether.

However, the law does not preclude anyone from using the cellphone to send and receive text messages. Hmm. The lawmakers want to make sure your lips and ears are not preoccupied, but will allow your eyes to be diverted from the road? Thumbs too? Last I checked, the thumbs were part of the hand, as in "hands-free". Yeah, makes a lot of sense.

Sodom

Hehe, leave it to a Sacramento Bee reader to write in and suggest that Northern California catching fire all at once had something to do with the timing, burning shortly after the decree that gay marriage shall be deemed legal in the state.

It's no more than 90 degrees outside, but here I am indoors with the a/c (may as well, after having plunked down a fortune to replace the old unit) just to avoid the bad air as much as possible.

Holy Smokes!

I was riding west along Hwy120 toward Mono Lake in California's Eastern Sierra on Tuesday afternoon. The sky was noticeably hazy and no doubt was due to smoke from forest fires... but where, I wondered, was it burning?

I reached Hwy395 and headed up the road to the eastern entrance to the Yosemite valley, pulled into the Tioga Gas Mart (and Whoa Nellie Deli) to gas up and ask a few questions. Spoke to a guy who was riding a sportbike adorned with luggage similarly to my setup. He had been touring as far as the coast and informed me that there were big fires near Monterey. I later learned that there were 800 fires burning, many of them ignited by lightning strikes (there's a lotta dry tinder out there!).

I still haven't found news details on what's going on with all the smoke in the air (and hence, where it was burning), but the particulates certainly can't be good for anyone's health. A bit of advice for those travelling the Eastern range: be prepared to spend dearly for your fuel. It'll cost you over 5 bucks a gallon for the cheap 87 octane stuff (as it also did back in Tonopah, NV)!

Holy smokes!

Iowa

Here is something that was emailed to me by a friend:

Have you all noticed that Cedar Rapids is under 10 feet of water?

Thousands upon thousands of people are displaced?

Have you noticed that nobody is looting every empty property in sight?

Have you noticed that nobody is shooting at rescuers?

Have you noticed any victims on TV wondering where the federal government is to 'take care of them'? Or, have you noticed victims, who have lost everything, make comments like 'life goes on', 'we'll just need to pick up the pieces and start over', and 'at least we still have our life'.

Maybe Barack could help make victims of these survivors as well, convince them that they aren't strong enough to take care of themselves, that they're not smart enough to survive.

Maybe we should subsidize their lives for the next 2+ years, free housing, $2000/month to not work...

Just food for thought.

Summer Solstice 2008

This was nearly a week ago, but since I have been on a cyber hiatus and pretty much isolated from all things Internet (including email and blogging), I'm posting this now. Yup. The first day of summer passed us by last Friday evening, marking the longest day and shortest night of the year. What was I doing when the summer solstice arrived on June 20th, just shy of 5:00pm PDT?

Getting ready for a night on the town, Flagstaff style. Not whoop-it-up partying, but an evening which began at the Wine Loft for wine and hors d'oeuvres followed by grub at a cafe elsewhere. Casual, as it should be. At 7000' elevation, the temps were pleasant (where the highs were in the mid-80s, not sure about after sunset tho'). It's a college town of around 60,000 population, so it's no surprise that there were plenty of activity happening downtown. It is also admirable that the downtown plaza (outdoors) is family-friendly with food vendors and a portable movie screen set up for a G-rated film (some animated movie was playing this Friday, "Ratatouille" perhaps?).

So enjoy those BBQs while the daylight still extends late into the day!

Space

The final frontier. These are the voyages of the... uh, wait a minute. Nope, this isn't a Star Trek post and I'm not about to go on about the Starship Enterprise, although aliens were the reason that triggered the thought. I was in Las Vegas this morning (where I spent the night, arriving the previous evening after a four hour ride from Flagstaff, AZ), and there's no escaping the geography on my ride home to Northern California.

Nellis Air Force Base. The Nevada Test Site. Area 51. See? Aliens! Hence, the association with outer space, as in "visitors from"... and what happens here also stays here.

The celestial objects in space can be viewed through telescopes from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. Or, thanks to the Dark Skies project you can peruse the heavens with naked eyes.

There's the vast expanse of desert that makes for wide open spaces and was pretty hard to ignore, since riding motorcycles requires concentration and I was without any music under the helmet. Save for what tunes rolled around in that ol' grey matter occupying the space between the ears of course.

We now come to cyberspace, which I had abandoned when I went on vacation. Left all internet-capable devices at home. No websurfing, no email, and none to be had at my friend's house.

Just thought I'd ramble a bit and take up some precious blog space, plus my chance to announce that:

I'm baaack!

Go Boston!

What better way to finish a 66 game winning season than to capture the 2008 NBA Championship? It may not have been an excitingly close final game, but it was an exciting rout nevertheless. Quite a lopsided 39 points at that. It was great to see Kevin Garnett finally get that elusive ring after all those many years and how he fit into the roster (of Pierce, Allen, et al).

Although I don't watch sports per se, preferring to participate rather than sitting in the audience, watching these Boston guys play just might convert me into a Celtics fan.

GO BOSTON!

The Middle

I'll say it again, 2008 has been an expensive year and it isn't even half over yet. My bike. Home. Bike and bike again. And I'm sure more home is lurking in the shadows. But, I am in the middle... yes I'm feeling the $ hit, but there are many who are struggling with much worse. And there are those who are enjoying their luxuries.

We are in the middle.

As to your health, there are those healthier, and those who are less fortunate. Those who are thinner, taller, prettier, funnier, smarter... in contrast to those who are fatter, shorter, more plain, somber, slower. No pity, no envy. The middle.

Such is the harmony of the yin and the yang.

Thank the Kings

Thanks to the NBA Sacramento Kings, the Boston Celtics will win the 2008 NBA Championship. Why? Because of the controversy surrounding Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Semifinals between the Kings and the Los Angeles Lakers, league officiating are under greater scrutiny, that's why.

When Game 5 between the Celtics and the Lakers become history come tomorrow, we shall see if all the marketing types, all the sponsors, all those who stand to financially gain from lucrative Games 6 and 7, will allow this weekend to mark the end of the 2008 season.

Call it Karma.

First Grass

A friend from the past called earlier today, asking if I'd be interested in playing in a tournament tomorrow at UC Davis, CA. The last time I played was probably last September... or October. That's over half a year ago!

It's a men's doubles grass volleyball tournament, and my first grass outing in 2008. Even for fun, let alone a tournament. Oh, and the temps may reach triple digits too.

This will be interesting, since both Dave and I have had a long hiatus from this format. Next up (the following Saturday) I will be playing with friends in Flagstaff, AZ in a coed quads grass tourney. At 7000' elevation, it oughtta be a little cooler than tomorrow's local forecast.

Everything Not So Zen

Phil Jackson, coach of the NBA Los Angeles Lakers after losing Game 2 to the Boston Celtics in the Finals (click here):

"I'm more struck by the fact that Leon Powe gets more foul shots than our whole team does in (Powe's) 14 minutes of play," Jackson said, even mispronouncing the Celtic forward's name to add insult to his 13-10 free throw edge. "That's ridiculous."

As I see it, 2002 was not that long ago when the shoe was on the other foot, the Lakers going on to win the championship via the Sacramento Kings. The series included a controversial Game 6 where the Kings had a substantial lead that was sure to clinch the Western Conference title. Instead, the Lakers managed to step up to the free-throw line 27 times in the fourth quarter alone. Listen, Los Angeles is a big consumer market and this was a well-publicized rivalry that it would be a lucrative move to extend the playoff to a full seven games. Yeah, I'm still whining... just like the Zen Master is doing now.

What goes around comes around, so they say.

Five Bucks?

California gasoline prices currently average over $4.00 per gallon, me having just filled up my motorcycle's tank yesterday at $4.45 per gallon. The forecast earlier this year is that the rising price of gas will put a damper on many people's vacation plans. Mine is coming up soon, and it doesn't look like the prices are about to fall. On the contrary, there has been some speculation that we may be paying $5.00 per gallon before year's end!

I still plan on riding to Flagstaff, AZ. I've had enough episodes this first half of 2008 that a vacation will be a welcome relief. Figure the cost of therapy these days (psycho- or otherwise) and my trip's expense will seem rather reasonable.

Damn the five bucks... something will eventually give.

Follow Me

I haven't yet figured out how to set up an RSS feed for my website, but then again, I don't have a product or service that might warrant creating one (that anyone would bother to subscribe to anyway). Perhaps it is because of its blogcentric nature, being more personal than commercial (or informational)... and a Twitter account would be just the ticket. At least the ads tell me that this is a tool to have for a down-and-dirty social network.

I opened an account in January of this year but haven't updated my tweets regularly.

Check out the sidebar and scroll down to the Twitter updates; click on the link to "follow me on Twitter" (as if anyone would bother to subscribe to this over an RSS feed). Tweets are limited to 140 characters in length, so it's possible people will find this brevity more socially acceptable.

TwitLit

"'Time travel works!' the note read. 'However you can only travel to the past and one-way.' I recognized my own handwriting and felt a chill."

That was Ron Gould's winning entry in Copyblogger's Twitter Writing Contest, which is promoting an emerging (?) literary art form dubbed TwitLit. Gives new meaning to short in short stories! Click here for the L.A. Times link.