Virginia Earthquake–August 23rd

OK, so today at 1:51 PM a 5.8 quake struck Virginia with an epicenter in Louisa County.  Quite a few buildings in Louisa suffered significant damage, 2 nuclear power plants shut themselves down (as designed & without other problems), the jail in Culpeper had to be evacuated to a nearby state prison due to building damage (which turned out to be minor & the jail folks were back home in less than 24 hours) and a whole lot of stores had most of there stock deposited on their floors.  The quake even did structural damage to the Washington Monument on the DC Mall (which hasn’t reopened) and did significant damage to the Washington Cathedral. 

And where was I during all of this?  On a country road between Brandy Station and Batna with a corn field on my left and cows in a pasture on my right.  Yes I felt the quake, I thought the road was just a bit rough.  Neither the corn nor the cows reacted in the slightest.  My mare Louise was a bit nervous during her hoof trimming just after the quake, but that was the only impact the quake had on my life.   Apparently various of my friends were concerned about me – sorry to have worried you all but the quake was barely felt here in Greene county.

A Laid Back Affair August 11 - 14

Its August and time for my favorite motorcycle rally- A Laid Back Affair.  The rally is co-hosted by a Newport News area BMW Airhead group and the No-Name Motorcycle Club, of which I am a proud member.  I wasn’t able to get any time off of work for the rally this year, but the 2 days I was able to be there were mighty fine. 

The Affair was at a different campground this year.  Last year the Glen Maury campground in Buena Vista double booked the group camping area, which lead to a rather unsatisfactory situation.  So this year we went to Mallard Duck campground where one of the NNMC crew has a long term camping site.

Mallard Duck isn’t very large but its very nicely laid out and very well run.  The little trailer in the photo is JR’s, he brought it up for the rally.  The bathhouse is clean, the roads level and well maintained and the picnic tables are all sound.  WooHoo !

The campground backs up to a small river with fishing available.

This is the tent camping area.  Its level, drains well and has 2 fire rings.  We likes this site so much we voted to return here next year.

Of course its really the riders that make the Affair such fun. 

The ALBA historically has been mostly BMW riders, but currently it’s about half and half BMWs and Harleys.

Of course there’s always a few vintage machines, dual purpose bikes etc.

My faithful steed

The weather was wonderful with the rain holding off enough for some serious outdoor cogitating.  The trailer in the background belongs to Paul.

Paul did the cooking for the Affair, which was just plain awesome.

The Affair always marks the winding down of summertime for me.  When Kat was in school there were clothes and supplies to buy right after the Affair ended, or a trip to up to upstate New York during her college years.  Those years are past but my mind always sees the turning of the season with the end of each Affair.   The weather has stayed warm and the lighting bugs abundant here at the house but there’s no new growth in the woods and the mushrooms are beginning to pop up under the pines.  The tree frogs are silent now, replaced by the late summer chorus of crickets and their kin.  The subtle scents of early fall are there each morning too, when I come home from work.  The quiet of fall is on its way.

A Recipe Worth Remembering

1) Take one yellow jacket nest – this one was built under the dog’s house in my back yard.  (I found it the hard way.)

2) Add 2 gallons boiling water with a dollop of dish soap – do this at night when everybody is asleep in the nest.  Wear your motorcycle leathers, winter gauntlets & full face helmet just in case a few sentries are awake.

3) Repeat 6 days later

The result 36 hours later.  There are still some yellow jackets capable of flight in the nest area.  It started out like O’Hare airport, now it’s a farmer’s private field. 

12 hours later & its all quiet on the western front.

Hidden Treasures of the Local Library

Lazy summer days with heat indexes over 100F are not days for Mighty Mouse Projects around the house & yard – but they are fine days to sit in the shade with a glass of ice water that has just a touch of lemon & read.  So when I deliver the trash & recycling to the local county facility for trash & recyclables I also visit my local branch of the regional public library.   It is my custom to wander up & down an aisle or two of the library & pick up 2 or 3 books, whatever catches my fancy at the time.  Recently this rather haphazard selection process netted me a real jewel. 

Now the title would led one to believe this tale concerns some non-canonical text or other, but this is not the case at all.  Rather it’s the tale of  the twin Presbyterian Scot sisters who found  the Sinaitic Pamplimsest  (a Syriac translation of the 4 canonical gospels) while searching for old Syriac manuscripts at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai desert.  The text is c.325 AD & thus rather important to the field of New Testament manuscript studies, but the best part of the story is the story of these 2 remarkable women.

These 2 Victorian Scot ladies were over 50 when they made their first trip to St. Catherine’s and they went unescorted by either husbands (both were widows) or fellow scholars.  The trip involved negotiating all transport from Alexandria on, including arranging for food & staff to prepare it, tents for themselves, camels for the land journey etc.  The year is 1893 & the Ottoman Empire is not a particularly safe place to travel.  Ok, Ok, so they both spoke Greek & Arabic, but that doesn’t make the trip itself safer.

Janet Soskice writes of Agnes & Margaret’s whole lives, not just finding of the manuscript.  It’s a good read whether or not you have any interest in manuscript studies. 

Meanwhile late summer is slowly morphing into early fall.  Only a few lightening bugs are rising each evening & there are no new plants in the understory of my woods.  I haven’t seen the brown skink in awhile but there are at least half a dozen little blue strip baby skinks running around the same brushy stump.  The nightly woods chorus has added insects to the frogs & toads of mid-summer.  The bird’s nest in my front bedroom window now has 4 Carolina wren babies in it.  Both mom & dad are busy keeping them fed.  And of course there are hummers – at least 2 nests of hummingbirds are in the white pines along the property line.  As the late summer orange flowers bloom along the wood line I’m sure I’ll see more hummers of an evening.  So the cycle of the seasons moves at its own pace.

Lazy, Hazy & Way Too Hot

The lazy, hazy days of mid summer have arrived along with way to much heat & humidity.  The trim painting project is on hold until the heat index is below 90 & the daily thunderstorms are over.  All that rain maybe great for the water table but it also means I’m still mowing the yard weekly & barely keeping up at that.  I’ve also made progress on minor projects around the house, but even sorting through boxes of books etc. is hard when the heat index is still over 100 at midnight.

The praying mantis of course are perfectly happy with the hot & humid weather.  There are plenty of bugs for them to eat & plenty of lush green plants to ambush said bugs on.  This one is just shy of 3 inches back on July 27th.  The lilies have bloomed & are drying back so the mantis have moved on to other hunting grounds.

The nest in my front room window was built by wrens.  Currently the hen is sitting on 4 brown speckled eggs which should hatch in another 7-10 days.  I’m sitting in my back yard rather than the swing in the front yard until the birds have grown & gone. 

Else its been a good summer.  Last Friday I took my daughter’s Ninja in for its annual inspection & then rode it up to her on Saturday morning.  We had a great day staying cool at her place with lunch at the Amphora with Carly, Dean, Don & Dolores.   Sunday I drove to Lynchburg & spent the day with Gypsy Jane at the Izaak Walton League campground.  I got a bit too much sun swimming in the lake there  (yes I put sunblock on, twice even) but that’s healing up nicely.   Wednesday was a marathon lawn mowing session & house chore day so I could spend Thursday again with Gypsy Jane.  We had a great time chillin’ & of course swimming in the lake.  (I wore a t-shirt over my suit so as not to re-burn my previous burn.)

Here’s Gypsy Jane’s New-to-Her RV with my truck parked behind it.  The silver mat over the front window is heat reflective material so the inside doesn’t become an oven.  She’s got mats for all the windows but only the front one goes on the outside of the rig.  Her work has had her working nights the last few weeks so the mats are needed to keep the rig both cool & dark inside.  It’s a very neat rig, a great place to a full timer to live although its not as easy to drive as her previous home. 

Ah the 1st week of August – can A Laid Back Affair Motorcycle Gathering be far behind?

When it Too Hot to Work Outside–Work Inside

The Plan was to get the Urchin’s motorcycle to the shop, mow the yard, finish the roof trim  & get the larger of my motorcycle trailers up for sale this week.  Well I did get the motorcycle to the shop Friday, loaded it onto the rail trailer all by myself just fine.  I also called the Urchin Friday eve & wished her a Happy Birthday.

Trailer with installed by me wood flooring & ramp

And I got  the yard mowed finally.  The cable that engages the wheels so they turn broke but I got things moving by substituting a bungee cord.  I got half the back mowed Saturday but had to stop when I located the yellow jacket nest under the doghouse the hard way.  No hard work until the effects of  the stings & the shot at the clinic wear off.  Spent the rest of Saturday with ice packs on various parts of my torso & drinking lots of water.  Mowed the front Sunday & the rest of the back Monday, all except a buffer zone around the nest site.  I do not want to annoy these squatters again. 

I got 2/3 of a coat of paint on the rear trim, but the heat is defeating me there.  Its just plain too hot to paint anything.  So the last 1/3 of the rear & the kitchen side trim will just have to wait.  Ditto working on the blue motorcycle trailer.  Its too hot to do anything outside, too hot even to read in the shade outside. 

I did consider finishing this front window because its well shaded but decided to wait until the birds are done here.

So I made lemonade – both literally & figuratively.  Since outside work was out, I worked inside.  Cleaning I did late at night when its cooler.  Letter writing, photo file organization & history projects I did during the day.

This is my shooting bag.  The strap has been reversed for left side wear & shortened for half-ling sized me.  The leather patch in the center of the strap is for a powder horn strap.  The strap slides under the patch so the bag & horn stay together as a unit.  The leather has been treated with Pecard dressing & an 18th century reproduction buckle installed.

Thank you Henry Bryant of Ft. Vause Outfitters for both the buckle & the tutoring in leather working.  This is a Speedy Hogarth bag & I wanted my alterations to match Speedy’s work in quality. 

This is Buffalo Woman’s Leatherman shooting bag.  She had some water leakage issues in her gear storage area & this bag had developed some serious mildew.  Well the mildew is gone thanks to a good cleaning with mouthwash inside & out.   This  bag has also been treated with Pecard dressing.  Another thanks here to Henry Bryant & his workshop on leather care at an Eastern Primitive Rendezvous.

The gear in the bag had suffered from the dampness also & corroded each in its own way.  I polished the German silver & brass pieces then polished & re-blued the iron gear.  The char cloth, flint & tow in the tinder box were unaffected by the moisture, so the box did what its supposed to do – keep the tinder dry. 

I also replace the strap on my mid-19th century style cherry wood canteen & am currently working  on a small pigskin flint & steel bag as well as a powder horn strap.  Will post those pictures once I’m done. 

I have also seen the final Harry Potter film but promised my daughter not to talk about that until she’s seen it too. 

Happy Birthday to the US of A

OK, I admit it, I LOVE the 4th of July.   The celebrations of my childhood involved neighborhood potluck cookouts where chicken, fresh fried lake perch, hotdogs & hamburgers were flanked by German potato salad, marinated garden peas & baby onions, coleslaw, jello with various fruits inside, canteloupes  &  deep red watermelon with iced Frosty root beer to drink.  The fish came from Lake Michigan, which had a viable fishing industry into the 60’s, & the produce was all locally grown.  After the evening feast we’d all pile into various family cars, the idea being to get the whole neighborhood into as few cars as possible.  Full dark does not come early in a western Michigan July so the local fireworks  never started until after 9 PM even before day light savings time was the norm.  The fireworks were shot off from a barge anchored  either in Lake Michigan or in the boat turning basin of the St. Joseph River if the lake was too rough.  The show was watched from the bluff above the lake or the river banks & lasted about an hour.

Once I’d left my parents’ house for the wider world the 4th was still a magic day.  I didn’t manage a picnic & fireworks every year but I managed at least fireworks most years.  I watched the DC Mall-works for several years with my daughter from the grass of a highway interchange in Alexandria VA, spent happy years with D&D at the Vienna VA works & one year watched 3 small town works at once from the Buena Vista campground. (The picnic pavilion was on a hill, the view was spectacular.) 

So it’s a sad year in Mudville when I have to work on the 4th & thus miss seeing any  fireworks.  Like this year or so I thought.  Until on the eve of the 4th the local neighbors held a potluck to rival those of my childhood, except there was BBQ pork  instead of fried perch.  I came home from running some errands just as the feed was winding up.  About 5 minutes later & with a thunderstorm moving in the fireworks began.  Yes real honest to China skyworks.  Roman candles, whistlers, bangers & flowers - lots & lots of flowers.  This stuff was most certainly not bought at the local fireworks stand.  The show went on for about half an hour, the thunderstorm moved in forcing an intermission & then there was another 20 minutes or so more.  It was gloriously grand.  Better even than the mall works, better than 3 town works at once, & maybe better even than those nights on the bluff above Lake Michigan when I was young & the whole world was new. 

Happy Birthday to All of the US of A

May there always be fireworks for your birthday.