Travels with Roscoe and My Sister and her Husband

Between the pensive monkeys lay Travels with Roscoe. Below this picture is my sister and Matt her husband and my brah. I call him a brother because I like him and he is my bra...not in the deep woods kind of way, but in the your good people sort of way... I am not a blood relative to my brah in law...I swear... Visit the link on the side of my page to buy Travels with Roscoe it will be highlighted in Dirt Rider in the next issue or two...A collectors item if you have good sense, if not...So be it. JW

Riding in the Blue Ridge Mountains

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWlNzpUIa7k&NR=1




How to order carry out pizza, you explain how to stack the slices...

Gassed up and ready to run but I already paid at the pump, its just the tornados that keep me from running and then I loose patience and point the compass towards the storm.

KTM LC4 Super Moto Sloth

I rode, I went to brewgrass, I studied the fine art of brewing and now I am going to bed...Ciao JW

If Insects Have Souls I Better Pack for Purgatory

I'm heading back to Asheville for some riding this weekend, the bugs may not be as prevalent as on my last visit in July, but if they are then they are probably going to meet the same fate as some of their kin. Dr. Schweitzer used to operate on people with drapes drawn so as not to kill insects that might be harmed by the hot lights. I guess I am not Dr. Schweitzer...(see face shields) In my own defense I dodged most of them, but I also think it could have been suicide. What if you were a mere insect and only had a few days to live, why not fly into the face shield of a mortal enemy. Hell, it wasn't me I didn’t invent DDT? But what do I know, not anymore than the bugs on my face shield. Kind Regards JW

I Done Been Tagged

ing is a friend and supporter of My Mule she reads and writes real good, she tagged me and here are the rules...

1) Post these rules before you give your facts

2) List 8 random facts about yourself

3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them

4) Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they've been tagged

then the facts:

1.I once spent 8 weeks in a remote cabin in the North Woods, the sole purpose was to sit down and finally write my book “101 ways to open a can of beans with out a can opener”. I thought and thought and all I could come up with was 8 ways, I do not think 8 ways to open a can of beans without a can opener would make the best seller list. Besides 7 of them involved running over them with a four wheel drive vehicle and the 8th involved a vice and a hammer, the vice cold sweet beer.


2.When I was a wee lad I took a shovel and started digging, I was going to dig to China. After much digging and even the hint of a blister forming I only made it to Ohio, since we lived in Ohio at this time I suppose this is nothing really to brag about. My mom asked me about the hole I told her I was going to move it, just to keep myself out of trouble.

3. I was pn 5th grade and got in a fist fight on the school bus with a dwarf, he was two years my senior and a farm dwarf, farm dwarfs are known for their strength and endurance, he out weighed me but I had the reach on him. It was a tie, my brother toilets started the fight. (This one is true)

4. I can drink a case of beer and still make a fool of myself.

5. I have not broken wind since 1975.

6. I have suffered from a nervous condition since around 1975.

7. Sept 14 is my birthday, so send gifts. I like my birthday mainly because I do not have to remember to buy just the right gift for someone else.

8. I used to mow my yard with a weedeater since it would grow to long for my reel mower to cut. I quit this practice and hired a friend to take care of it for me, he mows it with a weedeater, I have a beautiful lawn.

The following are tagged: Toilets will default to Reversing the Numbness since toilets blog is clogged.
Reversing the Numbness
Mom toilets blogged
Roscoe
Damsle Inthis Dress
Jungle Jane
T.I.L.D.E.
Helen Mansfield
Winters

Sailing Tips in no Rational Order

The only known photograph of long dead pirate Sam Bellamy. The captors went missing shortly after this photo. Skeptic's beware, this is all based on truth, facts and more! This is a prologue to the previous post on My Mule relating to the Sailing club, if it does not make sense this is fine, but let me warn you...Some things are based on fact!

Sam Bellamy and I were on the back deck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, he sat invisible to everyone but me, we were playing a cut throat game of Crazy Eight’s with a few of our neighbors at the club. Living on the docks I guess we are all neighbors so I guess I will narrow it down, they are the ones that will tolerate me talking to a man who cannot be seen, (they think its just “the demon rum” flap jacking my brain). Poor Black Sam was not much familiar with the game, “basically it’s the second cousin to Chess” I told him. Sam cursed us all after loosing a hand; he jumped overboard in a fit, assuming his visible soul vessel, the mighty catfish. A former Commodore and longtime fisherman (names are best left out of my accounts of the cold hard facts, because I have been told in a cold hard fashion that they did not hold water) “dang that was the biggest catfish I have ever did seen” it had to weight fifteen stone! Twenty-two I casually corrected him and then realized my social faux pas, I ended my statement with "or even bigger."
Our former Commodore a well-respected member of the club dropped his cards on the deck and ran to his boat in order to get his fishing rigs set up, he yelled over his shoulder as he ran , “were going to need a bigger boat.” I calmed the others with my special grog recipe and they all departed smiling and singing sea shanties terribly off key. I watched the a well kept boat motoring towards the damn, the fisherman/reformed commodore had his fighting chair (bean bag) tied in the cockpit while he motor/sailed towards the damn singing something about Fair Spanish Ladies….
I said to my only guest and servant, who was sitting next to me soaking wet and smelling of catfish. So Sam, where is Tailer? I had been waiting for the right moment and I judged him to be off guard enough to let it slip. Well he didn’t have to, I looked up when I heard a familiar voice, “I’m right here dufus”. Tailer? Yes? Where you been? Here and there, I heard you were spreading rumors about me being off’ed by the Mob or on the run for so much nonsense. Oh, Hi Sam good to see ya! Sam replied eey a sight for sore eyes, your cousin here has about driven me mind off the end of the earth! Tailer replied, Bailer, my relative? Second cousin twelve generations removed is abit of a stretch for claiming someone your blood unless he won the lottery; you win the lottery Bailer? No…So as I was saying he is as related to me as I am to everyone else on this big blue marble! However Bailer if you stop pouting I will admit you are like a long lost brother, one who I thought I had dropped off far enough from home that you would not be able err nevermind…Ah stop your pouting, were all brothers here you, me and Sam. Do me a favor bra, give us some tips, on your own this time, eh? I stuttered, wondered and thought, OK you wanna play that way than lets play that way, I’ve got some tips all on my own, knowing I could solo the globe like Joshua Slocum I reckon I can write my own tips, watch and weep.

#1. Trust no one unless you like what they are saying.
#2. Never give your credit card number to someone who calls, unless they insist, give them your mother’s maiden name for starters.
#3. Eat more catfish, gigantic ones, around 22 stone if available.
#4. Wear a hat, so you don’t get sunburned…This tip holds some water.
#5. Always talk, never listen.
#6. Laugh while your laugher is still working. This one holds water as well.
7#. It took deep concentration to come up with these tips. I chewed four #2 pencils to the nub and half a red ink pen. I am not sure chewing a pencil aids in the thought process but I do know chewing red ink pens can really make you feel alive, so for a change of pace I am looking for a tip. Does anyone know how to remove red ink from skin, say ones lips, cheek and chin? Also how would one if it were necessary remove red ink from clothing and fiberglass and teak?
8# Stop by my boat and chat, free grog, plus I volunteer Sam to clean your hull for free, he doesn’t mind at all…Bailer and company

The War Prayer ( Sam Clemens)

How often we are moved to admit the intelligence exhibited in both the designing and the execution of some of His works. Take the fly, for instance. The planning of the fly was an application of pure intelligence, morals not being concerned. Not one of us could have planned the fly, not one of us could have constructed him; and no one would have considered it wise to try, except under an assumed name. It is believed by some that the fly was introduced to meet a long-felt want. In the course of ages, for some reason or other, there have been millions of these persons, but out of this vast multitude there has not been one who has been willing to explain what the want was. At least satisfactorily. A few have explained that there was need of a creature to remove disease-breeding garbage; but these being then asked to explain what long-felt want the disease-breeding garbage was introduced to supply, they have not been willing to undertake the contract.

There is much inconsistency concerning the fly. In all the ages he has not had a friend, there has never been a person in the earth who could have been persuaded to intervene between him and extermination; yet billions of persons have excused the Hand that made him -- and this without a blush. Would they have excused a Man in the same circumstances, a man positively known to have invented the fly? On the contrary. For the credit of the race let us believe it would have been all day with that man. Would persons consider it just to reprobate in a child, with its undeveloped morals, a scandal which they would overlook in the Pope?

When we reflect that the fly was as not invented for pastime, but in the way of business; that he was not flung off in a heedless moment and with no object in view but to pass the time, but was the fruit of long and pains-taking labor and calculation, and with a definite and far-reaching, purpose in view; that his character and conduct were planned out with cold deliberation, that his career was foreseen and fore-ordered, and that there was no want which he could supply, we are hopelessly puzzled, we cannot understand the moral lapse that was able to render possible the conceiving and the consummation of this squalid and malevolent creature.

Let us try to think the unthinkable: let us try to imagine a Man of a sort willing to invent the fly; that is to say, a man destitute of feeling; a man willing to wantonly torture and harass and persecute myriads of creatures who had never done him any harm and could not if they wanted to, and -- the majority of them -- poor dumb things not even aware of his existence. In a word, let us try to imagine a man with so singular and so lumbering a code of morals as this: that it is fair and right to send afflictions upon the just -- upon the unoffending as well as upon the offending, without discrimination.

If we can imagine such a man, that is the man that could invent the fly, and send him out on his mission and furnish him his orders: "Depart into the uttermost corners of the earth, and diligently do your appointed work. Persecute the sick child; settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting; worry and fret and madden the worn and tired mother who watches by the child, and who humbly prays for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the unteachable. Settle upon the soldier's festering wounds in field and hospital and drive him frantic while he also prays, and betweentimes curses, with none to listen but you, Fly, who get all the petting and all the protection, without even praying for it. Harry and persecute the forlorn and forsaken wretch who is perishing of the plague, and in his terror and despair praying; bite, sting, feed upon his ulcers, dabble your feet in his rotten blood, gum them thick with plague-germs -- feet cunningly designed and perfected for this function ages ago in the beginning -- carry this freight to a hundred tables, among the just and the unjust. the high and the low, and walk over the food and gaum it with filth and death. Visit all; allow no man peace till he get it in the grave; visit and afflict the hard-worked and unoffending horse, mule, ox, ass, pester the patient cow, and all the kindly animals that labor without fair reward here and perish without hope of it hereafter; spare no creature, wild or tame; but wheresoever you find one, make his life a misery, treat him as the innocent deserve; and so please Me and increase My glory Who made the fly.

We hear much about His patience and forbearance and long-suffering; we hear nothing about our own, which much exceeds it. We hear much about His mercy and kindness and goodness -- in words -- the words of His Book and of His pulpit -- and the meek multitude is content with this evidence, such as it is, seeking no further; but whoso searcheth after a concreted sample of it will in time acquire fatigue. There being no instances of it. For what are gilded as mercies are not in any recorded case more than mere common justices, and due -- due without thanks or compliment. To rescue without personal risk a cripple from a burning house is not a mercy, it is a mere commonplace duty; anybody would do it that could. And not by proxy, either -- delegating the work but confiscating the credit for it. If men neglected "God's poor" and "God's stricken and helpless ones" as He does, what would become of them? The answer is to be found in those dark lands where man follows His example and turns his indifferent back upon them: they get no help at all; they cry, and plead and pray in vain, they linger and suffer, and miserably die. If you will look at the matter rationally and without prejudice, the proper place to hunt for the facts of His mercy, is not where man does the mercies and He collects the praise, but in those regions where He has the field to Himself.

It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for the earth. The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and sorrow which we can relieve and do not do it, we sin, heavily. There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin, then? If He is the Source of Morals He does -- certainly nothing can be plainer than that, you will admit. Surely the Source of law cannot violate law and stand unsmirched; surely the judge upon the bench cannot forbid crime and then revel in it himself unreproached. Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.

(early 1900s)

Thank you for your support...MT

I Share the Wisdom of the Sea

Landshark
Yes this stolen cartoon is a rerun, still funny, I think the word seen is cool.

Tips written for my club, a wise man I be and stuff. (Unedideded)


Waking up up laying face down on the fore deck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, was a new not a new one for me, but this time something was different. I had a knot on the back of my head from some sort of blunt head trauma, my hands tied in a knot stretched tight over my head and another around my legs, pulled tight. I was hanging above my own deck like a hammock, a strikingly handsome hammock but a hammock non-the less. My mouth was gagged with a monkey’s fist knot, which I marveled at because the monkeys fist is among the dying breed of knots.
I realized my boat and myself were in the middle of Eagle Ocean, me hanging hammock like before the mast. I heard laughter and craned my neck towards the laughter and recognized Jack Bellamy and Tailer at the wheel, both of them drinking straight from my beloved blender vessel passing it back and forth, my own recipes I would imagine. I shouted through the monkeys fist, “hey, drop my beloved vessel”! More laughter…I hung like a hammock as I mentioned and watched the two mock me and disrespect my blender vessel which has become legendary for its nectar. The story goes my blender vessel is as close to a perpetual motion machine as human kind will come to for some time now, until the computers invent one, which does not really does count, its like cheating but ... It is like cheating. Yet, these two cads where mocking my efforts to make the club a place that belongs on the map as one of the civilized clubs, one that has a nearly perfect perpetual motion machine, the sailing club that is so civilized we have transcended the blue blazer as dress code.
I yelled again at the two brothers in contempt, and they laughed and asked me if I had ever been “keel hauled”…
From Wikipedia: Keelhauling (from Dutch kielhalen; "to drag along the keel") was a severe form of corporal punishment meted out to sailors at sea.
The sailor was tied to a rope that looped beneath the vessel, thrown overboard on one side of the ship, and dragged under the ship's keel to the other side. As the hull was often covered in barnacles and other marine growth, this could result in lacerations and other injuries. This generally happened if the offender was pulled quickly. If pulled slowly, his weight might lower him sufficiently to miss the barnacles but might result in his drowning. If the rope snapped, the Captain could conclude that the punishment was not done properly and order it carried out again.

I asked for what and they replied in unison, “cause if you ain’t got no tips for the club we gonna Keelhaul ya” more laugher … I replied uhhh I got some tips, I was then hit in the head with a banana! I said, dudes, banana’s are bad luck on a boat, the two knot heads replied in unison, “sure seems to be for you” more laughter.
I said dudes, the water is low I have a wing keel and its resting on the bottom, how can you keel haul me if the keel is on the bottom? “ Tailer said we can do anything if we put our minds and backs into it” replied Sam. I got to thinking and came up with some mighty fine tips although I admit they were thought up under duress.


1. If the opportunity knocks, do not volunteer to be keelhauled.
2. Do not drink green lake water.
3. Bananas are bad luck on board ship. They also hurt when thrown hard enough at your noodle. The pointy part hurts the most.
4. The garbage can by the grill has a 8 5/8” hole drilled for the deposit of recyclable aluminum cans, use it, we can help lighten our carbon footprint plus the money from the sale will help ease the pain of our dues…True in all aspects of our life, maybe.
5. Is the hole on the can, can really 8 5/8” in diameter? I will wager that the first person to correct me can offer a donation of $45.00 towards a good cause.
6. When one attempts to fathom the thoughts of Mark Twain are they less of a person if they mark less?
7. Samuel Clemens lived as a reporter in Virginia City, it is said he took his pen name from his time on the river boat, marking twain meant that the person at the head of the boat would be measuring the depth of the water with a rope and weight with knots in the rope every six feet, each twain was two fathom’s (six feet) hence the name. Another theory less popular was that when he was a journalist in Virginia City, Nevada he would enter his favorite watering hole and say “Mark Twain” which meant he was asking for two drinks on his tab… Being a pirate’s buddy and a man of the world I suspect it was the riverboat that gave him his pen name, because he offered the name to himself, and not to be known as a western drunk. The Virginia City legend was offered by those who he made fun of, (the poor fella lost his job telling the truth about the news). He moved to San Francisco where he was quoted to say “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco” He soon landed a job to travel and write about a boat trip to Hawaii…
8. When you are stuck in the doldrums while sailing to Hawaii, read some Twain.
9. Do not believe everything you read.
10. Bring Gifts.
11. You read my rambles about Twain, don’t get me started on Joshua Slocum, or of course the Big Show from WWF fame.

Kind Regards Bailer