My Brain Hurts

I’ve been having strange dreams lately. Last night I had a dream that I wasn’t even in — I wasn’t even the narrator or anything. Someone finally did kill the robot, though… The night before, I had a dream that no one in my unit wanted to share a shelter-half with me, so I went through the whole area poking holes in other people’s mosquito netting and such and generally being mean-spirited to get even. The odd part about this is that I’m not in the military, and I’m generally a pretty nice guy – not one to poke holes in someone else’s tent. And if no one wanted to share a shelter-half with me I really wouldn’t have a problem with it anyway. Most likely I’d just mock up a hammock or something.

It bothers me when I have inexplicable or violent dreams.

I’ve been thinking of otters a lot lately, too.

Good Weekend

We had a good weekend. Saturday Dagmar and I went to Sioux Falls to visit my niece on her birthday. (My brother’s family only lives 25 miles from Sioux City, but they went to a fancy hotel in Sioux Falls so the kids could play in the water park the hotel had in the lobby.) That was fun! If I get time later I’ll post a photo or two… Small children all hopped-up on sugar in a swimming pool – what could be more fun than that? Too bad there weren’t any otters there…

Saturday night we stopped in Sioux Center to munch on a steak with some ALR friends of ours. That was fun, too. They served beer there. I always like that.

Sunday I finished up a web site I designed for the Northwest Iowa chapter of the American Legion Riders. You can peek at it HERE if you want. I enjoy doing stuff like that, but I’m always glad when the majority of the brain-sweat is done and I can sit back and relax for a few minutes. I’m really happy I got involved in the ALR. Couldn’t ask for better people to be around.

The only fly in the ointment was hearing the Packers were on the short end of a 38-10 score against the Jets. That makes me sad.

Long Time, No Smoke

The original reason I started this blog almost a year and a half ago was to give me something to do between twitches as I quit smoking. (You can read the first bloodshot and grouchy posts I wrote HERE — the earliest posts are at the bottom.) I’m very proud and a little surprised that I’ve been nicotine-free for so long, but I’m constantly surprised at how often the addiction makes itself known.

“Vy do you roll your window down when you chew gum?” asked my beloved Viennese bride the other day as we drove to Sioux Falls. “Every time you pop gum in your mouth you roll the vindow down a few inches.”

“Well,” I answered, “I roll the window down to let the smoke out, of course…”

I keep gum in my “cigarette” pocket. I’m done with smoking, but I still reach for my cigarettes about once every twenty minutes… (For those of you who know me in person, you know I also keep my digital camera in my cigarette pocket. I’ve taken almost 20,000 photos since I’ve quit smoking…)

I read the other day in a magazine that nicotine actually alters some chemical receptors in your brain so your brain can accept the nicotine. With some people that happens the first time nicotine is in their bloodstream, other times it’s the second or third time (which is why some people will try smoking once or twice and never mess with it again while others are addicted from the very get-go). But it’s a physical change that occurs in your brain. Once it happens, you can’t un-do it — you’re always, forever addicted to nicotine. That actually made me feel better… I’m not an addict, I’m just brain-damaged is all.

Generally, not smoking doesn’t bother me a bit any more. Until I drink coffee or beer – then I get all wistful and twitchy again… The only time I’m in any real danger of smoking is when I’m in a bar drinking beer (which doesn’t happen all that often any more, now that I’m not in a band), and I’ve learned how to cope with that for the most part. But every now and then I’ll find myself leaning over an ashtray, breathing it all in…

If the doctor came up to me today and told me I had some rare tropical disease and I only had a month to live, I’d probably go out and buy some cigarettes. But I’ve still got some forty or fifty years ahead of me, and I’ve already gained the weight, so I may as well stay quit. I am truly happier this way. I can go to a movie if I want now without worrying about smoking. I can go to family events and enjoy myself instead of standing outside in the snow, smoking a cigarette, peeking through the window to see my family having fun. I can go to restaurants. I don’t feel ill much any more. It’s all good. It’s all good.

The State of the UN

I just saw on a news site that the United States ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, is going to step down. In case you forgot, Mr. Bolton is the angry man with the moustache that U.S. President G. Walker Bush chose to speak for us all at the United Nations a year or two ago. Normally, this position must be ratified by congress, but Mr. Bush knew Mr. Bolton wouldn’t get the votes needed to assume the position legally, so Mr. Bush waited until congress was in recess (didn’t have to wait long – this congress has spent more time on vacation than any other in history) and made a “Recess Appointment,” a legal technicality generally reserved for time of emergency, and threw Mr. Bolton into the limelight.

Well, Mr. Bolton has been doing his job there for a year or two, and to my knowledge hasn’t actually punched anyone yet, but his recess appointment is up — it’s time to go in front of congress and get officially voted into the office. I guess he’s not too optimistic about his chances; he’s not even going to try. He’s just quitting. The only atypical aspect of this is that a Bush appointee seems to be quitting BEFORE being arrested, and he doesn’t seem to be blaming anyone else for his own shortcomings.

This is good for both the U.S. and the U.N. Mr. Bolton was not very good at working with others. I’m hoping now that with a democratically controlled congress we can put someone with good people skills in place to represent us to the world.

NOW I’m hungry!

Holy buckets! Check this out… A 1-1/4 pound (cooked) burger for seven bucks! (Click HERE for details.) A buddy of mine in VROC kept saying last summer that we should take the time to ride from the Missouri to the Mississippi simply to eat a Gunderburger. Now I’m more apt to agree with him… Though Gunder is all the way across the state, it might just be worth the trip! (There’s an entire website devoted to the Gunderburger HERE.)

There’s a place in Nebraska just 25 or 30 miles west of Sioux City that has huge hamburgers like that… If you’re ever in the neighborhood, stop by Bob’s in Martinsburg. You won’t be disappointed. I’ve been to Bob’s several times over the past few years. It’s a hole in the wall, but the burgers are great!

Note: I did most of this from memory. If some of my facts look wrong, please feel free to go look ’em up! I’m writing this as accurately as I can, but like I said, I’m doing it from memory…

The Government MUST Lead…

Once upon a time, way back in the 1970s, the bell-bottom-wearing people here in the United States of America elected Jimmy Carter as our president. Mr. Carter soon found himself trying to manage a nation in the midst of an energy crisis. Mr. Carter repeatedly stressed the benefits of conservation and tried his best to wean the nation from its dependence on foreign oil. As a symbolic gesture, he ordered solar panels to be put on the White House. People started driving smaller cars and were starting to be more aware of our environment.

Thankfully, due to Mr. Carter’s foresight, the auto companies have had thirty years to develop electric and alternate fuel cars, solar panel technology has grown by leaps and bounds due to market demand, and, like Brazil, we’re now totally free of our dependence on foreign oil. Our farmers are selling American-grown crops to Americans to use as fuel. Most new houses built in the past fifteen years are “off the grid,” creating their own electricity through rooftop windmills and solar panels. Global greenhouse emissions are down. Everything’s peachy indeed!

Ha! Wouldn’t THAT have been nice? The truth is, we’re no farther now than we were in 1978. In fact, we’ve dug ourselves deeper. United States republican president Ronald Reagan took the solar panels off the White House roof in the early 1980s, and since then we’ve been driving bigger and bigger cars and generally ignoring the problem. (I guess it’s more important to start unneeded wars and argue about the morality of two women living together than it is to save our children’s planet. Silly me.)

Today, nearly 30 years after Mr. Carter started the conservation ball rolling, we’re facing unrest in the Middle East (where we get the bulk of our foreign oil supplies), oil prices have skyrocketed, and global warming is looming. It’s estimated that some parts of northern Eurasia and Alaska are now over 11 degrees warmer than they were a century ago. Some northern bears are suffering from insomnia and are skipping their winter hibernation altogether. Glaciers are retreating. Ice caps are melting. This is happening, and it’s serious. As an example of how things are changing, the other day it was 65 degrees here in Iowa — a rarity for late November — but it was snowing in Florida the same day. Soon this is going to affect more than polar bears (did you know that the polar bear population is now below 20,000 bears worldwide?) and will start affecting our climate. Think it doesn’t affect you? Think of how we’ve treated Mexico lately — building walls between our nations, snubbing them politically, etc. Now think of how they’re going to react in ten or fifteen years when we’re wanting to buy corn and wheat from THEM. It could happen, and if it does, be sure they’re gonna charge us plenty!

What can we do about it? Lots. A little scientific background first…

The most important ingredient in the global warming problem is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a normal part of the carbon cycle, but if too much of it gets into the earth’s atmosphere it causes a “greenhouse effect” – it traps the sun’s warmth below it. There is a fixed amount of carbon in the world – we can’t make more, and we can’t destroy it. The carbon is here, and we need to deal with it. The problem is that humans have been taking carbon out of a “sink” (sinks are places in the carbon cycle where carbon is sequestered over a long period of time), namely fossil fuels, and are putting that carbon into the atmosphere.

One of the prime movers of carbon is the plant kingdom. Through photosynthesis plants remove carbon dioxide from the air during the day and release oxygen back into the environment, keeping the carbon in the plant’s structure. Thus, biomass (the totality of plants) is considered a carbon sink. The carbon gets released back into the environment when the plant dies and decays or is burned (and at night plants actually “exhale” a little of the CO2 they absorbed during the day, but they do keep most if it). If the plant is buried under muck for millions of years, it turns into coal or oil — holding the carbon until the coal or oil is released. (This is where the greenhouse effect comes into play – we’ve been taking carbon sequestered in the fossil fuels and dumping it ALL into the environment in one big swoop.)

So… back to the question. What can we do about global warming? The way I see it, there are two main ways to go about it. The first is to follow Mr. Carter’s example and cut back on our use of fossil fuels, thus reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that gets into the environment and putting more carbon dioxide into the carbon sinks, sequestering it. The second option is to keep on using fossil fuels, but utilize some big-time brute-force engineering to lower the earth’s temperature. Most of the options I list below will fall into one of those two categories.

Prevention:

There are a lot of little things that can easily be done to help the environment. They will all be painful to someone somewhere, but most things can be done with a minimum of fuss.

LIGHTS: An example is the simple light bulb. I propose that our government ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs altogether, thus forcing us to gradually replace our existing light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs. Fluorescent bulbs are now being made that fit into existing light sockets, and they are four to six times more energy efficient than regular old incandescent bulbs. (From www.energystar.gov: “If every home in America replaced just one light bulb with a fluorescent bulb we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars.”)

I feel the government would need to ban the manufacture and sale of incandescent bulbs simply because the fluorescent bulbs cost about three bucks, a couple dollars more than regular old light bulbs, and most people don’t wanna spend the extra dollar or two for a light bulb. What most people don’t realize, however, is that in addition to saving a few pennies in fuel costs, the fluorescent bulbs last just about forever! I replaced the light bulbs in my house with the screw-in fluorescent bulbs a few years ago, and I haven’t had a single bulb burn out since. I used to replace a few bulbs about every six months or so… So the extra cost was well worth it! If we ban the manufacture and sale of the regular incandescent bulb it would be painful for the company that makes ’em, but surely the overall benefits to society outweigh the discomfort of re-tooling to manufacture a different style bulb.

“But how does a light bulb create greenhouse gases?” you may ask. Simple. The bulb doesn’t. But the energy used to light the bulb comes most often from a power plant that burns coal to make electricity. If we got our electricity from power plants that utilized solar, wind, tidal, nuclear or geothermal sources I guess it wouldn’t matter much what kind of light bulb we use.

INSULATION: This one’s simple, too. Newer houses are well-insulated, but often older existing homes aren’t. Couldn’t the government send a couple guys out to put weatherstripping around the doors and windows of older homes? It’s a cheap thing to do, but has a big impact. We could fund this through a slightly increased gas tax if we need to, or perhaps by taxing, say, regular old incandescent light bulbs.

GOVERNMENT EXAMPLE: If I were king for a day, I’d make a law that all government vehicles (with the exemption of military vehicles of course) be hybrid at the least, preferably all-electric or hydrogen powered. The technology is in place. This can be done. Think of how much money this would save the taxpayers over the years in fuel costs alone. Mail trucks are a perfect example – they don’t often have to go over 55 miles per hour, they’re only used eight hours a day (leaving sixteen hours to recharge), they’re used for stop-and-go driving which is perfect for electric vehicles… (I’m not saying that the government needs to immediately sell their fleet and replace it with hybrids all at once, but any new vehicles the government purchases should be hybrid.)

Put the solar panels back on the White House roof. Our government should lead by example. Years ago I read an article in a back issue of Analog (in an open letter to Mr. Carter, no less) wherein the author stated that it would be very symbolic if the government could light up the Washington Monument (and Lincoln Monument, etc.) using solar power. I feel it should be taken many steps further than that. It should be mandated that EVERY government building, monument, edifice, etc. be made energy self-sufficient to the highest degree possible. Put solar panels on the roof of the courthouse. Build a wind turbine next to the National Guard armory. Again, the technology is in place. We just need the government to lead the way and show us how to use it.

REDUCE CORPORATE CONTROL: I read recently that a farmer near here spent $40,000 to put up a wind turbine on the assumption that the power he didn’t use would be sold back to the power company. His motivation wasn’t to make money, he just wanted to be self-sufficient. But if he could sell the excess power for a couple bucks, why not? Well, in an exercise of corporate muscle, the local utilities company not only refused to buy electricity from him, but actually made him shut his new turbine off altogether! That story may very well be an urban legend, but the point is valid – if we’re going to wean ourselves of foreign oil and reduce our greenhouse emissions, we NEED to limit corporate control. We cannot allow ourselves to be pushed around by utilities companies and big oil executives. If they’re afraid of losing money, well, that’s their problem. They can re-tool to provide different services easily enough if they have to. (Here in the Midwest the vast majority of people used to be directly or indirectly involved in agriculture a hundred years ago. Due to advancing technology, now only a fraction of those people are working in ag-related business. All the rest of the people learned a new trade and moved on with life. This can happen in the fossil-fuel industry too. It can be done. It’s been done before. It’s uncomfortable for a while, but it can be done.)

TRANSPORTATION: This is the biggie that everyone’s been talking about. We burn fossil fuels in our cars, and the exhaust goes straight out our tailpipes and into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. (The other evil of this is that we’re dependent on foreign oil to run our cars and trucks. If we solve the pollution problem, it’s likely that we’ll solve our oil dependency problem at the same time.) What can we do about it? Lots.

We’re starting to see viable hybrid gas-electric vehicles on the market now. (These are cars and trucks that have both gas and electric motors. The vehicle uses a combination of the two to its best advantage to raise gas mileage.) The problem, in my mind, is that hybrids are too expensive, and at the moment they’re not attractive to the mass market. We can get the “expensive” part by lowering taxes on hybrid cars to make them more affordable. Another possibility would be the government giving interest-free car loans to people who buy hybrid vehicles. A big part of the cost factor, however, could be alleviated by simple supply and demand — force the government to use hybrid vehicles (as I mentioned above). This would force American auto manufacturers to build more hybrid cars, thus lowering the cost of production, and at the same time would eventually put a bunch of used hybrid cars on the market when the government fleet gets replaced years down the road.

I was in line at the drive-through at the bank the other day. There were six vehicles in line – three big SUV’s, an H2 Hummer, an old Cadillac, and my little Geo Prism rustbucket. At times like that I always wonder why people need SUV’s in the city. “But I need it to haul my two kids around…” Bullpucky. My dad hauled his three kids around just find in a station wagon. I think we need to put a limit on just how big a non-commercial vehicle can be on our city streets. (Personally, I think anyone who drives a Hummer or one of the big SUV’s around is compensating for something, but that’s a topic for another post.)

Our American society needs to take a good look at public transportation, too. Europe and Japan, from what I hear, have excellent public transportation systems. We can learn something from them… Sioux City does have a public bus line, but it’s inefficient. I often see a full-size diesel bus belching black smoke on its way up the street, carrying only two or three passengers. I think our city would be better off by getting rid of its existing fleet of big buses, replacing them with half-sized hybrid buses, and doubling the number of routes. That would decrease considerably the amount of greenhouse gases emitted while simultaneously giving better service to more people – thus getting more people out of their cars.

People talk of hydrogen being the fuel of the future, and likely it is. The immediate problem is that the most cost-effective way to create hydrogen right now uses gasoline… So that’s not gonna help anything in the near future.

Other alternative-fuel vehicles are starting to hit the market — notably “E85” vehicles. These run on a mixture of gasoline and ethanol, which is created using renewable sources such as soybeans and corn. Brazil started down this path thirty years ago (remember Mr. Carter?) and is now fully self-sufficient; they don’t import ANY foreign oil whatsoever, relying instead upon ethanol-fueled vehicles and their own oil supply. Again, we’ll need our government to take the lead on this, and thus far they’ve failed us miserably. The government should further subsidize the purchase of E85 vehicles, and should reduce taxes on ethanol fuel in order to lure more consumers to the technology. This is already done to a small extent, but I guarantee you if there’s a dollar a gallon difference between cheap ethanol and expensive gasoline, there would be a much greater demand for E85 vehicles!

WIND POWER: Wouldn’t it be nice if we could develop small wind turbines that we could mount on the top of our house or garage to augment the power we get from the electric company? The technology is getting closer to making this a reality, but (as was mentioned earlier) legislation will have to be put into place to keep the utilities companies from lobbying against this technology. There are currently large “wind farms” in California and the Midwest with big huge wind turbines creating electricity – this is a great first step! We need more commercial wind farms, as well as eventually developing “personal” wind turbines. Any energy we get from non-fossil sources is good energy!

TIDAL POWER: Our government needs to look into “underwater windmills” – put a turbine with large, slow-moving blades underwater to take advantage of tidal energy. This has been tested, and it works very well. But, again, we need to legislate for this.

All of these things, and much more (such as using wave energy, and I never did talk about geothermal power), should be done to limit the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Conservation alone won’t solve the problem, but it’s a good first step.

Brute-Force Engineering

Remember when I said earlier that the other way we could pull ourselves out of this situation could be by brute-force engineering? Instead of lowering our greenhouse emissions, we can simply let global warming happen and cool the earth’s atmosphere. (I got most of this information from the July/August 2003 edition of Analog magazine – “From Salt Foam to artificial Oysters,” pages 43-51, written by Dr. Richard A. Lovett.)

ORBITING SHADES: Someone smart figured out that if we reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the earth by 1.8% we could alleviate global warming. One possibility is to put big black panels in orbit around the earth to act as giant shades. If we are clever, we could put solar panels on the back of ’em and have them do double-duty by having them beam energy to earth in the form of microwaves in addition to creating the needed 1.8% increase in shadows. Can we do this? Yes. We have the technology. It’d sure as heck be more expensive than changing a few light bulbs, but we can do it.

CLOUDS: Another smart person figured that if we put little floating “mist machines” in the oceans to put more water into the atmosphere we could increase global cloud cover by 15%, thus decreasing the amount of sunlight by the needed 1.8%. It would be a major feat, however, to create the millions of “mist machines” or atomizers needed, get them distributed equally throughout the earth’s oceans, keep them from drifting around, and keep ships from hitting them.

CARBON SINKS: If you’ve been reading this whole thing, you’ll remember that part of the carbon cycle includes carbon sinks. It’s been proposed that we simply take some of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and put it in a sink, sequestering the carbon there where it can’t get back into the atmosphere. One way to do this would be to simply take a whole bunch of plants (biomass) and dump ’em into the deepest, darkest spot in the bottom of the ocean and keep it there. The plants, of course, have been taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and will release that carbon when they decompose. By preventing the decomposition, we “lock” the carbon in place, keeping it from doing any harm. So, some people have proposed that we do massive reforestation, harvest the trees, and dump ’em into the Mariana Trench. The problem with this is that we’d need to put a LOT of biomass out of commission, and along with the carbon, we’d be taking a lot of nutrients absorbed by the plant material out of commission.

People have also considered taking limestone slurry (limestone absorbs CO2) and using that to collect the carbon dioxide, then dumping the slurry down a mine shaft or something. To be honest, I didn’t study enough chemistry to understand this concept, but it doesn’t sound all that feasible to me… In order to get enough limestone to do the trick we’d have to start strip mining again, and I don’t like that much.

SCIENCE FICTION: There’s always the old science fiction standby of simply moving our planet a bit farther away from the sun when it gets too warm. Or, of course, moving to another planet altogether and starting over. Needless to say, I’m not gonna hold my breath… These things are simply NOT feasible at this time.

It seems to me that prevention is more feasible than any of the “brute-force” engineering solutions.

The Conclusion…

I’ve noticed that one common thread through every solution I listed is government. We need to let our elected officials know that we’re concerned about global warming, and that we expect them to take the lead in taking steps to alleviate the problem. The United States has, under the Bush administration, refused to sign the Kyoto accords — thus placing America squarely in the “environmental bad guy” column. This needs to change. America needs to grab the bull by the horns and deal with this problem in a responsible manner. This can happen on a local level (some cities in the Pacific Northwest have “public bicycles” available for people to use in their downtown districts), the state level (maybe now that Iowa republican Chris Rants can’t block legislation we can get our state government to require state-owned vehicle fleets to be E85 or hybrid), or the national level (tax breaks for non-fossil power plants, funding for research, signing the Kyoto accords, etc. — if our government is uncomfortable with Kyoto’s emission trading plan, well, can’t we suggest something else?)

Many of the solutions simply need governmental determination to make them happen. We’re currently giving a TON of money to the Saudis in exchange for oil. This doesn’t make sense. Why not give a TON of money to America’s farmers in exchange for soybean or corn products that will burn in modified engines just fine? The only thing stopping this from happening is Big Oil’s powerful lobbying of congress.

All Slept Out

The Siouxland Sleep-Out is over for the year, and we’ve come away from the experience with all our toeses and noses intact. I haven’t seen the news, but I’ve heard that there were twice as many participants this year as last, and some $30,000 was raised for the homeless in Sioux City. Details follow…

“Ve should go out early und set our stuff up,” my little Austrian Snickerdoodle said to me over the phone. “I vant to get a good spot.” I nodded agreeable, then realized she probably couldn’t see me nodding over the phone. “Okay,” I said. “They open the park gates at one, so we can take a long lunch and set our tent up. That’ll be fun…” So, we met at home shortly before one and grabbed our stuff and headed for the ball park.

“Ve can park right there, right by the gate,” Dagmar said. I shook my head – “No, those are handicapped spaces. We’ll park just over here. It won’t hurt us to carry our stuff a little ways…” I parked the car and opened the door, only to be whapped upside the face with a 25 mile per hour gust of 20 degree wind. “Whooooo! This’ll be fun,” I muttered in my beard. We got our stuff out of the trunk of our rustbucket and headed for the ball diamond.

“Vow!” exclaimed my Viennese Turtledove. “Dat vind! It’s cold! Where should we set up our tent do you think?” I stared at the windswept plain that was the ball field. “Well,” I said, “there aren’t any trees to hide behind… How about that corner over there? Maybe that’ll be out of the wind a little.” With that we put our heads down and trudged to the left-fielder’s back corner. We trudged and we trudged. Then we trudged a little more. You know, when you’re walking into a freezing wind, a 350-foot walk can seem like two or three miles…

“This’ll do fine,” I said. “It’s a little protected from the wind and no one else will want to walk this far, so we’ll have this whole area to ourselves.” That said, we dropped our bundles and stood there, wheezing into wind for a few moments.

I opened the box with our brand-new tent and started unrolling things. Thankfully these new-fangled tents are pretty easy to put up… All you gotta do is unroll the thing, grab a pole (where are those pesky poles – ah, THERE they are), slip the pole through the little fabric guide, repeat with the next pole, then stake the whole thing down with (where are those pesky stakes anyway? Ah, there they are!) conveniently provided stakes and viola! you’re done. Just that easy. And it would have been just that easy, too, except that when you put two thin poles crosswise through a chunk of large square fabric, well, you’ve just made a kite. A rather large kite, capable of pushing your average hippie around a baseball diamond rather effectively…

But we did eventually get the tent staked down and got all our stuff happily situated inside. As I stood up to survey our results, I couldn’t help but notice that there were four or five tents set up right beside ours. Somehow these people had shown up, run across the baseball diamond, set their tents up and left again — all while Dagmar and I were blowing up our air mattress. Kinda made me feel kinda slow…

With a brisk “brrrrr” my Austrian Snowflake and I ran back to our car and headed back to work. “What time do we need to be back?” I asked. “Oh, six or seven,” she replied.

By 6:30 we were again at the baseball field, this time properly attired for the cold. “Ve can park there,” my wife said, “right by the gate…” I shook my head. “It’s still a handicap zone,” I said. “We can’t park there…” By the time I had finished the sentence I’d changed my mind. We did, after all, have to unload all my heavy bass guitar amps and stuff so I could jam with the band later that night. “Well, we’ll park there, but then we gotta move the car after we’re unloaded.”

Three minutes later the car was unloaded and my bass amp, speakers and guitar were all sitting on the sidewalk, and the car was moved to a legal parking spot.

“What do we do now?” I asked my Viennese bride. “We vait,” she answered. “Until morning. Then we go home…”

So we commenced waiting, passing time talking with friends. Eventually the rest of the musicians showed up and we set up our stuff in an out-of-the-way corner. I’d jammed with the band once or twice, not enough to be confident in my playing, but I wasn’t reluctant to play, either. The problem started once we started playing… There was a TV right behind me playing just loud enough that I couldn’t hear what anyone was singing as we were doing the gig “acoustically” – without microphones. I could see the guitar player’s fingers moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was playing… Needless to say, I don’t think I played terribly well. I found out later that they were singing, too. I didn’t know that at the time. Oh well… The people in the crowd seemed to like it. Or they were too polite to complain, anyway…

Once we were done playing, Dagmar and I wandered around a little bit, seeing who was there and what they were doing… There was a youth group from a neighboring town in center field that built an entire little village out of cardboard boxes – complete with a little church and everything! It was fun to watch. West High had a group of students there as well; they were writing down ideas how to alleviate the homeless problem in the area. (I would have submitted my suggestion, but my crayon broke.)

One man was there with nothing but a summertime sleeping bag. He said he’d walked two and a half hours to get to the park. He looked REALLY cold the next morning!

We eventually wound down and found our way back to our brand-new store-bought tent. Within minutes I was happily snuggled under two sleeping bags and a blanket, with two more sleeping bags and another blanket underneath me and my wife comfortably wriggling under the blankets by my side. “Ahhh,” I said. “This is comfy.” And indeed it was! In just a few moments I was drifting off to sleep.

“I have to pee,” stated my beloved. Off went the blankets, swoosh went the tent flap, and down the field ran my wife, leaving the hippie abruptly uncovered and COLD. About the time I got the myriad blankets situated again, Dagmar was back, sticking her COLD feet back into the blankets again… Evidently cold weather does something to my wife, ’cause she had to pee about five times that night…

We all survived though to morning, though. I have to admit, it’s been years and years since I’ve camped in the winter months, and I was a little surprised at how easily it could turn into an uncomfortable ordeal. The homeless folk really do have it rough! In any case, by seven in the morning we were tearing our tent down and loading our car. (I found it interesting to note that all the handicap parking spots were taken by brand-new SUV’s, while all the rustbucket cars were in legal spots. I don’t know what that says about society, but it sure seems that the well-to-do people [or people who wanted to appear well-to-do] wanted to park as close as they could to the gate while everyone else was content to obey the law and walk half a block…) By nine on Saturday both Dagmar and I were happily snoozing at home, trying to thaw out a little…

I’d like to thank everyone who sent in a pledge or donation – the money is certainly going to a good cause! If you’d like to see more photos of the event, you can find them HERE.

It’s Getting Closer…

“Can I help you, Ma’am?” came the voice from behind me. I turned around reflexively. “Um, Sir,” amended the lad, noticing my beard and mustache. (That happens to me fairly often when I forget to put my hair back. It makes me laugh.)

“Yeah,” I said, scratching my head in befuzzlement, gazing absently at the boy’s bright orange Home Depot vest, wondering if it was made by the same people that make the pretty blue Wal-Mart vests. “I’m looking for some little tent stake thingies to hold down that fabric stuff that lives under the bark in my yard.”

The “sales associate” looked at me like I grew horns. “I’m sorry, sir, but this is the plumbing section… Camping supplies are over that way.” Thus started my foray into Home Improvement. Not at all an auspicious start…

“No, no, no… I don’t really need tent stakes. I have some of that fabric stuff in the garden in my front yard,” I explain, “with bark chips on it. The fabric is supposed to keep weeds from growing, but it keeps blowing away. I need something to hold it down.” I scratched my whiskers.

“Um,” said the boy in the Home Depot vest, “I don’t think we have that here in the plumbing section. You might want to try looking in the maybe the garden section, maybe?” He gestured vaguely westward.

I nodded wisely. “Oh. Okay then.” I didn’t want to explain to the lad that if I had known where the garden section was, I wouldn’t be in plumbing in the first place. I wandered vaguely westward.

I did eventually find what I needed (do you believe, they actually MAKE fabric stakes?) and made my way home again, purchases in hand. Twenty minutes later I was standing ankle-deep in bark mulch, hammering away at a little green plastic stake with a hammer (handle wrapped in duct tape, of course). I was wondering if the woodchuck that lives under my front porch had finally moved out (quietest neighbor we’ve had in years, that woodchuck) and if I should find a way to fill in the holes he’d chewed through the latticework that skirts our porch, when I noticed some movement about half a block down the alley.

I stopped pounding at the little green plastic stake and peered. (I used to be more discreet about peering, but it doesn’t bother me much any more to peer – I just gaze away at whatever or whomever catches my interest. It maybe bothers some people, probably.) Anyway, whilst involved in my favorite hobby of slack-jawed gawking, I watched a couple homeless guys crawl out from between my neighbor’s garage and that abandoned shed. As I watched, they gathered their belongings, a couple bundles of rags and some empty cans, dusted themselves off, tugged their hats down around their ears and wandered off down the alley towards the Gospel Mission. I had mixed emotions, as I always do when confronted by homeless people wandering around the neighborhood – awe that they can survive Iowa winters outdoors, admiration at their ingenuity to find such a cozy place to snooze, pity that they have to do these things, and shame that I don’t rush over to them and hand them money.

I know, I know… They don’t want my pity.

About the time they turned the corner at the far end of the alley, I heard a thump-bumping down the street the other way. I turned to see another homeless guy going through our neighbor’s garbage, looking for cans. He was dressed in layers – but I couldn’t really identify what the layers were… A grocery cart half-full of empty pop cans was in the sidewalk behind him. He looked up and saw me staring at him. Before I could look away, he gave me a cheerful smile and waved, then resumed rooting through the garbage.

Not quite knowing how to react, or what to do, I resumed pounding little green plastic stakes into the ground. I paid ten bucks for those little green plastic stakes so I could whack ’em with a hammer. What would this guy do with ten bucks? “He’d probably spend it on booze,” I thought to myself. “These people are hard people – they’ve lost their humanity.” About that time the guy pushed his cart past me. He paused in front of my house, gazing into my porch. “Oh no,” I thought. “He’s going to try to steal something, or maybe ask me if he can have something in my porch…”

He stood there, stock still for about fifteen seconds. Then he broke into a big grin, laughed a little, and tapped on the window. He looked back at me. “What a beautiful cat!” he said, big smile on his face. He turned back to the window and tapped at my cat for a few more seconds, then made his way down the street, whistling the “Stray Cat Strut.”

Yep, he’s hardened all right.

It startled me that in the space of five minutes I’d see three homeless people within half a block of my house. Three human beings with no place to go. Three men with no prospects. It makes me sad.

Last November Dagmar participated in the First Annual Siouxland Sleep-Out; she took pledges and then went to sleep outside for a night. I was so proud of her! All the money went towards programs to help keep people from becoming homeless in the first place. Being an annual event, it’s really no surprise that they’re having it again this year… So, both Dagmar and I are going to go sleep outside this Friday (though we’re gonna sleep in a tent, not a box like this hearty soul did last year). If anyone would like to make a pledge, just let us know! You can mail us a check (made out to Siouxland Sleep-Out), or you can even PayPal a donation to me if you want at chris at radloffs.net (using the “@” of course – I’m afraid if I write my e-mail out properly I’ll get even more junk mail).

If you’d like more information on exactly where the money goes or how to donate, just drop us a line, or you can go to this nifty web site to learn more. It’s a good thing. Every little bit helps!

I’m gonna buy a lottery ticket!

What a grand day! The midterm elections were yesterday, and not only did the Democrats gain control over the House of Representatives by a bigger margin than expected, but all sorts of other good things happened as well! Here in Iowa at the state level the Democrats gained significant ground, taking the Governorship and both houses — with the joyous side-effect of nullifying Republican embarrassment Chris Rants’ leadership as he’s no longer Iowa’s Speaker of the House.

What a beautiful day! Not only did all that wondrous stuff happen, but United States President G. Walker Bush today announced that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (I’m always dyslexic when I type Mr. Rumsfeld’s name – my fingers want to type “Ronald Dumsfeld” every time) is no longer the Secretary of Defense! Wheee! Giddy joy! Maybe now we can get someone in there who will LISTEN to the generals who have been in-country.

And to top it all off, it’s 85 degrees and sunny today, the eighth day of November. I had buffalo wings for lunch. Things just can’t get any better today…

Republican Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania is gone (thanks to Steakbellie, I guess). Rapturous joy!

The only fly in the ointment is that my very own district here in Iowa has re-elected Republican extremist Steve King to another term. I vehemently disagree with everything Mr. King stands for… He treats veterans and soldiers with disdain (as can easily be seen though his voting record), he wants the government to give a contract to him, his son, and his neighbor to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico at the cheap, cheap cost of $3 million per mile, he wants to legalize cock-fighting… Grand talk for someone with no military service who dropped out of college. (I don’t like the man. Can you tell?)

But everything else is grand and peachy!

Blasts from the Past

I was just poking about in the archives, trying to spark a couple synapses to get an idea going for something to write, and stumbled across these posts from years back that you, dear reader, may find interesting:

Dagmar’s Operation

Last Years’ Thanksgiving

Football

From the Mouths…

My buddy Drew here at work told me he walked past his four-year-old boy last Sunday. “Whatcha doing?” he asked the wee lad. “Watching football,” the boy answered. He continued “The Shkago Bears are playing the Man-Eating Dolphins.”

Grand Intentions

I had all sorts of intentions to write something either amusing or politically relevant, but I just don’t have my mojo working today. I can’t think of a blessed thing to write about. Oh well… I’m hoping to go to the weekly jam session tonight, but I may very well fall asleep before it gets started. (I really wish they’d have something happening around town at 5 or 5:30 when I get off work, rather than waiting until 9:30 or 10 at night. I gotta work in the morning, you know. I’m usually in bed by nine. Oh well.)

New Weekly Feature

I’ve decided that with the elections fast approaching it would be nice to list the phone numbers where people can call and volunteer. All political parties need volunteers, you know. I’ll start with the Iowa Democrats this week. If you feel the urge to volunteer to make some phone calls or whatever for the Democrats, here are the numbers you can call here in Iowa:

Ames — 515-232-7592
Burlington — 319-753-0445
Cedar Rapids — 319-221-1065
Clinton — 563-241-1356
Council Bluffs — 712-328-0086
Davenport — 563-322-3948
Des Moines — 515-974-1701
Dubuque — 563-556-7764
Fort Dodge — 515-955-1016
Ft. Madison — 319-372-7596
Grinnell — 641-236-1166
Iowa City — 319-337-3164
Marshalltown — 641-752-2930
Mason City — 641-422-0156
Newton — 641-792-2877
Ottumwa — 641-682-9038
Sioux City — 712-233-2056
Warren — 515-962-1211
Waterloo — 319-226-4428

Next Wednesday I’ll continue my weekly listing with the Republican numbers.

Why I Haven’t Written Lately…

A Fine Fundraiser Indeed

If you happen to be in Northwest Iowa this weekend, be sure to stop in at the American Legion Hall in LeMars Saturday. The Legion Riders (a fine group, yes indeed) are having a Rocky Mountain Oyster & Ham Dinner Saturday night from 5:30 until they kick us out. They’ll have lots of food there, all for a free-will donation. All proceeds go to American Legion Rider projects (the ALR does some nifty stuff, but they do need a touch of money to get it done). Before you get teste, remember, there’s a bar there too. (Sometimes booze helps a bit.)

Any support is appreciated!

Photos…

Last Saturday a few of us from Northwest Iowa got up at five in the morning to ride our motorcycles in the 30-degree weather to Norfolk, NE to welcome the National Guard unit home. The 189th Transportation unit based in Norfolk and Wayne, Nebraska, had been in Iraq for over a year. It was quite the sight Saturday morning – there were somewhere between 185 and 200 motorcycles in the escort. (There are more photos HERE.) You could certainly tell the guys were happy to be back, and their families were sure happy to see them!

Missing Messages

Blogger’s been doing some strange things lately – including misplacing some comments people have left. I got a voice mail from a long-lost college buddy who said he left me a comment on this very blog, but I never found said comment. It makes me sad. So, Mr. L in Nashville, please know I’m not ignoring you – I simply deleted the voice mail figgering I could track you down from the comment I didn’t get…

I’ve been having trouble uploading photos, too.

Halloweenie

I wrote a comment on Steakbellie’s blog about our Halloween experience here in the ghettos of Sioux City. I thought it was kinda funny, so I’m a-gonna repeat myself here.

The first year we owned our house in Sioux City we bought a bunch of candy, put pumpkins out, dressed up like something scary and waited. One neighbor kid showed up about 7:30. By nine I’d eaten most of the candy… One kid all night. The second year we bought six candy bars and turned the porch light on. About 7:30 the same kid showed up (wearing the same costume from the year before). She was the only trick or treater that year, too. The third year we just put a candy bar on the porch steps and went out for dinner. When we came home the candy bar was gone. The fourth year we knew we were gonna be out of town, so we took the candy bar to the kid’s house a couple days early so she wouldn’t have to walk across the street. The fifth year the kid hit pooberty. We haven’t seen much of her since… This year we’re not even gonna try — six years, and only one trick-or-treater…

I went and saw our nephew and nieces in LeMars this year. That was fun! Took the nephew to the funeral home. They gave him some popcorn.

Something Coming Up…

Siouxland Sleep-Out. This is a very good thing. Please take a minute to visit the web site. Dagmar and I will be participating – feel free to contact us if you’d like to make a donation. (I’ll blog more on this next week and go in-depth.)

The Jam

I received a nice honor a few days ago… A friend of mine in a respected local band sent me an e-mail. “We’re gonna play these three songs at the jam session Wednesday night for sure,” he said. “Feel free to stop by and play them with us…” He then listed a few songs. I’m kind of touched that he’s willing to go so far out of his way to make me feel welcome at the jam! I actually kinda got misty there for a moment.

I haven’t been to the jam session in quite a while, and I miss it. But I can’t make it tonight, unfortunately… Poor Dagmar has been down with pneumonia for five or six days and I hate to leave her alone, and, to be honest, I’ve been really tired myself lately. (Work has been stressful. Stressful as in “I really and truly am growing to hate my job.” If I’d go to a bar to jam in the mood I’m in, I’d probably end up drinking way too much and making a fool of myself…) It’s best I stay home. Apologies, guys…

The Good One

I’d like to point out something rather subtle I’ve noticed. There is one (1) politician I’ve gotten mailings from that has never mentioned his opponent and has never said anything negative. State Senator and Gulf War veteran Steve Warnstadt has been the lone bright spot in an otherwise mud-spattered campaign. Kudos to Mr. Warnstadt.

King and Blanchard, on the other hand, have done nothing but negative ads as far as I can tell — they haven’t sent much to me, but what I’ve seen hasn’t particularly impressed me with it’s positive message…

Thanks!

I’ve had a lot of good comments on my last blog entry (found HERE) about escorting the local National Guard unit home. I even had a guy come up to me in a restaurant and shake my hand ’cause he’d read the article! I felt rather famous there for a bit… I do appreciate all the nice things people say! But really, all I did was go ride my motorcycle, then write about it. (I did that once before – you can read about it HERE.) The soldiers did all the hard stuff.

We need to remember, as a nation and a society, that when we send our troops to war, we are asking them to do horrific things. We need to make sure that if we’re willing to ask them to do these things, that we’re also willing to give them what they need, both while they’re on duty and when they come back home again. It was pointed out on New Iowan’s blog that our legislators have been falling short of that responsibility.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America took a hard look at how our lawmakers have actually voted on various bills in regard to supporting the troops and graded them accordingly. According to their website, “Every member of Congress claims to support the troops, but this guide shows us that more often than not, the rhetoric does not match the reality.” It goes on to say, “A legislator’s low score can be directly linked to the unnecessary hardship that US troops, Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, and military families often face.”

How do our local lawmakers here in Iowa fare?

Charles Grassley (R) – D
Tom Harkin (D) – B
Jim Nussle (R) – C
Jim Leach (R) – B
Leonard Boswell (D) – B+
Tom Latham (R) – C+
Steve King (R) – D+

It used to be that the Republicans were more supportive of the military, but that paradigm seems to be shifting. For me, here in Northwestern Iowa, I’m most concerned with Grassley, Harkin, Nussle (who’s running for Governor), and King. Of those, Democrat Tom Harkin is the only one to get a good grade. (Mr. King’s D+ doesn’t surprise me at all. He’s shown questionable judgment at best since we sent him to Washington.) I know I’m going to be careful when I vote in a few weeks!

I encourage everyone to go do some investigating and see how your own congressman has been voting. You can find the IAVA website HERE.

Not that I’m complaining or anything…

…but this is the closest window in my office. Some days I really feel like I’m in a dungeon. Isolated. Kinda sucks. (I haven’t been enjoying work lately. It’s become, well, work. If anyone needs a freelance writer, I’m getting kinda tired of the graphic design biz…)

When I went home the other day, I saw these guys, hanging around in their tree like vultures, huddled, waiting for winter. It made me cold.

Guardian Angels

A few years ago I did the Heimlich maneuver on a guy at a local greasy-spoon diner. He coughed up whatever he was choking on and we all went back to our breakfasts. (I don’t think I ate much more that day.) Believe it or not, after a few days I’d kinda forgotten about the incident. Life just sort of went on, you know? But a couple weeks later my dad gave me a “Hero Gift.” Not much, just a little medallion that I keep in my pocket sometimes. When I see it, I remember that for just a few seconds in a diner I was a hero and saved some guy from choking to death, and I feel a little good about it.

Last week I read on a “blog-buddy’s” blog that she’d saved a child’s life by doing a difficult thing. She wrote in her blog that she was a bit shook up about it (it’s not every day you have to keep a twelve-year-old stabbing victim from bleeding to death on a football field). So we sent her a “Hero Gift.” Hopefully when she sees the little angel we sent her every now and then she’ll think about how she was a guardian angel, a hero, and she’ll feel a little good about it.

I wish I could send “Hero Gifts” to everyone who deserves one. There are a lot of good people out there! And we all need to feel a little good about it every now and then.

They’re Home!

“You’re sure you still vant to do this?” asked my Austrian wife, Dagmar. “It’s awfully cold out there.”

“Yeah, I still want to do this,” I said. “Can you help me zip this silly thing?” At the moment I was wearing a nice thick pair of socks, long-johns, blue jeans, T-shirt, long-sleeved baggy T-shirt, long-sleeved overshirt and my old Army boots. I had my leather chaps strapped on, but they weren’t too happy about zipping up around my left leg. (That’s the fat one. Why I have one fat leg and one skinny leg I don’t know, but it seems that I do…)

“Hold on,” my wife mumbled, struggling with the errant zipper. “Quit it mit der moving around all the time — there. I almost have it…” With that she gave a mighty tug on the zipper, which obediently zipped down to my ankle. “There you go.”

With that I did the “can’t bend my knees ’cause I have so much stuff on” waddle to the table to get the rest of my stuff. Coat, vest, gloves, scarf-thingy around my neck, helmet… “I have to go,” I said, pulling my coat on. “Grandpa would have done this.”

Grandpa would have been there. My grandfather served in the European theater in World War II. He didn’t talk about it much, but he kept on being a Master Sergeant in the Iowa Army National Guard for years and years afterwards. Every morning before breakfast he went outside and put the American flag up outside his front door. He took being an American seriously. People on the street called him “sir” and treated him with respect. So, on this day, the day Troop C of the 113th Cavalry, a descendant of my grandfather’s Guard unit, came home to LeMars from serving in Iraq, you can bet I was going to be there to welcome the troops home. “Besides,” I continued, “that’s my old unit, too. And a couple of the guys have boys in the LeMars unit. I want to be there for them, too.”

Troop C (I still want to call it Company A; it was Company K back in grandpappy’s day) served more than a year in Iraq. They got released to Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin and were coming across Minnesota on a couple buses. I was on my way to meet them at Worthington, Minnesota on my motorcycle to help escort the convoy the last 80 miles to LeMars (which lives just north of Sioux City in the northwest corner of Iowa). The American Legion Riders (ALR) planned the escort, which was open to everyone via the Patriot Guard Riders (PGR). So, when I said “a couple of the guys,” I was talking about my buddies in the ALR and PGR.

“What’s that for,” asked my bride, pointing to the glove I was pulling on at the moment. “That thing on your finger?”

I looked at my brand new gloves. “Oh, that,” I said. “That’s a little squeegee to get the rain off your glasses.” It’s kinda cute – a little windshield wiper on the left index finger. Someone was thinking when they designed that! “Well, I’m off,” I said, kissing her on the nose. I waddled out to start the bike. You know, chaps are mighty convenient at times, but boy I wish they covered a bit more sometimes — that seat was COLD when I plopped my tuckus down.

Twenty minutes later I was happily tootling down the road to LeMars, a full load of gas in the tank and scarf over my nose. As I went through Merrill, one of the small towns between Sioux City and LeMars, I chanced upon a fellow Legion Rider on his cool-looking Goldwing Trike. He was covered from head to toe in snowmobile equipment. At the first stop light in LeMars I hollered over, “How cold do you think it is?” He shrugged and hollered back, “I dunno – maybe 35 degrees? Are those new gloves?”

For those of you who don’t have motorcycles, let me pause here to tell you that I’ve been cold when it’s 74 degrees. Wind chill is NASTY when you’re going 70 miles per hour! Next time you’re out driving around on a 30 or 40 degree day, stick your arm out the window of your car. So this was not a day for joy-riding, lemme tell ya!

“Well,” I thought, “At least I’m not the only one doing this…” I have to admit, I had visions of being the only one to actually show up on a motorcycle; that I’d get there to find that everyone else was smart enough to drive a car… When Trikerider and I pulled around the corner and went the last few blocks to the Legion Hall where we were supposed to meet, I found myself looking at about 20 bikes already lined up and ready to go. Evidently there are other people out there who find this kind of thing important! We had to park around the corner, there were so many bikes there. The local news was standing outside, interviewing our Ride Captain, so Trikerider and I hung around taking pictures of each other for a few minutes until the TV cameras were off, then went inside.

After a few minutes, the Ride Captain called us together for a short safety meeting, then off we went to get on our bikes. I know I was wondering to myself if I could make it all the way to Worthington… The 25 miles from Sioux City kind of spooked me a bit, to be honest. My fingers and toes and even my nose were a bit sore. “Hey, before we go, try these,” said my buddy, Trikerider. He handed me some of those little hand warmer doohickies. I put ’em in my gloves and immediately knew that I gotta get me some of these and keep ’em in my saddlebags! They really saved the day, as far as I’m concerned!

And about that quick, we were off in a thundering herd. Down the street, take a right on the highway, get the formation correct (we were riding staggered), and settle back. We stopped briefly at the first town up the road to pick up a few riders who were meeting us there, then made our way to the nearest on-ramp. Unfortunately, on that stretch, one of us hit a patch of gravel on the road and went down. The only good thing about the situation is that in a group like this there are plenty of people with medical training (Army medics and such) and plenty of people with the leadership skills necessary to tell us to get our bikes off the road and stay back… Last I heard, K was in the hospital with a broken leg — I hope she’s doing well!

So, we were all a bit somber when we resumed our trip after the ambulance took our compadre off to get fixed, but we did resume.

Another 25 miles or so up the road we stopped again at a gas station. By the time I had my kickstand down and sprinted (as well as a guy can run with that many clothes on) inside I found I was about fifteenth in line for the restroom. Patience is a virtue, I guess, but we decided that discretion is the better part of valor and used the ladies’ room. I’m sure the restroom gods will forgive us.

Once we got to the truck stop in Worthington where we were to meet the buses, we were all a bit worried about being able to make it the entire 75 miles back to LeMars in one shot. It was okay riding in this kind of cold, provided we stopped every 25 miles, but to go 75 miles? In the dark…?

“It’ll be an hour and a half yet,” hollered the Ride Captain, cell phone stuck in his ear. “They just passed Albert Lea – one of the buses had some problems.” We all looked at each other. We all looked at the diner, where we could see happy smiley people eating what appeared to be WARM food. We all looked at each other… Within, oh, two minutes or so, we all had our hands wrapped around warm coffee cups and were perusing the menu.

The whole way to Worthington, we’d been followed by a pickup truck carrying two soldiers from the 113th Cav that had been sent home a few weeks early due to medical issues. As we sat at the truck stop I watched these two get more and more nervous, eager, excited… They were really looking forward to riding back to LeMars on the buses with their unit! The whole trip, up until then, had been taken up with thoughts of the cold. But seeing these two so eager to rejoin their unit made me realize all over again just exactly why I was there. I don’t know any of the men in the unit, but it’s my job to be sure they get honored. They’ve been through a lot – they deserve a good homecoming!

As I sat, waiting for my grilled cheese sandwich, the guy across the table mentioned that his son was in one of the buses. “He’s a driver,” he said. “By last May he’d had three Humvee’s blown up out from underneath him. He hasn’t mentioned it recently, though. I guess you kind of get used to it after a while.”

A lady from the next table noticed all the black leather present in the diner. I could see her visibly struggling with her question, but she finally leaned over and asked my buddy, “What are you guys doing here?” He explained that we were meeting the LeMars National Guard unit to escort them home from Iraq. “Oh, what a wonderful thing to do!” she said. “I bet there are a lot of happy people in LeMars tonight!” We smiled and nodded. I thought of Sergeant Sesker’s family and wondered what they were doing, what they were feeling. They don’t have anyone getting off the bus this night; he was lost in April.

About that time the Ride Captain walked past. “They’re in Jackson now,” he said. “It’ll be about twenty minutes or so.”

We all started zipping, buttoning and strapping ourselves into our various outfits and made our way outside to start our bikes. (Motorcycle engines take a while to warm up.) I overheard an interesting conversation while the bikes were quietly rumbling to themselves… “Did you see combat,” asked one guy. “Yep,” answered the other. “I was a medic in Vietnam.” The first guy looked surprised. “So was I! They made me be a forward observer too. Did they make you do that?” The second guy shook his head. “No, I didn’t have to do all that dangerous stuff. They just threw me out of airplanes…”

After a few minutes, a call went up – “There they are!” Sure enough, two buses full of soldiers pulled in. The line of bikers all started honking their horns and cheering – and so did the people in the diner. The soldiers piled off the buses and the bikers piled off their bikes for an impromptu five-minute back-slapping session in the parking lot. I tried to find my buddy who’s boy was on the bus, but I couldn’t find them. I really wanted to get a picture of that moment…

All too quickly the soldiers were back on the buses and we were back on our bikes. With a determined rumble we left the parking lot and headed down the road to home. Before we left Worthington I saw a group of people standing along the side of the road, waving flags, holding a sheet with “Thank You” painted on it. I knew it was going to be a good ride.

We settled in for the ride. I could see a line of flashing taillights spread a good half a mile in front of me. There were at least that many bikes behind me, too. All I could see were headlights and taillights, stretching into the distance…

Fifteen or twenty miles down the road we passed the first town. I could see, miles ahead, flashing lights. As we got closer I started to wonder if there had been an accident on the highway – the lights weren’t moving. Ahhh! I see! The local police had all their squad cars parked along the overpass, right above the highway, with all their lights flashing. Townspeople were gathered along the railing, waving flags and signs. I could hear them cheering for the troops over the rumble of the bikes.

The next town had the same thing – firetrucks, police cars, lights, sirens, a HUGE flag, townspeople cheering… So did the town after that, and the next town… People were standing alongside the road, wearing their winter coats and floppy hats, waiting to see the soldiers come home. It was quite the sight!

Soon we came to the outskirts of LeMars. Every single light pole, tree, road sign, car and truck had a big yellow ribbon tied on it. We turned off the highway to go uptown, then to the high school. Horns were honking, people were cheering, flags were waving – it seemed the whole town turned out to welcome the boys home! When we pulled into the high school parking lot, we found that the entire high school auditorium was full to overflowing with people waiting for the soldiers. We parked our bikes and pretty much ran to the front of the high school to see the celebration. The firetruck was parked on the yard, a big American flag waving in the breeze, hanging from the ladder. People were lined up along the front of the school, waiting to catch first glimpse of their loved ones, home from combat. My wife and mother-in-law were there, waving our flag. As I looked around I spotted my mother as well – she’d been waiting downtown for the buses to pass before she came to the ceremony.

The troops came off the bus and formed up in front of the school, then inside they went. We followed, but there wasn’t room in the gym for all of us, so we kinda stood in the entryway and watched. Someone handed me a program with the unit’s history…

“Troop C, 1st Squadron, 113th Cavalry, augmented by Troops A, B, and Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 1st Squadron, 113th Cavalry, 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry; and 1st Battalion, 194th Field Artillery was mobilized under partial mobilization callup on July 7, 2005. These 155 soldiers were mobilized in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom 05-07. Troop C conducted mobilization training at Fort Lewis, WA from July through October and entered the Iraq theater of operations on October 30, 2005. Troop C was based out of Camp Ashraf, Forward Operating Base Grizzly in the Diyala Province (approximately 30 miles north of Baghdad) where they conducted security escort millions to Baghdad and Logistic Support Area Anaconda, IED route clearance, and security presence patrols. In addition, the unit maintained numerous static fixed and security positions as well as security escorts for the State Department.”

The flyer went on to mention that the unit received more than 60 Combat Action Badges, over ten Purple Hearts, and 20 Bronze Stars, and had sustained more than 50 improvised explosive device strikes in the 3,000+ missions they completed.

We couldn’t hear what was going on inside the gym, but we didn’t really need to know. All that mattered is that there are hundreds of happy families, and hundreds of soldiers home safe. There were lots of smiles!

I’m happy I went. (I have more photos that can be seen HERE if you’re interested.)

From the program: “And lest we forget our fallen comrade, Sergeant Dan Sesker, who entered Fiddler’s Green on April 6, 2006.”

They’re Coming Home!

The LeMars unit of the 113th Cavalry is on its way home from Iraq! The National Guard unit has been gone for ’bout a year now… I’m VERY happy to hear they’re on their way back.

I served eight years in the 113th Mechanized Infantry, back before they switched to Cavalry – six years in Headquarters, and two in the LeMars unit. My grandfather was instrumental in starting the unit there, years and years ago when he got back from WWII – as far as I know they still have his picture hanging on the wall there. I’ve had a few uncles on both sides of the family serve in that particular unit, too. The last time the LeMars unit was in combat was in Vietnam… There’s history there, both personal and for the entire community.

The hope is that they’ll arrive home next weekend sometime, after spending a few days at Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin. A bunch of us are gonna ride our bikes up to Worthington, Minnesota and escort the buses the last 80 miles home… I guess the town is planning some sort of homecoming celebration. I encourage anyone in the area to head to LeMars when the Cav comes home – they deserve a good homecoming! If you see something like this, you’ll probably not forget it in quite some time.

Football, as in National League.

Sometimes nothing is better than something. The Green Bay Packers improved their record this last weekend by not playing. They had a bye week and didn’t play, you see, so they couldn’t lose… It was definitely one of their better weekends so far this season.

If’n the Packers aren’t doing so well, I always hope for someone in the NFC North (almost said NFC Central there – I don’t deal well with change I guess) to pick up the pace. Go Bears! Chicago’s playing tonight… They’re on a roll! I’m happy for them.

I saw bits and pieces of the Steelers-Chiefs game yesterday, in and amongst my other various (never nefarious) activities. It was interesting that Steeler Troy Polamalu actually got dragged down by his hair, and the hair-puller didn’t get penalized for it (though he did get penalized for taunting Polamalu after dragging him down by his hair). I like this, believe it or not. If a football player wants to have long hair, that’s fine — but he should NOT get preferential treatment for having long hair. In other words, if he doesn’t want his hair pulled, he has the freedom to get it trimmed. If he wants long hair, he should either tuck it away somewhere or be wary that it can be pulled.

Bullies

Don’t let them bully you. The Republicans, I mean…

Fox News “accidentally” listed Mark Foley (the guy who wanted to diddle teenage boys) as a Democrat rather than a Republican. He’s Republican. The Bush administration claims that Bill Clinton is to blame for North Korea’s nuclear bomb. I’m pretty sure that North Korea is responsible for having the bomb, actually. If we weren’t so involved in Iraq, we could probably spare some troops to scare North Korea a little, but according to the Bush administration, the Iraqis are responsible for the 9/11 tragedy, even though Mr. Bush himself finally admitted the falsehood of that theory. So there are no troops available to send to Nuclear North Korea.

It’s not their fault, you see. None of this is the Republican party’s fault at all. The all-powerful Democrats tied their hands… Even though the Republicans have had control of the presidency, both houses of congress, and the court system, somehow the Democrats are to blame for North Korea, Mark Foley, Delay, Ney, Haliburton, Abramoff, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, etc…

It’s simple. The Republicans simply won’t admit that they bungled. We must demand that our leadership take responsibility for it’s actions! The Bush administration is setting a miserable example for today’s youth, I tell ya… Don’t let them bully you into thinking it’s someone else’s fault.

You know, the Republicans’ core supporters should be severely disappointed with this administration. The military generally supports the Republicans, but look what the Bush administration has done – sent the military (ill equipped) into a battle with no end, cutting benefits, ignoring the veterans… The worst in my eyes was when President G.W. Bush put on a pilot’s outfit and swaggered around an aircraft carrier proclaiming that the mission was accomplished. If I put on a police uniform and wandered into a police station shouting that the criminal has been found, they’d arrest me for impersonating an officer… And for being a loony, most likely.

The other core component of the Republican party is the religious right. According to a new book out by a fundamentalist who worked in the White House, the Bush administration has been callously using the Christians while poking fun at them at the same time. The Christian conservatives should realize by now that the Republican party does not support them, nor does it reflect Christian values. The Bush administration uses religion as a weapon – NOT what Christ had in mind.

Fiscal conservatives should be alarmed, too. Bush took a nation solidly in the black and squandered all the money and left us with a record deficit. We CANNOT remain on a war footing without raising taxes. We need more troops, more equipment, and we NEED to take care of the troops once they get back home. Mr. Bush has earmarked $20 million for a “Victory in Iraq” party while at the same time many soldier’s families are struggling financially. It ain’t right.

There’s an election in a few weeks. We need a change. They’ve had their turn… Please, go vote.

Photos

Prose

I realize I’ve not written anything particularly good, witty, or charming lately. For that I apologize – things have been busy, and to be honest I’ve not been in a creative mood as of late. But I feel my muse returning… I shall be witty and charming again, someday, I’m sure.

Geeze, they’ve actually said it OUT LOUD…

I just read this. How sickening!

“Leading Republicans, with the support of conservative media outlets, are charging that the Mark Foley scandal was a plot orchestrated by Democrats to damage the G.O.P.’s electoral prospects this November.” source

This was NOT leaked suddenly – the story was known by insiders up to five years ago, and the Harper’s reporter knew of it last May. The Mark Foley scandal is NOT a “plot orchestrated by the Democrats” as Mr. Dennis Hastert claimed on the Rush Limbaugh radio show – it’s a 50+ year old elected official trying to lure underage boys into sexual congress. How in the world can the Republicans blame this on anyone but themselves? A member of their own party perpetrated the crime, and other party members covered it up – thereby endangering other young boys. How can the Democrats possibly be to blame?

We NEED to change things! This cannot continue.