Generation X

They told us we were special, but not as special as they were.

This was after our parents told us we could have the world, but forgot to mention we'd have to first delouse it from the 60's.

This time of year brings a fresh crop of interns in at work.  Along with these gogetters, some major work reorganization means there is some evaluation of what new work spaces will look like.  In their infinite wisdom, the people leading this effort took it on themselves to ask younger Gen Y how they thought they would work and what their careers would be like.  If someone had done that to me in the 80's, I would have been very wrong, and thankfully.
What the generation that gave us Justin Bieber thinks is not only self-serving, but simple-minded and contains a lack of awareness of what 10 years of a less-than-ideal economy has created; a generation that has not had a real job.  I say that with full acknowledgement of the horrors of Tiffany and New Kids on the Block and yes, we can always blame Bieber on the Canadians.

I don't really believe that generations exist.  Since children are born every year, there is a broad continuum, not discrete groups.  But, I'm smack dab in the middle of Generation X and fit more of the stereotype than I care to admit.  The Lost Generation.

My parents were divorced and I came home with my siblings to an empty house.  We were the latch-key kids.  Actually, I rarely came home as I was usually working; a fat kid washing dishes at a bakery.  The jokes are too easy.

Our parents gave us Ronald Reagan.  We liked him if our parents did.  He broke communism.  He bankrupt communism first, and almost ourselves in the process.  The terrible side effects to the end of Gorbachev was the loss of a common enemy.  No longer was the Soviet Union the acceptable enemy in every movie.  We had to search for new enemies, but none worked as well.  While the actual end of the Soviet Union didn't happen until I was in College, prescient people saw that walloping an aging dog with a piece of an iron curtain wasn't going to work for much longer.  Red Dawn tried to use the Cubans and Nicaraguans as the enemy - it didn't matter that it didn't work.  We were raised on the threat of nuclear annihilation and we needed an enemy.  If education didn't save us, our desks would as we drilled on the art of Duck and Cover.
In 1986 Rutger Hauer went head to head against Gene Simmons using Arabs as the enemy.  An enemy without a state isn't quite as easy to rally behind - or without a state that political sensitivities will allow.
Thankfully Indiana Jones continued to chase the Nazis.

Our parents gave us the internet, but only after they couldn't figure out what to do with it.  We weren't sure either, but were not saddled with the thought of the internet only being a different form of print.  Smart people thought to create web pages devoted to scientific experiments with Twinkies.  Our parents tried to take that away.
We all started mass emailing jokes and sometimes pornography - the first social network.  This was while Mark Zuckerberg was still just another dorky middle school kid.
We used Usenet to do inappropriate things (and sometimes learn stuff too).  Even long after Usenet has been supplanted by more advanced web-based features, school and corporate filters never stopped it since they didn't understand it.  Like holding on to a cherished childhood memento, I still have the .exe file to install Forte Free Agent.

We were the last generation to have real winners or losers.  All trophies were not almost the same.  Even the person who was judged to have played best at the piano recital got a larger cheap metal head of Beethoven; the rest of us got cheap plastic heads of some guy named Brahms.  The winners of the soccer tournament got a trophy, the rest of us got soggy orange slices from reused plastic bags out of a cooler.

We were the first kids who were taught that cigarettes would kill us from day one, but lots of us tried them.  We second-hand smoked packs of cigarettes anyway, before anybody knew what that was.  Our teachers obviously didn't think that much of our intelligence as they snuck down to the boiler room to smoke during recess.

We were all moved behind the barricades for the fireworks.  What our parents refused to believe was that it was boring back there and the Crystal Flash gas station sold fireworks to anyone.  Even better fireworks could be bought from the older son of the junior high art teacher.  Never, has the rare tip from delivering newspapers been so important as when roman candles or enormous strings of lady finger fire crackers can be purchased singly.

We went to arcades because they were so much better than the Intellivision or Atari that some of our friends had.  For a few quarters, we could entertain ourselves on Spy Hunter or a vector-based Star Wars.  If anybody was there with money to burn, we could watch them play Dragon's Lair; but the two dollars in quarters was too much for most of us to pay for three quick deaths.  "Drink Me" was the only level that was passable to a neophyte.

Riding bikes without a helmet is now taboo.  Kids in a car without car seats (not to mention seat belts) is illegal; very few kids born today will know the joy or riding cross-country in the back of a station wagon or sleeping on the floor of a blue VW microbus (yeah - that was us).  On second thought, that would only have been joy if the people in charge could have been a little more civil.  Sun-tan oil probably still exists, but SPF5 is seen as risky now as opposed to being 80's overcautious.

Parachute pants are long gone (are they?) and the last Space Shuttle flight is grounded long after Challenger killed Christa McAuliffe.  Crockett and Tubbs are vague memories while Sonny (the Congressman) is dead.

The hangover form the 80s is about over now, although I'm not sure I'll ever be able to smell peach schnapps again without shuddering a little.  The Brat Pack are nearing the half-century mark.  The black white guy that gave us Thriller turned into a nut-job, a drug addict, and is now dead.

I guess the crowd that grew up not knowing a world without email addresses, and not knowing a "portable" phone that weighed several pounds and costs dollars per minute to use might have something important to say.  Maybe.  But for a while, Generation X, raised independent to a fault will continue to do what needs to be done.

You talk like a Rosicrucian, who will love nothing but a sylph, who does not believe in the existence of a sylph, and who yet quarrels with the whole universe for not containing a sylph. - Peacock, Nightmare Abbey

Short Stories

I just finished reading a book of short stories.  Merriam Webster's word of the day a few weeks ago was "Walter Mitty" defined as: a commonplace unadventurous person who seeks escape from reality through daydreaming
Reading the origin of the term was from a short story by James Thurber, I felt the need to read the origin.  My local library had a book which included The Secret Life of Walter Mitty among other titles.

Short story books are good to read when there can be lapses between starting a finishing a book.  Every story is an end to itself and if any of them aren't very good, it won't last long.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was very short, and not terribly interesting. But a few other short stories from the book made the time spent worthwhile.  I'm surprised a movie was made out of this, I may have to look for it as well?

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a story I knew about, but had not read.  I think we were shown a movie short on it in junior high school.  I'm familiar with the writing of Ambrose Bierce mostly through short quips and musings, reading something slightly more substantive was interesting.  The story is morose, but inventive.

The Pearl by John Steinbeck was also a good read, if not particularly fun.  The story is inventive, with many parts that tie together only tangentially.  I have not read The Grapes of Wrath as it is sort of over my usual length limit.  I may have to revisit this the next time I know I'll have time and energy to read it in entirety.

While not contained in the recent book, a few other short stories have made an impression on me.

T.C. Doyle's After the Plague is a little disturbing, bringing together love, hate and death all in one story which is both uplifting and a let-down at the same time.

Barn Burning by William Faulkner is like a shortened version of A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren.  One short story and one book that tell a similar tale, but altogether different.

No discussion of short stories is complete without talking about A Boy and His Dog by Harlan Ellison.  This was made into a movie starring Don Johnson.  The movie is good (a true guy's movie if there ever was one), but it defaced the story.  The end of the written short story brings a different feeling to the final scene in the book.  As is almost always the case, the book (or story in this case) ends up being much better than the movie.

True to the genre, this posting is short.  I'd say I can follow this up with a fictional short story of my own, but given that no one would ever likely read it I would then be acting in the way of a true Walter Mitty.

2014 Triumph Trophy Part II

There is no better way to wring out the good, bad, great and ugly of a motorcycle than to take a multi-day trip on it.  Even better if the weather is a spectrum of perfect to heinous.  Mission accomplished.  I recently got back from a few days away on my (relatively) new Triumph Trophy SE.

I'm a member in a couple motorcycle online forums and a lurker in many more.  It is easy to sit back and read post after post about how terrible any given bike/marque/brand/model is.  There are slightly less posts how a given bike is the last word; the best never to be bettered.  The two most polarizing bikes, Harley Davidsons and BMWs seem to represent the best and worst of this - castigating every flaw with a motorcycle while remaining fiercely brand loyal.  There is a dearth of honest reviews from real people.  While most motorcycle magazines will point out issues encountered, the overall honesty is often in question since manufacturers also advertise in said magazines - although sometimes reading between the lines can point to bikes that may have less-than-desirable features.

The reality is, vehicle manufacturers go to great lengths to build, refine, test, and market motorcycles while balancing what a very broad array of people will want as well as balancing cost, manufacturability and repairability.  The result is almost always a sound bike built for a target.  The balancing act means that nothing will ever be perfect for everyone.  But, being content in the middle ground is a good place to be.  The big watch out for people is to not buy something if it isn't really what is wanted.  If someone wants to tour, a CBR250 probably isn't the best choice.  If someone wants to go crazy fast, a Sportster probably shouldn't be high on the list.

So a few days ago I found myself several hundred miles away from home parked in front of Hotel Room 6.

The trip away from home was threatened to be hurt by inclimate weather, but it remained dry the entire time.  Thinking back, what I noticed most about the trip away was what I didn't notice.  Compared to my ST1300, there was very little fatigue in my back or wrists.  While not as comfortable as my Goldwing, the bike was wonderful for the several hundred miles.  This is especially important given my mode of travel is to go-go-go with stops only for fuel or the relieving of biological function and every effort is made to have them infrequent and occur simultaneously.
The trip north did have a significant east wind.  This resulted in amazing fuel economy when going west, but was a constant battle when going north.  Fighting the wind as it ebbed around terrain changes made the last few hours tiring and I was happy to be done for the night in Room 6.

I spent a couple days away from home before heading back on only a slightly different route.  Half the trip home was spent in rain which ranged from light to torrential.  Again, the Trophy did a marvelous job, keeping the adjustable windscreeen in the sweet spot to allow good protection from the weather and still being able to see over it was easy - I've always been a proponent of never looking through a motorcycle windscreen.  Since I also own a Goldwing, I cringe every time I see some dude on a GL1800 with a picture window size aftermarket windshield - ugh...

The second half of the trip home was dry, bordering on hot.  So the overall trip gave a little of everything.

There are probably only two small issues encountered that were real for this wring-out.

Cruise Control
The cruise control on the Trophy worked wonderfully and I'm sure having it helped with the lack of fatigue after many hours on the bike.  The cruise control on the Trophy can be deactivated by hitting either brake, the clutch or rolling the throttle off.  This last feature is a really nice way to turn it off when coming up on a situation which requires it, but it was a bit sensitive.  On a few occasions, the combination of wind gust and hitting a road bump in just the right (wrong?) way turned the cruise control off by my bumping the throttle forward.  In theory, this isn't a big deal as a slight movement of my right thumb resumed speed control.  In practice, it was frustrating.
Given that I've used the cruise control in many other situations without experiencing this, I'll attribute most of this annoyance to the high wind and gustiness.  I haven't seen it on my trips to work or other instances when I have been using cruise control.  A slight adjustment of my hand position did help as well.

Antenna
The stock antenna on the Trophy is troublesome.  At the right combination of windscreen and antenna position, it is fine.  And, both do adjust - the windscreen electrically for wind protection and the antenna angle moves mechanically.  In the wrong combination, the wind deflected by the windscreen hits the antenna resulting in violent movement of it (that might be a bit of an overstatement), at times resulting in a Galloping Gerdie oscillation (definitely an overstatement).

Luckily, the fix for this is pretty easy.  The stock antenna unscrews with a male m5 thread on the antenna base.  This is a fairly standard antenna fixing, so a trip to Autozone resulted in a shorty replacement.

With this replacement, I am nearly certain that regardless of windscreen position, there is almost no chance that the antenna will wag around, even remotely.  So far, I haven't noticed any significant difference in radio reception either.

And, I actually like the looks of the shorty antenna a little better!