Some Days, You See the Darnedest Things on the Way to Work...

Sometimes what you see while commuting is a little more interesting:

Pretty sure this guy is waiting for the uptown local.
He's got that resigned yet at the same time impatient look of the veteran bus stop regular.

Now, I understand that for some folks, this is not an unusual thing to see during your daily commute, especially if you are a dairy farmer.  Of course normally a cow on the side of the road is associated with an open field or barn nearby, not woods, guard rail cables and a steep embankment.  So maybe this is an unusual sight for just about anyone.  I certainly wasn't the only one taking notice:

Note our Bovine hero in the center of the mirror.

Everyone passed at a very slow rate.  It really was hard to figure out where the cow had come from, in fact I never did.  This is on NY RT 206 in the Catskills and while there are many farms along the road, this particular stretch (near Walton, I believe) is pretty hilly and there was no obvious Dairy farm nearby.

I understand there is a lot of very excellent Mountain biking in the area, so maybe Ferdinand got inspried by some single trackers blasting through the woods and decided to try out some 4 legged cross country-ing of his own.

On the other hand, there is a Kraft factory in Walton.  I think they make Breakstones cottage cheese there.  Maybe he's on his way down to pick up the Mrs. after a her shift on the milk machine.

Of course he could also be looking for the cow version of this:

Yeah, I don't know what it means either.  I can say, whatever it is,
that they seem to have done it to helluva lot of Goats, if that number is any indication.

Now, I could of course Google this and put in a link with the real answer.

But I'd rather speculate.

Perhaps this the entrance to a Union Hall (local 12032, of course) for theatrically minded goats.  I think most goats are pretty big hams.  Or is that pigs?  I get my farm animals confused sometimes, which can lead to problems, especially at a kosher dish to pass.

Or maybe it's a secret anagram of "Gaga Bitingly Lost" with the numbers added as a meaningless misdirection.  God, I hope they find Gaga before she is bites again!


Another possibility is that this is a facility dedictated solely to handling Billy Goat #12032, although I was not aware they were all numbered.  


It's just so hard to know for sure.


And to keep to the Animal Theme:

For the uninitiated, this is a dog.

Alright, it's just an Australian sheep dog standing in an Oregon Winery.  Not that shocking really.  But he was very sweet and I know he could really use the publicity.  Nothing like an virtually unread blog to get your name out there!  And no, I don't remeber his name.


But getting back to the unexpected and surprising:

Canoe Canoe?

This almost made me crash the mighty little Scion!  It's big installation piece on display in front of the Albright-Knox gallery in Buffalo by Californian sculptor Nancy Rubins.  Apparently, deconstructed metal objects are her "canvas".  She has made things from airplanes, boats of all kinds, trailers various appliances and everything looks to be very large.


The whole thing is so surprising that it actually took me a few seconds to realize what it was made of.  It is an interesting take on "found object" art;  The canoes are as much "re-purposed" as they are found.  It is an incredible engineering feat, in addition to being compelling visually.  You should check it out.


Other surprising if less artistic views seen recently across the windshield include:

I did not know you could have them delivered.  But then this was taken in California...

This could also be called the intersection of difficult decisions.....

Anybody have any ideas as to what type of cuisine this might be?  I'm stumped.

Yep, that is a segway scooter on the back of a car

Caution: GIANT HOGWEED!

That last picture (I know it is lousy) is especially un-artistic.  It is of Giant Hogweed, an invasive species the sap of which can cause severe burns and even blindness.  The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has launched a consumer action program to help eradicate it.  It's nasty stuff but on the plus side, it did reminds me of the old Star Trek episode, "The Quest For Eden"  The relvant part comes at about 9:20 (you can skip ahead if you want to, but why would you want to?  THIS is art!):

And for our final non-artistic but certainly inspired image of the day, we take you to north eastern Pennsylvania, right along the even so beautiful route 80 corridor. 


Not sure if this is an advertisement, a suggestion or a particularly well funded attack on chickens in general:

Actually, I think the sign pretty much says it all....

Left Coast, Views You Can't Get From a Car, Funky Keys and Unfamiliar Gadgets

Occasionally, "The Road" offers up vistas that are unexpected.

The Colorado Rockies from 35,000 feet. I thought about not including the altitude and  just claiming that I was doing some serious Mountain training on the bike, but the wing really gives it away.  And I was too lazy to crop it out...

Ok, let me back up a little.  I'll be taking a few liberties in this post, like using some pictures taken from planes or while I was not the one actually driving.  In this case I'm using "road" to loosely mean "travel".

Why the change of venue and a slight bending of the rules?  Because I recently had occasion to travel to the west coast with a group of colleagues to visit some of the properties we represent and as always, "The Road" and its vistas got me thinking and taking pictures.

Like things you see from a plane, for example (that's why I always take the window seat, limited bathroom access be damned!):

Yeah, it would be better if I knew were this was.  But I don't.  Deal. Could be the Grand Canyon...

See caption above

And again!  Grand Canyon?

Don't know where this is either, but it doesn't matter. This one's about the clouds and shadows.

NO!  I don't know where this is!  Sierra Nevadas?

OK, this I know.  San Francisco Bay!

Dam on the Sacramento River

Mount Shasta, where they used to make the soda....

Dramatic Zeus Clouds!

South Shore of Long Island, near JFK.

But enough of the over dramatic and slightly cheating high altitude views; Let's get back down to earth.

More specifically, into the Mini-Van.

Loyal Road Work readers will know that the vast majority of my miles are driven solo behind the wheel of the mighty little Scion.  On the left coast I shared "The Road" with 5 others in a, it hurts even to type this, a 2010 Dodge Caravan!
       
        Important factual disclaimer.  Our other family car, to supplement the Mighty Scion, is a Toyota Sienna Mini-Van. So I have no call to, and am in fact a hypocrite for casting aspersions on the Caravan.  Call it "Auto-Poetic" License. It's tough to be an artist, so I've heard.


Now, a Caravan is a fine way to move a small group of people over long distances (assuming you can settle the ipod/music skirmishes that inevitably pop up), but I have to admit I found some of its new-fangled features a little off-putting.

Who puts a shifter there?  It looks like they added it at the last second. "Oh, Right!  
We need a way to shift gears. Lets put it where an air vent should be..."

Fancy Electronic Key.  How am I supposed to clean my ears with that?

Our GPS unit, which received the sobriquet ":The Dominatrix" immediately for the forceful way in which it "guided" us. 

  I've never actually used a GPS unit before.  I don't have one and don't plan on getting one.  Which is actually odd in a way, as I am a classic early adopter of new technology (can you use classic and early adopter in the same sentence?  We'll see).  I've had an email address since 1993 and the same cell phone number since 1992.

But knowing where you are going and how to get there is a weird point of pride for me.  Of course, I have 20 years of driving history on the roads of my home range, so I should be able to work out how to get from most points A to points B.  And I've always had maps, which in a sense are not much different than a GPS unit, from a "you are here" point of view.

But it does feel different.  Looking at a map and deciding on a route is more pro-active than taking disembodied directions from a...a...what exactly is a garmin?

And I do worry about the loss of human capacity that technologies like this can bring (Yes, my hypocrite alarm is going off again too.  I'm going to ignore it). Before cell phones and speed dial, I knew by heart at least 150 phone numbers; all my top customers and dozens of friends & family besides.  Now, if you give me your number and I don't put it directly into my phone, I will never call you.  Not because I don't want to, but because I won't be able to.  I've lost the ability to remember phone numbers.

God, do you think I could still remember the complete order, from appetizers to dessert & wine for a table of four without writing it down, like I did in the old days?  Here's hoping I never have to find out!

In the end, driving in unfamiliar territory, the GPS was a awesome.  It never led us astray and predicted with uncanny accuracy our arrival time at each appointment.  And it virtually eliminated passenger conflicts on route selection.  Which left plenty of time for high brow discussions such as the effects of terroir versus vintage and seemingly endless (and usually funny) stream of Anthony Wiener jokes.

As I am writing this, Congressmember Wiener has already resigned, but I just have to weigh in on one point.  In his early denials, AW stated that he couldn't be sure if the pictures in question were of him or not.  Which in this case is the same thing as declaring "Yes, I've taken MANY pictures of myself in a state of arousal while wearing underwear, too many in fact to identify any one particular image as being of me."

Which, if you think about it, is a little sad.  Shouldn't such an event be special and at least in some way memorable?  On the the other hand, Wiener is an idiot who couldn't even learn from the many examples of his colleagues (Hello!?!?, Chris Lee was only a few months ago).  He deserves what he gets.  Actually, I take that back.  Last I checked, Elliot Spitzer had a cable talks show that was paying him Hella-Bank. Wiener does NOT deserve that. Maybe Brooklyn could bring back the squigee guys of the early 90's and plug Anthony into one of those jobs.  Seems appropriate.  

In a bid to do our part for public service, Road Work offers the following video advice for America's politicians from the 80's Cinema Classic, DC Cab.  Fast forward and watch from 8:05 to 8:25 for the crucial message that could save many political careers in years to come.

But I see this has turned into one of those "two part installment" kinds of posts.  Stay tuned for more on the Caravan and its many adventures.  Coming soon to a blogspot near you!

  

Two Wheels Good, Found Objects, Beer and Shameless Plugs

Here's a view I really like and have missed through this long winter and cold, damp spring:

No, this wheel is not horribly out of true.  It's just an optical illusion caused by  my hand moving as 
I held the camera over the wheel.  Also, I was travelling at nearly the speed of  light....
It was supposed to be a picture of some nasty road debris.  Missed it.  This is more interesting anyway.

I don't really need an excuse for why I haven't written anything on Road Work for a while.  After all, it's my blog; I have the right to ignore it if I want to.  Suffice it to say that I've been busy. (Lame, I know.)

But I didn't get back to putting finger to keyboard solely for the purposes of complaining or explaining.

The weather has finally turned for the better (again, not complaining) and I finally got the chance recently to leave the four wheeled machine in the driveway and venture out with just two skinny bicycle tires between me and the road.

Strictly speaking, it was not my first ride of the year; I've been out several times just messing around in the neighborhood on the mountain bike.  In fact, the first cycling Road Work post of 2011 was supposed to have been focused on a little mountain bike jaunt I took a while back.  It would have been too, had I paid better attention to the weather forecast.

I'd ridden downtown for a meeting in full sunshine on a day that ended with heavy rain, hail, serious thunder & lightning and even a tornado warning (an actual confirmed tornado hit Danby two days later; it was a week of very dramatic weather).  The skies turned dark and started spitting cold water while I was in the meeting and I managed to beg a lift back up the hill.  Not really the kind of ride you want to build a blog post around (although a portion of one is OK, I hope).  I should have ridden home in the storm and written about the heroism needed to complete such a daring and audacious voyage....blah blah blah.....glad I didn't, both for the discomfort avoided and the drivel it would have caused me write.

The meeting in question actually had to do with the reason I needed to get back out on the road in the first place, namely the annual Southern Tier AIDS Program Ride for Life.  As many of you know, I have been participating in the RFL to help raise money (2011 fundraising page here.  Please refer to post title for warnings regarding shameless plugs) for STAP for a quite a while now.  This year I was asked to be a member of the Ride Committee, an offer I was very happy to accept.

We were meeting to plan out some advertising and marketing for the RFL, including some radio spots.  To spice things up a little bit, we created a character named Vance Legstrong to use in some of the spots.  No Vance spots have been recorded yet but stay tuned (you can follow Vance on Twitter @vlegstrong, If you're into that sort of thing), I'll let you know when they are going to air.  Who knows, Vance may even get his own blog one day...

All of which was a very long winded and roundabout way of saying why I was so anxious to get back out on the road and start training again.

Here are the very first moments of my 2011 Road Riding training campaign:

Again, I don't aim, I just point and press go.  

In any case and despite some lingering embarrassment regarding the gears I was compelled to use on VERY modest climbs, it was a lovely first ride.  Plus it gave me occasion almost immediately to recall something I wrote about in the first roadwork cycling post; Namely how much I enjoy the opportunity afforded by cycling to see things you miss looking through a car window or to just stop and take a look at something that has peeked your interest.  For example:

HONK! HONK! HONK!

I'd driven by this sign for months and although I may have honked once or twice had never stopped to investigate.  On the bike, all I had to do was veer to the right and pull over.  Turns out that longtime Lansing landmark restaurant Rogue's Harbor Inn has begun brewing their own beer in a little out building.  

That makes them the latest addition to what is becoming a pretty interesting Ithaca area brewing scene, pioneered of course by The Ithaca Beer Company but which now also includes The Scale House and Band Wagon Brew Pub, not mention all the home brewers (you know who you are).

Little Baby Brew Tanks!

From the look of things, they are starting out small with 2 beers on offer.  I went back later in the week and tried their Cayuga Cream Ale, and it was pretty tasty.

Of course, riding doesn't just give you a chance to stop and take a look at things you'd ordinarily drive by.  Moving at that slower pace reveals all kinds of things you'd NEVER see from your car. 

Actually, that is a bit of an argument for NOT riding, given some of what I saw by the side of the road.  

Like this bit of packaging I noticed in the ditch:

Yes.  Found on the side of the road.  I can't post a picture of the other empty package I found right next to it.  Lets just say it involved electrodes and a part of the male anatomy...

Pretty sure I don't want to know the back story on how that ended up where I found it....

  

But other things you come across make you glad to be on two wheels instead of four. Like this metallic Cephalopod:

OK, you would see this from your car.  But you might think it was a pile of metal and not a rusty octopus.

I also saw a lot of road kill, loose change, discarded pens, car parts, trash and various detritus that did not warrant a stop for a photo-op.

But when you are lucky, you see and find things that suggest stories if their own.

By far the most interesting and story suggesting thing I saw by the side of the road that day was this:

Lying at the edge of the shoulder where the grass began and any hope of finding it would have ended,
had it slid just a little bit further into the weeds!

I picked it up, assuming it was dead, with the intent of taking it home to recycle.  On a whim, I flipped it open. Three bars and more than half the battery power left.  Last call made at 11:45 the previous night, the third call in a series to a "Jeff".

I am not just being nosey here (note the use of "just").  I'm looking for clues about the owner, so I can get the phone back to them.  There was nothing under the I.C.E. number, nothing called "Home" in contacts, no obvious owner info at all.  So I poked around a little bit...like you wouldn't have done the same.

Late night last calls.  Phone by the side of a country road.  No contact info.  What had I stumble on? My mind started to race. Had a Lover's quarrel ending in squealing tires and a phone thrown vengefully from the back of a speeding motorcycle?  Man, if you squint your eyes, you can almost see the "Leader of the Pack" roaring off.   

Or perhaps it was a stolen phone used in a drug deal gone bad.  Was I only yards away from a hidden meth lab, eyes and guns trained on me as I stood at the side of the road in spandex shorts?

Maybe it was left there on purpose, waiting for a specific person to come along, pick it up and hit redial for instructions on where to leave the money as part of an elaborate ransom plan.  Did I unwittingly send some innocent to their doom with a clumsy attempt at being a good Samaritan?  

Was "Jeff" just a code name.  

I started to think I should take the phone to Verizon and let them figure out how to get it to the owner.  In the end I came to my senses, looked at missed calls and dialed the number that had called the phone 5 times in the previous 2 hours.  A man's voice came over the line, but before he said hello, I heard him yell "Hey Lorraine, I think somebody found your phone!"

Five seconds later a very giddy Lorraine was on the line, wondering where I found it and how soon she could come and pick up the phone.  Apparently, she'd left the phone on the hood of her car just before leaving for work earlier in the day and it had flown of as she made a turn.  She had driven up and down the very stretch of road where I'd come across it a dozen times, looking for it, but never finding it.

A few hours later she was driving away from my house with phone in hand.

Chalk one up for slow rides with time to look at the road beneath your wheels and the curiosity to stop and see. 

"The Apple and the Tree" or "Do What I Say, Not What My Behavior Says or Especially What I have Written About Doing in a Stupid Blog!"

Date Line Ithaca, January 30th, 2011

Ordinarily, I revel in the idea that someone, anyone, might be reading these electronic scribbles.  I love looking at the number of page views for Road Work and when I see that I have had a reader from Poland, Singapore, Russia or Malaysia, I get pretty excited.

Who knew I'd ever regret that someone in my house had actually read it.

But a little back story.  In the first Road Work post, I wrote about a little adventure occasioned by a lack of attention paid to the gas gauge.  In short, the post was about running out of gas and my unfortunate propensity for and history of doing just that.

You can see where this is going.

So when the phone rang with my daughter on the line saying she had run out of gas on her way home, I found myself in a bit of a quandary.  I WANTED to lecture her on responsibility and paying attention and planning ahead...

Disclaimer: I couldn't entirely help it. I HAD to say something about looking at the gauge.  And I'm sure she got some "I am mad" vibe through the ether.  And why not? After all, we make mistakes so that our kids don't have to; so they can learn from and avoid our missteps.  Of course, by that logic, humanity should have eliminated error several millennia ago.  


I did pay for my unfairness immediately as all of my many gas cans are in the shed, which was of course frozen shut.  A crowbar, kicking with heavy boots and swear words came into play before I finally got it open.  On the plus side, I worked out my anger AND managed to break a pretty good sweat, despite the 17 degree temperature. 


....you should take better care of mom's car and tell her to walk home and walk back with the gas that she would have to pay for and...

But of course I couldn't (see disclaimer above).  After all, I had forced her to read my blog, leaving me without a gas can to stand on.  Caught in my own electronic web!

Sarah was the one to go pick her up, but when the daughter got home, I gave her a high five and said "Welcome to the Club".  What else could I do?  She knows my secret.

Although I did tell her not to do it again......



 Of course, I can't finish a post without at least one picture, so here it the saving gas can.

Yes, it is a repeat image.  But it is cold and dark.
And my foot hurts from kicking the door.

And a few Big Monkey pictures, just for luck.

See, the Big Monkey even makes the Hudson River Look good.
Don't those pedestrians look startled?

Only the SR-71 Blackbird is as cool as the big Monkey.

         

Timing, Comparisons, Second Views and A Big Monkey

Wow, its been a while since I've taken a whack at this blog thingy.  Chalk it up to holidays, busyness and just possibly a little bit of laziness.  Time to get Back on the Road.

In November, I wrote two posts about driving to and from New York City.  Traffic and how it affects the drive played a big part in the first story and while I didn't say so explicit in the post, the intensity of traffic is directly correlated with the time of day you reach any of the Hudson River Crossings.

On the way down during that November trip, I was trying to make a 10:00am meeting and so reached my usual crossing of choice, the Lincoln Tunnel, around 8:15am. That's just about peak rush hour, which put me right in the middle of the inbound third (that's an estimate) of the 120,000 (that's not) vehicles that use the tunnel each day.

I've been back to the city a few times since then and on one occasion had the luxury of arriving at the tunnel closer to noon.  Here is proof positive that timing is everything.

Instead of seeing this:

I saw this:

Instead of seeing this:

I saw this:

Instead of seeing this:

I saw this:

Instead of seeing this:

I saw this:

The time for trip 1 door to door was 4:25.  Trip 2, closer to 3:45.  And I didn't have to curse my manual transmission due to stop and go traffic.

If traffic was a key part in part 1 of the "down and back series",  the need for and aesthetic value of a Big Monkey was the persistent theme of part 2.  If you recall, I asserted that the addition of a Big Monkey would greatly improve the look of several of NYC's classic landmarks.  

An alert and loyal reader (OK, it was my mother-in-law) turns out to be a Big Monkey fan as well and she felt the pain of "monkey-lack" nearly as acutely as I did.  She decided to do something about it and so Christmas morning I found this under the tree:

So he's not THAT big.  But I wouldn't mess with him if I were you.

I knew immediately what I had to do; Get the Big Monkey on the George Washington Bridge and the Empire State Building.  And I had to do it ASAP.

I will admit here to being mightily influenced by the "Heisenblog Principle".  In preparation for my most recent trip to New York, I packed the Big Monkey snugly into the seat beside me with the intent of photographing him on the icons during the trip home.  To ensure success, I took care to hide the Big Monkey before leaving the little Scion in the hands of the parking attendant in Manhattan (strictly for the Big Monkey's safety...I don't care what the parking guy says about me...really...even if I could understand him).  I waited impatiently in my meeting, dreaming of the Big Monkey photo shoot to come. 

The plan was to take the photo using perspective to make it look like the Big Monkey was on the structures.

Like this:

Soooooooo Thirsty!

 Well, it turns out that it is pretty much impossible to hold the Big Monkey in one hand, the camera in the other and then create enough distance to get perspective while navigating the stop and go traffic heading back into the tunnel.  I didn't get the shot.  Not even close.  To be honest, I never actually got to click the shutter.

I let myself, the loyal reader and, most of all, the Big Monkey down.  Much brooding and recrimination on the long drive home.

But in this modern age there is always a technological fix.  And so I present to you two classic NYC Icons improved with the addition of the Big Monkey.  You be the judge.  Where I stand is pretty clear.

The Empire State Building:

Before

Boring, Cliché, So Last Century

Improved

New, Vibrant, Cutting Edge and Extreme

The George Washington Bridge

Before

Yeah, engineering miracle, whatever

Improved

8th Wonder of the World, Dynamic, a Must See Before You Die

I think the Monkey and I have made our point.

Think of these as concept mock ups.  The Big Monkey and I are waiting and available to work with the New York city planners on this project.  This is Manhattan's chance to put itself on the map and finally drop that "the place across the river from Hoboken" tag.  Be Bold New York!  Now is your time!

Of course, my Big Monkey is not the first to offer his services to New York:

Obviously, the Big Monkey would prefer a happier ending than his cousin enjoyed, but we're ready to take on the challenge.

Ah, Back on the Road...feels good!