Hazardous pastime

The news has been talking this week about the hazards of motorcycling with the death of another rider west of Mandan, Neal Geiger. It was another case of the classic “I didn’t see him” syndrome from which many “cagers,” a term we motorcyclists use for car drivers, suffer.

We’re in a very tricky season. Not only are the roads still scummy and sandy from the winter, but the sun is still very low in the sky this time of year. That can make for some very dangerous visibility problems at dusk and dawn. Compound that with the fact that area cagers have probably not seen a motorcycle on the roads for several months now, aside from the diehards, so they’re just not used to looking for them on a conscious or subconscious level.

I haven’t even ridden any of my motorcycles this year. Only a couple of years ago I made a point of riding every month of the year, including ice racing. But these days I’d rather not sandblast my paint with the remainder of the winter sand, and I’m a little spooked by the whole angle-of-the-sun thing. It was that type of scenario that led to the horrible death of my friend Kirk on his Kawasaki Ninja several years ago. That kind of thing makes you think.

When one participates in high risk activities, our own vulnerabilities and mortality are something we try to brush off so they don’t interfere with the fun. But after a while, the law of averages and the benefit of experience tend to make those concerns harder and harder to put away. Maybe I’m just getting old…more or less, I’m lucky to be getting old. As several of my friends would attest, we hung it out there farther and faster than any one of us should have dared and yet survived. I’ve got the scars, the almost invisible limp, and the 24 hour pain to prove it.

I was talking with a friend today about the newspaper article about Mr. Geiger’s fatal collision, and it brought to mind memories of friends that have passed. There have been several fatalities among my friends here and abroad. One particularly awful memory was the crash of Norm Kukert, a friend who died literally right in front of another friend and me. I still can’t see a motorcycle on its side without seeing the horribly grisly accident scene. Facing not only the tragedy of a fallen friend, but also one’s own mortality staring back at you, can be a sobering event.

I remember when my friend Mike announced he was going to quit roadracing. He and his wife had a new baby boy, their first, and he decided to hang up racing for their sakes. This was interesting given his particular career, which is inherently dangerous. The next weekend, the weekend immediately following the 9/11 attacks, I was all set up and ready to race on my own. For a number of reasons I packed up my pit gear and came back to North Dakota without racing. That very weekend a young man was killed in turn 2 while his fiance and their little girl were in attendance. Suddenly Mike’s choice didn’t seem so cautious after all.

Why do I continue to ride? It’s what I am. It’s all I’ve ever known, since before I was even in first grade. It’s where I feel at home, it’s where I find peace, it’s where I find excitement and relaxation all bundled up into one. Tragedies and dangers notwithstanding, it’s where I belong.

We all take chances. Different folks have different levels of chance that they’re willing to take. Many of us will be out there this summer on two wheels, occasionally one, trying not to go pinballing between the cars of hapless drivers who “just didn’t see” us. Please take the time to watch out for motorcyclists. We’re counting on you to help lessen the risk of simply doing what we love and were born to do.

The Pine Ridge solution: kill more Indians

As you may have heard, South Dakota passed a law banning nearly all abortions. The law is supposedly written in such a way as to be a good constitutional challenge for Roe v. Wade. Thus one of our fellow rural states is going to be a focal point of a LOT of national attention, as the governor vowed to sign the bill into law. (I’m not sure if that has happened yet). But don’t worry…the fine folks who brought you gambling and tax-free smokes are ready to step in! Need an abortion? Hop on over to Pine Ridge and get one there once their new clinic is built. Heck, they will probably even have federal dollars pay for it! One catch though; not available to a woman who’s non-Indian. From an KNBN news report: “The best solution to abortion is to make sure that women have access to contraceptives, have access to family planning options, and that information needs to be out there at all times where all women of childbearing age have that information and use it.” … “We just want to make sure that something is done for women who make that decision. All we can do is provide that to them, no questions asked. It’s their choice. It’s between her and God and that unborn baby. And I honor that.” — Cecilia Fire Thunder, President, Oglala Sioux Tribe Wow, imagine if a white guy (person of whiteness? I don’t know the Politically Correct language) proposed the idea that killing (or even just preventing the births) of more Native American babies would be a solution to anything! If I were to make a short list of issues that should be tackled aggressively and quickly in Indian country, I think the list would include unemployment and poverty, meth and alcohol addiction…there are plenty of things that would come before no-questions-asked abortions. If you’d like you can read the whole KNBN TV story here.

Demographics plotted

This is a plot of demographic statistics (race, income, housing statistics, etc) that was married up to Google Maps. You can scan all over the country and find how the Census 2000 data matches up to locations.

It’s not precise enough to go from neighborhood to neighborhood; too bad, it’d be neat to see things get that specific. Instead it goes as small as a 1 mile radius. Otherwise we could see how badly some of those people in Southport are financed up to their eyeballs!

One cool thing is that you can switch to Satellite view and actually see Bismarck’s satellite photo. It looks to be the same 3-5m resolution satellite imagery that Google Earth uses.

You can play around with it a bit by clicking here.

Weekend sunset

I caught this particular sunset Friday evening from my favorite endangered sunset spot. There were others driving by with their cameras too, but none of them wanted to brave the mud and get to the bluff where I got this exposure. Doing so allows me to get out of the way of all the power lines and stuff that would clutter the foreground. It also allows me to kick it into 4×4 and do some climbing!

Kohl’s, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Home Depot announce Bismarck closures after less than a year

The recent surge in construction of “Big Box” stores in the Bismarck-Mandan area may have come to a screeching halt after shocking announcements released Friday!

Stores like this will only build in a certain metro area once its population has reached or exceeded a certain threshold, usually around 100,000 people. In order to recruit these businesses to the Bismarck-Mandan area, local community developers exploited the “100 mile radius” rule to define a Bismarck-Mandan “metro area” that met the requirement. This allowed them to include Dickinson, Washburn, Wilton, Jamestown, and other outlying communities.

But who’s to say that someone will hop in the car and drive 99.9 miles to do their regular shopping at these stores? Apparently, that’s not the case. After a minor surge in business upon opening, the local “Big Box” establishments now sit largely empty, relying only on drastic sales to try to recruit those elusive prairie customers. Now they want out.

“We were duped by the numbers,” said one store manager in an off-the-record phone conversation. “It’s worse than the ‘budget surplus’ of the Clinton administration in the 1990s, counting on revenue that wasn’t there. In this case, we’re counting on people that just aren’t coming.” Another store employee I bumped into said, “We’re not sure we’d have much business in building materials at all, except that the locals are tired of Menards selling ‘curly lumber’ all these years.”

Local officials deny that there was any sort of “massaging the numbers” at play here, but instead cite gas prices and winter weather as causes for fewer customers coming to Bismarck from the surrounding area. At an emergency city meeting, the question was posed: “Look, if they’ll just wait for Spring and Summer, we’re sure this trend will turn around. What sense does it make to put up a million dollar building, then cry foul and go home?”

To make matters worse, this devastating news comes on the weekend of April Fool’s Day, which means that by now you should have figured out that I’m pulling your chain. I had to make up a gripping April Fool’s joke from somewhere. Now go out to Best Buy, Kohl’s, Petsmart, Home Depot, or one of the other lovely new “Big Box” establishments and spend some money.

On a related note, if you feel the need to donate a Briggs & Stratton-powered pressure washer from Home Depot to the Bismarck-Mandan Blog, please contact me by email using the form at the upper right of this page. It will be greatly appreciated and immediately put to good use in a good home.

DMVW railroad practices mosquito control

On my way to east Bismarck on Wednesday, I came over the hill by the Coke plant to see the whole area awash in a foggy haze. I thought it truly was fog until I saw this:

The DMVW railroad was warming up a couple of diesel-electric locomotives. There were actually two pairs but only this pair was smoking. I wonder who checked the oil? You could check it by sticking a finger in the air. It smelled like it was synthetic, too…that can’t be cheap. Or environmentally friendly!

Stymied!*

I was on my way to the deep, DEEP part of the river bottoms for some wildlife photography Wednesday afternoon when I came upon this little obstruction:

Despite a nearly overwhelming temptation to throw it into four wheel drive and give ‘er the proverbial “onion,” I backed off and called it a day. There’s always the weekend…

* “Stymie” is an old Scottish colloquialism from the early days of the game of golf, meaning to obstruct a shot. For the definition of “colloquialism” please consult a dictionary or someone who’s homeschooled.

The ol’ fixer-upper

If you’ve driven past the Liberty Memorial Bridge lately I’m sure you’ve seen these scaffolds stuck to the side of two of the support columns. Work continues to put a steel liner around the two trouble spots and fill the gaps with a special concrete.

It looks like one of them is completed and the other one under wraps in these photos, which I took this weekend. I bet it’s cold working up there…that’s likely why they’ve wrapped the area where concrete is to be poured, to let it set properly.

What’s weird about being near the bridge when it’s closed is that it’s eerily quiet in the absence of traffic. The only sound is the constant cooing of all those darn pigeons. That in itself is kinda spooky…what if they decide to revolt?

While they’re at it…shouldn’t they take a look at some of this stuff? I mean, if the rest of the undercarriage of this bridge has broken rebar and crumbling concrete…do we really want to reopen it? That’s kinda scary.

We’ve all had a taste of what life will be like while the bridge’s replacement is built…it’s not fun. Hopefully, once the construction on a new bridge gets underway, the process of building a new one will go quickly.

Some people think this bridge is just fine the way it is, and should simply be properly maintained. Others want it scrapped in favor of a new and better one. Then there’s the shock and awe brought about by its deterioration. And of course those who want it preserved as a historical item.

Personally, I think the historic appeal of this bridge died when they decided to put a concrete deck on the famous “singing bridge.” Now that it appears to be rusting and crumbling away, let’s replace it. But let’s do so responsibly. And I sure hope the next design lasts as long as this one has!

Behind the scenes, beneath the streets

I’m a naturally curious sort of guy. I am interested in how everything works. So when I was driving down Highland Acres Road last weekend and saw this trailer parked in the middle of the road, I had to stop and investigate. At a passing glance I saw the cable going down into the manhole, the room in the front of the trailer with the guy looking out, and the video monitor in the upper corner of the trailer. Looks like something interesting’s going on here.

That’s where I met Jeff from Watertown, SD. He’s working for a company that is going through parts of the sewer system in Bismarck and preparing it for maintenance. The city will be putting polymer sock liners in some of the sanitary sewer lines around the city. But when someone builds a house and taps into the sewer line and weld their pipe to the main line, part of their pipe protrudes into the main line. That’s a problem for anyone trying to stuff a liner down the pipe. That’s where Jeff’s company comes in.

He’s operating a motorized camera/light rig that drives down the pipe. From the other end of the neighborhood are the rest of the crew, driving up a machine that spins inside the pipe, flinging 3 lengths of chain and driven by 2000 PSI of water pressure. The machine grinds away the protruding lengths of pipe or any other obstructions so that the liner may be applied to the pipe later. Jeff’s job is to use his camera/ light to spot protrusions and give the other guys directions to hone them out of the pipe. They communicate by 2-way radio and he tells them which way to go back and forth until the pipe is honed clear.

This machine does a pretty slick job. Jeff’s got computers and a tape machine, and they record and log everything they do. They can then provide the city with a diagram of the length of pipe they’ve serviced, labeled as to where they encountered obstructions, what they looked like, how they were dealt with, and what the pipe looks like after they’ve cleared it. He showed me printouts of all of that stuff. It’s really pretty slick.

Thanks to Jeff for the explanation. He’s also got a couple of Canon digital SLRs like me and enjoys wildlife photography, so we had a really nice chat. It was quite gracious of him to explain everything he’s doing and take time during his busy evening to show me all the stuff that they do.

So just remember…the reason everything works the way it does is because the city’s got guys like Jeff and his crew that help maintain and upgrade the system. And they’ve got cool machinery to enable them to get that job done.