Detail of Moto Light

Detail of Moto Light
Originally uploaded by mojohand.

Love these lights on my motorcycle! They improve my visibility and how visible I am to others. Thoguh expensive, they are definitely worth it.
Remember--we motorcyclists are out there! Be careful and watch for us.

More on the RidgeRunners' Ride 2007

Pictures of the ride.

The route was, starting in Richmond, then

• West on River Road to SR 6
  
• SR6 west through Scottsville (still torn up), with a side trip to Schuyler, VA (home of Walton's Mountain creater Earl Hamner, Jr.)
  
• US 29 S to Colleen (after lunch in Lovingston).
  
• SR 56 west to Piney Grove, then SR 778 west/southwest to US 60.
  
• US 60 to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
  
• South on the BRP to SR 130
  
• SR 130 west to Natural Bridge, VA

Spent the night at the hotel there (20% discount for motorcyclists, with the coupon from the hotel's page)

• Sunday north on US 11 (with a stop at Foamhenge!)
  
• Putz around Lexington looking for an open coffee shop (couldn't find one!) Grab some fruit at Kroger's, then stop for fuel outside of town.
  
• SR 39 west through Goshen Pass, with stops at the Maury River and Dan Ingall's Overlook.
  
• SR 39 west to US 220 north, stopping for lunch in Monterey, VA.
  
• US 220 north to West Virginia. Shortly after crossing the line, SR 25 east to SR 21 North to Brandywine, WV.
  
• US 33 east all the way back to Richmond,, with a stop on Shenandoah Mountain, fuel before the Blue Ridge, discover low oil, stop in Ruckersville looking for oil, stop in Gordonsville for a chocolate malted & a quart of 10W40 dino (mixing with my 10W50 synth, due to low oil).

Approx. 440 miles round trip, 9.5 hours in the saddle, top speed 102mph (for me, not Dave & Ray), average speed 44 mph, average fuel 39 mpg.

Tired from the Weekend, but Oh How Much Fun!  My brother Ray and my best friend Dave went motorcycling this weekend. They drove up from Georgia (Dave from Rising Fawn, picking Ray up in Lawrenceville NE of Atlanta) with Dave's new-to-him 1996 Honda Magna 750. I had Ray's '92 Nighthawk 750 here.
More about the trip later, including pictures posted to Flickr. Suffice it to say, however, that we had a blast on Saturday & Sunday! Blue Ridge, Shenandoah, and a bit of West Virginia heaven.

And they say the surge is working... Looks like Gen. Petraeus got some 'splainin' to do.

Is Apple Still Cool?  Has Apple still got it? Forbes has an interesting discussion. I still think it is and will continue to innovate.

So It Goes.  RIP, Billy Pilgrim. May you live forever on Tralfamidor.

Shopping for Records  Went to Plan 9 Records the other day. While browsing through the LPs, I was struck by how many of them came from my peak period of record-buying—1971 through 1982 or so. Artists like Dan Fogelberg, Billy Joel, Frank Zappa, and so many others show up. It's almost like a slice of musical time.

The Wayback Machine Redux  Yes, it's me, on Broad Street in St. Elmo...the area at the foot of Lookout Mountain, across from the Incline Pharmacy and almost next door to Kay's Kastle ice cream store Good gravy! What was I thinking back then?
Lord, look at that collar! I was wearing the "uniform" of McCallie School, which by that time had turned simply private...before, it was military, from 1908 until 1971.

Capturing the Past  In a few weeks I'm planning a motorcycle weekend. My middle bro Ray and my high-school friend Dave are planning to come up from Georgia (Lawrenceville & Rising Fawn, respectively). Dave's bringing his Honda Magna 750 in the back of his truck, while Ray will pick up his Honda Nighthawk 750 I picked up for him.

The goal is to ride for a day or two together, and then they'll pakc both bikes into the truck & diddy mau back to Georgia. All three of us are re-entry bikers, with me having the most riding experience lately, about 60,000 miles in the past five years. Dave picked his bike up about a month ago, while Ray just recently got his license.

I first rode on Dave's 1971 Honda 450 in the summer of '72. He even took me to get a haircut on it. I remember riding a hundred miles an hour on the back of the bike, wearing my McCallie blazer, while we raced to the back of Lookout Mountain to get to a barber we knew...who was closed. We then had to race to the foot of the mountain, where the St. Elmo barber was still open.

The next year, Ray bought a brand-new Honda 450. I vividly recall the first day he brought it home, stalling out as he humped and bumped it up the hill to our Franklin Street/Bragg Avenue house. I also vividly remember our mother absolutely collapsing in tears on the living room floor when she learned he'd bought a bike.

Now, 35 years later, the three of us will ride together. It's sort of a nostalgia trip for me in a way...the three of us were close those early '70s summers, and now, three decades later, we have a chance to spend some time together.

Bellagio at night

Bellagio at night
Originally uploaded by mojohand.

It was fun being in Vegas...up to a certain point. Winning almost $400 at roulette was a gas. Having to breathe my room neighbor's cigarette smoke and the gambers' smoke was not.

Still, Vegas is Vegas. The fact that they do what they do and do it well is great. American commerce at its most designed.

Oh, and the conference was great!

Social Economics  Sitting in McCarran Airport in Lo$t Wage$ after the IA Summit with Jason Hobbs and Andrea & Everett Wiggins, we got to talking about social network analysis (Andrea's field) and non-commercial Internet transactions (Jason's recent research topic). Andrea was talking about the interactions of people in Internet cafes in Ecuador. Jason was mentioning that, in South African Internet cafes, no banking or credit card transactions are occurring because of security concerns. They were coming close to a synchronicity of sorts, when I suddenly said, "Social economics."

Both of them kinda turned to me and said, "Hmmmm, yeah, you might have something there." Small smiles of growing recognition that, maybe, there's something there. What if there is a sense of an economy in social interactions that is not based on currency but rather on social costs and benefits? I think there might be something here worth pursuing.

One of the core things that's so cool about the conference is the web of connections that occur. so, grnted, I and Keane spent some chunk of change in my attending the conference. But think about it—I gained friendship, knowledge, and inspiration for my investment in time, extroversion, and, yes, even space invasion (that idea that I allow others to interfere with my sense of space).

Content analysis

Content analysis
Originally uploaded by mojohand.

took a great pre-conference workshop from Indi Young on Friday. Matching content to task groups (and spaces!) is pretty mind-numbingly tedious.

Vegas Bound!  I'm leaving on Thursday for the Information Architecture Summit 2007 in Las Vegas. I'm definitely looking forward to it. It's the one conference I've attended since its inception. Indeed, I've been to almost every one that's occurred:

• Boston
• San Francisco
• Montréal
• Vancouver.

I missed only two summits (albeit in rather cool locations: Portland, OR and Austin, TX.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Back Home  After spending the past five months in almost non-stop travel, I'm home...for awhile.Other than VA Beach this coming weekend for the Shamrock Race and the following weekend for the IA Summit in Vegas, I'll be working outta the house. Nice! Good to be able to walk the dog, ride the bike, get clothes out of my own closet instead of a suitcase, and go to klatsch at Betsy's.

In other words, lead a normal life.

Yet More Hidden Costs  So it now comes out that the surge isn't just 21,000 troops. From the AP:

Gates said that the request for extra MPs is in addition to the 21,500 combat troops that President Bush is sending for the Baghdad security plan and 2,400 other troops designated to support them.

Gordon England, the deputy defense secretary, told Congress earlier this week that the number of required support troops could reach 7,000.

So, that means, 21,000 + 2,200 MPs + 2,400 other troops = 25,600 extra troops...which could be 29,000. Go figure.

Why Do Republicans Hate the Troops?  Endemic to the Repbulican party is the hollow flag-draping and bloody shirt-waving posturing of the party as being "tough on defense." Instead and indeed, the truth is that the GOP is the party of big pockets for defense contractors. The recent revelations of deplorable Abu Ghraib-like conditions in Walter Reed and other outpatient care facilities shows just how little the Republican-dominated Congress and Administration care for the broken cannon fodder it has been sending to an illegal, ill-conceived war in Iraq. So the next time a Repub sez he's voting for Cantor or McCain or Gilmore or Giuliani or even John Webb, remember that these guys belong to the party that has, for at least the last seven years, gutted veteran's care.
Never forget, just like an elephant never forgets.

VCU Wins!  'Nuff said! But sitting in Cambridge, Mass, watching my alma matter spank Geo. Mason. I think it's great—a come-from-behind victory that's as thrilling as any end of a game I've seen.

Me, Jorge, and Susheet

Me, Jorge, and Susheet
Originally uploaded by mojohand.

Note the depth of the snow, relative to our legs--it's up to our knees! This shot is in Barre-Berlin, Vermont, just south of Montpelier. Too, this shot is on Thursday, when we ventured out to the Applebee's next to the Comfort Inn. Much, much snow.

Jonesing for a Ride So the weather sucks, I'm stuck in Boston, my bike's in Virginia, and I really wanna ride. I've been reading Alexis' stories lately. Man, there's a woman who rides! 50K miles last year. Crazy, or what?

I'd love to be able to do that. Tonight, Captain Bob & I were chatting about riding. We were talking about doing the four corners....7,000 miles in 21 days. He said, "That's really not too bad—400 miles a day as an average." I reminded him, though, that we'd be somewhere else...Key West or San Diego when we finished. He said, "Yeah, but then it doesn't matter how long it takes to get back."

To which I replied, "Uh, well, if I still have to work, it does."

The life of a retired guy.