Bottle Rocket

I was coming across the bridge on my way home, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone running the stop sign just ahead of me. I cranked the bike to the right, and the other guy swerved left, so we were running parallel to each other down the street. I looked over, ready to give him a piece of my mind about running the stop sign, but my ire was repaced with wonder, as two things began to sink in:

1. I was riding beside a beer cooler; and
2. the beer cooler was keeping up.

He veered off to my neighbor's house, and I hopped off my motorcycle and went to investigate.

It wasn't my imagination. It was a beer cooler. But the owner (whose name slips my mind at the moment; he lives on the next block over...) had fitted a 10 HP engine and wheels, along with steering that reminded me quite a bit of a fold-up scooter. Braking were a step above Flintsone-style, with steel plates that rubbed against the tires.

Of course, I had to ride it. It was frighteningly fast (wheelies aren't out of the question) and almost impossible to steer. But, I had to admit, it was cool. He says future plans include a real cooler under the hood, and drag-racing wheelie bars.

Urbana

Every few years, I hear about this enormous Christian conference in Urbana, Illinois. Thousands upon thousands of people attend. And whenever I ride south on Rt. 13, I can't help thinking, What if they got their states mixed up? What if, instead of Urbana, IL, they go to Urbana, IN?

I rode through Urbana a few weeks ago, on my way down to pick up Deborah's sewing machine. Out here, they'd call Urbana a blink'n'missit; out East, it would be a poke'n'plumb — poke your nose in, and you're plumb through. It's a rural farming community, with a short row of houses, a gas station, and... Pam's Cafe.

I've always admired the paint on this place. If they'd pained it a solid white, I probably wouldn't have given it a second look.

This place has always intrigued me as I've ridden past it, partly because of the paint, and partly because of the fact that I had never seen it open. This day, however, open it was. So I parked amidst the dozen or so heavy-duty pickups, and poked my head in.

"WELL, YOU LOOK COMFORTABLE." The two waitresses — one of whom I suspected to be Pam herself — were on break, smoke curling up from their mirrored cigarettes. Comfortable? I had to laugh in spite of myself — I'd obviously been riding in the rain, every inch of my riding gear dripping. "I'm OK," I chuckled, "at least I'm dressed for it." "WHAT CAN WE GETCHA?" I wanted to get something — breakfast sounded good — but I hadn't seen any credit card stickers on anything, and I knew I didn't have the cash, but I asked anyway. Pam's raspy, pack-a-day, small-cap voice took on a hounded note. "NO HON, NOT YET, WE'RE GETTIN' IN ONE OF THEM MACHINES NEXT WEEK. YOU CAN GO TO ONE OF THEM MACHINES UP AT THE MINI-MART, OR WE CAN TAKE CHECKS. WE'RE OPEN UNTIL TWO." I needed to get down to Marion before the sewing machine shop closed anyway, so I said I'd be back.

Open until two, I mused. No wonder it was never open when I went past. As I motored on, I realized that I actually had my checkbook inside my coat pocket. D'oh!

An hour and a half later, sewing machine retrieved and firmly strapped to by passenger seat, I was back, and hungry for lunch.

Fortunately, Deborah has a nice, small sewing machine, and the gals at the shop down in Marion gave me a few bags to wrap the case in. The top bag hides the heavy-duty tie-downs that are actually holding the case to the bike.

I hadn't relized it on my first glance, but Pam's Cafe was... a farmer hangout. The scenes on the outside walls hadn't tipped me off. The John Deere wall plaques, toy tractors, and the seed-company mug did, though. A group of farmers sat in the other room, swapping stories. "He took his Case out into the fields last week, rutted 'em up something bad." I and my city-boy self felt like we'd stepped into an alternate universe. "Say, how do you get yer innernet service? I've got a satellite hookup, but I've been thinkin; one of them DSL lines might be better, can you get that through the REMC?" My alternate universe took an odd twist. I started to gather that things worked a whole different way out here. Phone companies I'd never heard of. Prices for corn and soybeans checked every morning. Satellites and GPS. No one mentioned the rain. Clearly, my view of farmers needed an update.

It was fascinating to just sit and listen to the world go by here. These guys seemed like they hd all the time in the world. It was like I was transported into an episode of Prarie Home Companion.

There were customer photos all over the walls. Well, all over the walls that didn't have farming motifs all over them.

Lunch arrived. My waitress had said the tenderloin sandwich was pretty good, so I got that — although it took me a minute to realize that it was, indeed, a sandwich — the breaded meat hid both halves of the bun and hung over the edge of the plate. It wasn't until I'd eaten a four inches of it that I discovered the lettuce.

Yum.

After my second cup of hot chocolate, it was getting on towards 2:00, and things were shutting down. I discovered my check underneath my plate, and went to pay. I resisted the temptation to play with the toy tractors on the counter while my waitress added up the bill. I left that afternoon, my hunger sated, and my mind satisfied that I'd finally gotten to experience this place after riding past it so many times.

Not so much of a Monday after all

Now that I've been home and actually seen the car, I'm much relieved. The way Deborah described it on the phone, you'd think an entire corner of the car was missing. In reality, though, the lens on the cornering light is broken out, and the light still works. Other than a few small scratches, that was the only harm done.

The lady Deborah hit called back later — there's a call you'd dread returning! — but it was just to make sure that Deborah was OK. You run into the nicest people around here...

So now both sides of the car match — which I find oddly comforting, somehow. Not that I can explain why — perhaps I just like symmetry, even if it's symmetrical damage. Or perhaps it's the same sort of pride Deborah and I take in having completely mismatched, multi-sourced silverware. Yes, we could probably afford to have a nice, matching set, but somehow, the sentimental value (this set was given to us by a co-worker; this set was given to us by the Spites when Deborah first got her apartment here, this was passed on to us by my sister...) far outweighs the oddness of the place settings. Character triumphs over appearances. The world doesn't have to be perfect; in fact, it makes for a better story if it isn't.

Monday, continued

I just got a call from Deborah saying she got into an accident on the way to work. Something about not seeing a gray car on a gray day and pulling out into what turned out not to be an empty street. There's apparently little damage to the other car (a hubcap fell off) but she says the headlight on ours is completely gone.

A long look at the lake

I may as well post this one now. It'll be summer before I finish working on it to my complete satisfaction. (Frustrated perfectionist, that's me!) Anyway, I have no idea what Blogger is going to do to this one, or how much you'll be able to see, but it's worth clicking on the picture to open this one up bigger.

A long view of the lake.

This is a severely downsized version; the original is something like 150MB, and, if printed, would be 10 inches high and about 13 feet long. It's made up of 26 shots. (If you want to see a larger version than what's here, email me.)

A few weeks ago, May was clamoring for a chance to go out walking on the lake, and May, being May, didn't want to go do it alone. So Paul and I went out with her. We walked down our street, to the edge of the island, and, well, kept on walking. The snow was about four or five inches deep on the surface, so Paul and May spent a few minutes kicking aside the white powder so that they could actually stand on the ice itself.

Paul and May, on ice.

While was trying out the panorama/stitch feature on my camera (Click, turn, click, turn, click... I did two of these, and you can see the sun is lower at the end of the sequence than it was at the beginning!) Paul and May got quite a ways out — that's them in the first picture, about two-thirds of the way over.

After I was done, I jogged to catch up with the other two, who were chatting with the only other people out on the lake that evening. It turned out to be a father and son, out spending some time together in the cold. None of us had really had any contact with anyone that did ice fishing, so we stayed and chatted a while. It's a fairly complicated activity, to hear them tell it; I would have thought the fishing would be the easy part, and the main attraction would have been the quiet time out on the ice, away from all the noise of everyday life. Apparently that's a side benefit. (It might expalin why I've never caught much of anything when I've gone fishing, too.)

On the way back in, I noticed that the cheery glow coming from the houses wasn't the result of artificial lighting. It was a reflection of the natural glory of the setting sun.

"Picture window" takes on a whole new meaning.

Ta-dah!

I haven't seen Brian out working on the tree for the past week or so, even on the days it wasn't raining, and today I understood why. There was an Autumn Festival of sorts down at the Village, and he was there, finishing it off for an audience. Given that he's got some sort of varnish or other coating on it, I think this is the final product.



Cool, eh?

The tree takes shape...

I stopped and talked with Brian again on my way to work this morning. Turns out he hasn't been doing chainsaw art since he was 8, just carving and whittling. He started out with knives and Exacto blades.



That's coming along nicely, don't you think?

New life for a dead tree, part 2

So where were with our tree?

I stopped and talked to the guy on my way to work this morning. You'd think someone running a chainsaw wouldn't want to be bothered, but it seems this guy's on the lookout for people to talk to while he's working. His name is Brian Yoder. Apparently, he's been comissioned to do several more trees around here.

Here he's fitting a new piece on the top, as the part that was supposed to go there was rotten. I suppose that's a common problem if your main medium is dead trees...

I did a search for this guy, and found out he's been doing this since he was 8. The commentary (by RevPharaoh) on that bit of info was pretty funny:

"Yoder had been doing chainsaw art since he was eight years old?!?"

This raises all sorts of questions, like:

Where were his parents?

Was his first chainsaw art on purpose or accidental?

Does Suzuki make child size chainsaws for young artists like they do violins?

My eight year old wants to start making bulldozer art. Should I encourage him?

New life for a dead tree

Here in Winona Lake, we don't cut down trees. Well, not all the way. If they're in a nice setting, other things tend to happen to them. This morning, I came across this fellow by Rodeheaver Auditorium on my way to work, a very pleasant Amish guy.*

When I took this picture, he told me he was removing some embedded nails from the wood. I'll take more pictures as the day goes on. I can hear his chainsaw from where I'm sitting...

*It's generally a safe assumption around here that men with long beards and no mustaches are Amish, but not always: when I was with Deborah in the hospital a few years ago, one of the hospital staff apparently couldn't see my mustache too well, and kept offering me instructions on how to use the elevators.