According to a story from the BBC, fire has destroyed much of the National Motorcycle Museum near Birmingham, ruining 650 vintage machines and leaving 60% of the building a blackened shell. More than 120 firefighters tackled the fire which could be seen for 15 miles around.
Here’s a late September update on the story http://www.realclassic.co.uk/news03091910.html
Here’s a direct link to the museum’s website
http://www.nationalmotorcyclemuseum.co.uk/
When Buddhists come to town
Important things are in store this week.
I asked for a half-day off this afternoon, but didn’t give specifics.
We’d heard about an interesting event at the Washington National Cathedral this afternoon: A Teaching by His Holiness the Dalai Lama Cultivating Peace as an Antidote to Violence. Sounded like an interesting way to spend the 2nd Anniversary of the September 11th attack
The Cathedral doors open at 2:30 and the event starts at 4 pm – and it sounded like an interesting event to attend – we’d never heard the Dalai Lama speak before. So we decided we could work a half-day, take the metro into town and grab some lunch, then catch a bus uptown to the Cathedral. Simple plan and fun together.
I grabbed Emma at 11, and we took the subway to Farragut West, and walked upstairs to International Square for lunch. 30 minutes later we headed outside
and caught the bus. 30 minutes after that the bus dropped us at Mass Avenue, and we saw a l-o-n-g line of people was already there! we walked 3 blocks to the end of the line and took our place … it was just 1:45!
To shorten the story, we did all get in, but it was packed. We heard chanting – a mix of the Tibetan monks throat singing and the Cathedral choir doing simplesong, with a simple sort of synthesizer backing them. Think Enigma, or Eno … We could hear, but just barely – the sound wasn’t that good where we were, and there were flatscreen digital monitors on some of the stone columns – a very future-retro vision.
Transcript, webcast and official pictures of the event
On a related note – we heard of another respected teacher coming to town –
Thich Nhat Hanh giving a public lecture at the Washington Hebrew Congregation, Sun Sept 14 – 7pm We have tickets for this and are looking forward to hearing him speak.
More info on Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village Retreat Center
Import Finished!
I’ve reloaded the software, imported all the old entries, and begun rebuilding the templates so the Blogpile is beginning to look like the old site before it crashed, tho I still have more work to do on the templates, when I have time.
Test file
They reconfigged the server and my old bLog configuration didn’t survive.
So – I’ve rebuilt the blog configuration and will be re-entering some of the postings from last winter and such – tho – I reserve the right to skip a few.
Ah well – Vive la revolution!
Whoohoo!! Biker babe Photo!!!
The cool thing about having a bike is … Biker babe photos!!!
Let Sleepin’ Cats lie…
Okay – so we’re relaxing after dinner, watching Home and Garden TV, when we glance over at the cats and see them sleeping, Dolly hugging Teddy.
This is a real photo of our cats, not posed, no catnip was consumed in the making of this shot, no photoshop creativity (other than resizing the picture and minor contrast enhancement) – its pretty much directly out of my Olympus digital camera! And yes, Teddy is kinda hanging off the end of the sofa – he is the chill cat – he knows how to relax!
Click to enlarge to 600×800 pixels size
Bike update – with me!
I’m still haunting eBay for various parts – got a new shifter and tailight mount on the way, as well as a proper headlight with ammeter (wouldn’t be a classic British bike without a bouncing needle on the headlight!) … I’ve got a new seatcover and trim, but I’ll have a professional redo that after everything else is sorted…just as I’ll probably pay a painter to do a proper gas tank for me, later …
I’ve even got the right exhaust pipes & footpegs
But its really getting close now … we even have our vanity plate!
click to enlarge
On Closings …
August 1st, 2003 – Three years ago, Emma and I sat down and signed papers, closing the deal to purchase out house in Fairfax, Virginia. We were first time homebuyers, and, frankly, very glad to start building equity with a house instead of ‘paying money to the man’ in Rent. Much has happened since then, and we refinanced once in Feb 2002.
In June we contacted the mortgage company to request a better loan.
They waffled a bit, but we reminded them that getting a percentage of something is always better than taking a larger percentage of nothing …
Now, with the fallen interest rates, we will be sitting down at 5PM today, closing another set of refinance papers. Property values have risen so we can drop off the PMI fees, and we’ll save more due to an even better interest rate.
What a great way to celebrate the third year anniversary of our house!
All praise and thanks to god for these blessings!
Live the Triumph Life!!
While scanning the web for info on the bike, I ran across the website of a company that makes T shirts from Vintage ads – for Chevy, Dodge, Ducati – even Triumph. SO, I went to look at the Triumph ads and ran across this gem from 1968. Understand that the 500 was considered a “girl’s bike” – I suppose the 650 Bonneville was for the guys. That sort of thing is long gone, but … the phrase “The best of both worlds” holds special meaning for T people. Emma even thinks the model looks like me … I’m flattered …but … I dunno …
Click to see the whole ad!
RIAA: ALL AMERICANS are targets!
This pursuit of the RIAA to fund themselves by suing any and all peer-peer fileshare users is getting rediculous. Its bad enough that the Radio business has turned into shills for the blonde-blue-eyed clone-of-the-month. Its bad enough that the music industry has been systematically ripping off the artists that made the music in the first place (see Courtney Love, see Robert Fripp, etc).
Now the concept of the dead-but still struggling music bidness trying to extort money from all possible sources has completely sickened me. I hearby give the music bidness notice. I will no longer buy commercial recordings, I will not steal
the music, I will not trade the music, I will just – walk away and ignore the music
business and no longer provide ANY of my hard earned money to sponsor such scum..