Friday, May 29, 2015

Wandering Aimlessly in the Deep Water..

Tuesday we had lunch in Polo, Missouri....   The restaurant is in the middle of the town and is called the Red Rooster...





Its kind of a nondescript building with white siding...   But we filled the place as usual...


I happened to be front and center in this picture, but it shows the inside of the cafe fairly well too.

From there we went off on a ride across most of Northwestern Missouri....  This was fine until we tried to cross the Platte River somewhere South of Ridgely on a county road with only a letter for a name...   With all the rain, the river was about 10 feet above its intended banks...  There was water as far as we could see and the road just disappeared into it..

We turned around and after riding back North to Edgerton we then went West to Dearborn..   Having had enough of the small roads, we got on I 29 and high tailed it back to KC...

The map says we only went 191 miles, but after wandering aimlessly all over West of Camden Point in the country, I had 227 miles on my trip odometer...


Retired Rod

Windows Live Writer

I found this on one of the Microsoft Forums where unhappy users were taking them to task....


We're working getting WLW updated/open sourced. 

Scott Hanselman

Scott's by line indicates he is on the Microsoft team.....

If they do open source this program, it would be like linux where the users are able to do the updates...  Open source also indicates that they have no interest in using or maintaining the program.....

Retired Rod

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Ceiling repairs..

What a mess!



It will take years to clean up all the dry wall compound mess....




They will be back tomorrow afternoon to begin painting the new knock down ceiling again....  I say again, because this was done and painted last Friday, but the big boss man came and looked it over saying that you could still see the place where it was patched...  And to him that was unacceptable...

I had kind of steeled myself that it would look patched when they got done, but not the big boss...  He said it is either right or it isn't... And if you can tell we worked on it, then it isn't right....

Well OK then....  

Changing subjects...... I have used Linux for years and because Live Writer only works on Microsoft operating systems, haven't been able to run anything but blogger's software...  So this past weekend, I went out an bought a Windows machine thinking I would add 10 to it when that becomes available..  And I downloaded Microsoft Essentials Live writer as part of my setup....  Well so much for that idea...

I don't see mother Google going backwards on their file definitions and Microsoft hasn't updated the Essentials programs for the last three years..  I wonder if we are just stuck with no more writer... or who will blink first....  Need to send lots of complaints...  Send one every day, to both companies......!

Retired Rod

Monday, May 25, 2015

Memorial Day.....

Happy Memorial Day.... !

In memory of all fallen Veterans who passed defending our right to be free citizens.....


I am just back from a family Holiday at Lake Ozark...   Retired Rod

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Bucksaw Resort Marina

We met at a Quicktrip in the far end of Overland Park, known as Stanley.   A patron there stopped me and thanked me for not shooting up the place.....  Referring to the recent tragedy in Waco....  I find that so disturbing, because the public paints all people on motorcycles with the same brush...  Enough said...

Our destination for today was Truman Lake South of Clinton, Missouri...  The Bucksaw Resort and Marina..  They have a restaurant on the floating dock along the shore...


We came in three or more waves of folks, and it was quite cool for the morning ride...  I saw 48 on the bike dashboard as I was riding to the meeting place..  We stopped a couple of times on the way down but still arrived about 10:30...  There was a big crowd of breakfast eaters that were just finishing up...


The lunch crew spread outside as the morning warmed up... But it never got above 68 all day...  They served Buffalo burgers as one of the main entrees, and they were fairly popular..


We left about 12:30 and took a tour up thru the center of Missouri finally arriving at Knob Noster, where the Whiteman Airforce Base is located....  As we were a couple of miles South of the airfield, a big flying wing overtook us over our right shoulder...  At first it looked like a gigantic bird, but it was trailing dirty jet exhaust...  A B2 Bomber....  They routinely fly missions on the other side of the world out of this remote base...

Out along the divided highway North of the base is a Mc Donalds...  This is where the afternoon coffee and ice cream stop was declared...   The group decided that they were going on North before heading back to KC since it was only overcast and not raining...   I needed to be back for Biscuit as it was already 3:30...

So I left them and headed right back into the city on highway 50..  It still took me about an hour to get home, and I have no idea when the rest of the group got back...  By 8 PM it was raining and continued well into the next day...

Google said it was 212 miles but I had 250 on the bike clock...  We left at 9 AM and returned at 4:30 Which was longer than Googles 4 hour travel time, but most of the rest of the time was in the restaurants....

Retired Rod

Monday, May 18, 2015

News Paper Article

Do you remember the week we went to Wellsville, Kansas and had the Kansas City Star newspaper reporters there to do a story on the Romeo Riders?

Several folks made comments asking if they would be able to read the write up...  And you can by following this link....

KC Star Article

We were all a little worried about the Successful Aging title of the newspaper supplement, but what are you going to do...?  And yes I was in the group picture, but it is like looking for waldo..  I'm in the very back next to one of the posts on the porch...  All you can see is my head and sunglasses.....  No hat either.

So here you go,  by request....

Retired Rod

Friday, May 15, 2015

On a Trip

Hello from the Dayton, Ohio Hamvention.....   We left the Kansas City area on Tuesday and drove to Terre Haute, Indiana through out the day.....  I arrived around 5 PM, but quickly realized that crossing the Indiana state line  about 5 miles back put me into the Eastern Time zone....

So in the last couple of months, I have now been in all 5 mainland time zones...   What the heck time is it anyway....??    On Wednesday, we stopped at the Speedway in Indianapolis for the time trial practice session...   That was a hoot....  Well it was anyway until the fastest driver in car 3 lost it and spun backwards...   Then hit the wall hard and air got under his back end flipping him into the air and onto his top....   He was going about 225 at the time...       Video  But he got out with the emergency folks help and was OK....

Since then, we drove directly over to the Hotel in Dayton   and have been going to the Ham Show each day...  They had good attendance and we have been busy scoping out purchases that would be possible if we wanted to spend the money...  Our sales have been fairly brisk, but we are about out of stuff to put on the tables, so now it is time to get other stuff to take back home...  Its a disease you know....

We always go to the many favorite places for meals that we have learned over the last several years...   A Mark's Big Boy for the old cars on Wednesday and Mario's Pizza on Thursday and tonight it was Hooters for Chicken wings and then on to an Ice Cream place.... We thought we were going to Friendly's, but it turned out they had closed that location and up the road a small ways there was a Cold Stone....   Well, what are you going to do..........!

Tomorrow is another big day of looking and dreaming...  And then home on Sunday...

For Biscuit fans, she is at her grandkids home, snuggling under the covers with the grand girls...  And they also have a new puppy named Augie...   He is a standard Poodle and Wheaton mix called a Whoodle.....    He has all the energy of both breeds, so son Ben is hoping that Biscuit can help settle down the new puppy....

Walking Augie with the bicycle...  You can't keep up unless you are on wheels...  And then he pulls you along, so you have to be ready....

Retired Rod

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Where the heck have I been...?

Its a sad thing to get out of the habit of writing a blog.....   You put it off at first, but then you are so far behind that you can't catch up...  So then your motivation goes South....  But perhaps I can catch things up all at once...

I'm still waiting for the drywall repair folks.....   It was all scheduled and they were to come this past week...  But at the last minute they called that their workers have some kind of a family emergency and wouldn't be arriving......  The workers are hispanic and do not speak the language well enough to have the contractor, which is my point man understand what went wrong...

All I know is that they didn't arrive....  But the new carpet people are supposed to be here tomorrow...  But only to do the measure.....  So we will have to slow that down some....  In the meantime all of the furniture from the living room and the dining room has been relocated to the family room...  I can barely make it to my recliner chair...  The tables are in the kitchen.... including the dining room table and the china dishes have been unloaded from the hutches....  We are a total mess........

I did find a replacement used piano as the old one was a total loss...  It arrived from Manhattan, Ks and is now in the way as well....  It is shoved up against the entry way wall...  There is not a thing I can do about any of this... So I have decided to remain happy...  But frustrated......

I have been going on a number of Motorcycle luncheons.....  Some of the destinations were Adrian, Mo and then Williamsburg, Kansas...  We managed to not get into the rain on those days, but it has rained here almost every day since the middle of last week....  Tuesday of the past week we rode up to Cameron, Mo which is about 100 miles North of me here in South KC...

On that day, I broke away from my friend Al as he was headed to Cabella's for camping gear and I ended up in Guitar Center looking for a Looper..  That is an electronic gizmo that records a few minutes of playing and then loops it back to you...  You can then play along with yourself on the next loop... This makes it sound like there are now two guitars...  Of course my skills are awful, but how will I ever learn if I don't have the gizmo..?

When I write up the motorcycle trips, not many folks seem as interested and my numbers of readers wanes...   So that kind of kills my motivation to blog about them....  So that's my story and I'm sticking to it..... LOL

Retired Rod