ChuckDoherty.com

I discovered a trick that allows you to send an email on a WiFi-equipped Delta flight without paying $12 – $15 for connectivity. The downside is that it is outgoing only (you can’t receive mail this way) but if you need to send a message out during a flight, and you have a WiFi-equipped device, it’s pretty handy. Here is how it works:

The WiFi connectivity allows access to a few shopping sites for free, including Amazon.com. If you have an account on Amazon, you probably know that you can create and maintain “wish lists” so that your friends know what to give you for your birthday and other occassions. You can also ask Amazon to email people a link to your wish list (which can just have one item in it), and use the comments field they provide to enter the text of your messge. Sure, it’s not too fancy, but if you need to get a message out for free from 37,000 feet, it’s a great trick.

It has been a number of months since I updated this site, and I blame it all on Facebook. With its taunting ease of updates, and its ephemeral read-it-or-it’s-gone nature, I have fallen under the spell and use it far too often. Not that what I or any of my friends are having for lunch makes any difference whatsoever to you or the world at large, but dammit, we need to be able to keep up on that! And God knows that knowing which Brady Bunch character someone is (a concept that I can’t quite grasp to begin with) may prove either beneficial or even interesting at some point.

Today is the day after Christmas, and I am getting packed up to return to New Jersey where I have been working on a project for a few weeks and will be for at least three more. This project has been a delight to work on and a was perfectly timed to find me at a slow business period, and I only wish it would go longer, but that does not appear to be in the cards.

Oy, it has been forever since I updated this site.  I know, I know, that whole Facebook thing that all the kids are doing these days makes it so easy to shoot out a quick “I’m having grilled cheese!” status update, and I am as much an abuser of that as anyone. But that is so superficial.  I need to delve deep into my psyche, and here in the “$80 for a 50-minute session” zone of my blog I can ramble on far more eloquently then I ever could in a Facebook posting, or that a 140-character Tweet would allow.  Plus, I can airbrush the pictures better.

In any case, I have been spending the better part of the past few months looking for work and taking advantage of this involuntary downtime by putting some serious miles on the motorcycle. 

I am going to update this much more regularly in the near future, and share my pithy observations on the world with all who visit here.  God knows the Internet is sorely lacking for people giving their 2-cents worth on all manner of subjects, and I do not want to dissapoint, or miss out on my chance to speak my mind on every possible subject. 

Stand by.

I am just back from the Great Western Motorcycle Adventure, and need to get some rest before I do much else.  However, I did upload a pile of photos from the trip (all as yet unlabled) to my picassa web album:

My Photo Gallery

Have a look around.

Let’s be honest;  Asian women are the worst drivers on Earth.   It’s not a subjective observation, it is simply the way things are.  The Sun is 93 million miles from the Earth, cheetahs are the fastest land animal, and Asian women are terrible drivers. Basic facts.

I just returned from a quick trip to and from New Jersey on the motorcycle, and can make this claim with a great deal of conviction after almost meeting my maker several times at the hands of an Asian woman piloting an SUV.

Secondly, (and are you listening to me McDonalds?), if you offer drinks in two sizes, one of them (the bigger one) is large, and the other is considered small.  Saying “we don’t have small, we only have large and medium” makes no sense, so stop it right now.  You cannot have a medium  (look the word up) unless you have at least three sizes anyway, but that’s another matter.  

It does not matter if YOU choose to name your two size offerings ”Flapjack” and “Tuesday”, because the larger of the two is still “large”, and the smaller is still “small.”

One week to go before the big trip.  I have all of my motorcycle and camping gear spread out on a folding table in my dining room, and I am getting closer to the final selection as to what will come along and what I will leave behind.  As I was reminded; “They have stores out there, you know” so I am sure that I could stop in a WalMart along the way if I discovered I need an additional pair of socks.

The route is taking shape as well, with the plan now calling for travel on RT 6 across the northern part of Pennsylvania after a highway-based blast from here to Scranton early on the morning of the 12th.  I hope to make it to the western part of PA that evening, find a non-haunted motel for the night, and set sail for Mishawaka Indiana on Monday morning where I plan to visit with a good friend from my yute who I have not seen in well over 20 years.  If he has not aged every bit as much as I have, I will be inconsolable.

On Tuesday, I am heading to Cedar Rapids Iowa to meet my friend Joe, who owes me a night out.

After that, I am off to Sioux Falls for one night and (hopefully) dinner with another friend, then across the enormous state of South Dakota to Deadwood early the next morning where I’ll kick off the “fun riding” portion of the trip.   I am sure that more motorcycle riding will be high on my must-do list by then.

Stay tuned.

I recently purchased a map update for the GPS on my motorcycle through Amazon.com. After a year or so, the map data becomes noticeably out of synch with reality, especially in areas where there is a great deal of road construction. Plus, businesses such as gas stations open and close fairly regularly, meaning you can’t always trust the old map data to get you to a gas station in the boonies when you are running on fumes.  I have never faced a close call myself, but it has directed me to a few stations with tumbleweeds rolling past rusty stumps of abandoned pumps.

What I actually bought was the license to visit their website and download updated map data up to four times each year for the usable lifetime (as defined by Garmin) of my GPS device.  The right to do this costs about $100, as opposed to shelling out around $59 for each one-time purchase.  What you actually receive for your money is simply a seven-digit alphanumeric code (like “JGKDFED”) which you then type in at the Garmin website. 

This code could very easily have been sent to me in real-time via email. Instead, the code arrived printed on the back of a plastic card similar to a credit card or gift card, and covered with scratch-off latex like you would see on a lottery ticket.

The card was in turn mounted on a piece of cardboard and, along with a shoplifting detection device, encased in one of those infuriating clamshell packages that are the bane of modern consumerism not to mention being responsible for a large number of injuries on the part of people trying to open them.

The clamshell, which could  have been shipped in a padded envelope, was instead nested at the bottom of a shoebox-sized cardboard box, and the remaining 95% of the volume in the box was taken up by a few of those plastic bag balloons that have recently replaced foam peanuts as the padding of choice.  The box, weighing all of about two ounces,  was then shipped to me via UPS and arrived at my back door about a week after I placed the order.

Putting aside all of the global warming, wasted materials, recycling, and fuel usages issues that surround this, it is frustrating to realize that the shipping and handling charges applied to this virtual item, as well as the delay in getting it, were totally unnecessary. 

The entire transaction should have lasted 15 seconds and gone like this;

“Here’s $100.” 

“Thanks. Now go to the website and type: ‘IAMASAP’ and you can download your maps.” 

</bitching>

I rode up to the Americade motorcycle rally in Lake George New York for the first two days of the week-long event. The folks from the local riders’ group that put this together go early in the week, before it gets too crowded and crazy.

Unlike Sturgis, Laconia, Daytona and other “bike” events, Americade is much less Harley-centric and geared more toward touring motorcycles and the folks who ride them, including many trikes, trailers, and sidecar rigs. But that does not mean that the event was biker-free.  There was no shortage of geniuses sporting straight-pipe bikes and riding down the street like a kid with baseball cards clothes-pinned to their spokes.  I have to admit feeling a delightful wave of Schadenfreude when one overly loud rider astride a Japanese Harley clone was followed into the motel parking lot by a cop who wrote him up for excessive noise.  Apparently excessive assholeness is not in itself a ticketable offense.

The heart of the event is a huge market / trade-show at which vendors of all stripes hawk their wares. If there is something that can be attached to a motorcycle, it was for sale there along with the ubiquitous Sham-Wow, magnetic bracelet, and beef jerky vendors that seem to be at every event, no matter the theme.  I was a bit disappointed that many of the vendors were selling at their regular retail prices instead of offering the expected show special, so there was no real point in buying products that I could get later on and not have to schlep home.

On the way back, I stopped in at the French Hollow Alpaca Farm in Cambridge NY where I learned: a) alpacas are among the sweetest, cutest things on earth, and b) I am alergic to alpacas.  I also enjoyed a coffee and a delicious muffin (probably hemp-based) at a twee coffee shop in downtown Cambridge that looked like a retirement home for Hobbits on the inside. It was run by the just-too-friendly members of a local commune.