Autographs

As I age, the concept of autographs seems silly to me. Some other human with some form of talent signed their name. My first autograph was at the local little league baseball preseason parade, 1975 or '76. Detroit Tiger Mickey Lolich made an appearance and must have signed 200+ items with a slew of 10 year olds in line. He signed my mitt that I played with so needless to say, the autograph didn't last long after a few games and don't recall losing a bit of sleep over it.  I have a handful of autographed items but none were actually signed in my presence. Some live for collecting them, I don't. My dad used to tell anyone that would listen that the signed baseball on the right of the attached picture was from the 1968 World Champion Tigers but was actually from the '74 season when they were crap. My favorite autograph story was at the old Buick Open golf tournament in Grand Blanc that my dad took me to a couple of years. I was hanging at the 18th green and got a handful of autographs from the pros coming off the course. Up walks Chi Chi Rodriguez and I asked for his autograph. He looks at me says, "You want to know how Tom Kite signs his name?" and proceeded to scribble through all of the autographs I had on my program. He laughed and walked away.

Trail Head 

Coming Soon....Someday

While my next move will be into the old folks home, when I moved north in the spring of 2022, the attached 'Coming Soon' signs were adorned along the bike path looking off onto Betsie Bay. Waterfront condos is/was the vision and a beautiful vision it is/was looking off to the west from your luxury condo. It is now 2026, however, and the 'Coming Soon' signs have had more activity than the condo construction, which is none. It started with 'Coming Fall 2022' to 'Coming Spring 2023' to 'Coming Soon' to 'Coming 2024' and stayed that way through 2025. A big wig realtor in the area slapped her name on the project and the locals in town told me it would now go forward with her name on it. Up went a 'Coming Spring 2026' sign, the building area was cleared and thought it was going to happen. Spring came and went and with summer just about complete, the latest update back to 'Coming Soon' is in place.

Someday

Trail Head

Book Reviews

The 6+ hour flight to Alaska a few weeks back allowed me to catch up on some reading as the cheapo airlines didn't have inflight movies. With that, some recent reads:

Football

In the spirit of the upcoming football season, a good read about the craze of  football in the U.S.A. with fantasy football and mock drafts ALL YEAR LONG. How it's impossible to compare Jim Thorpe to Barry Sanders; both great players in their respective eras but can't compare. My favorite  portion of the book is where the author references a study that was done on how long a football game actually lasts using a stop watch (https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/football-games-have-11-minutes-of-action). Start on the snap and stop at the whistle and it turns out games only last about 11 minutes!!! We're all in it for three hours (at least) however.

Raised on Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola – the AOR Glory Years 1976-1986

A good read covering the bands my siblings got me into growing up (fortunate to grow up in the era), such as Journey, Heart, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon, Boston, Pat Benatar, Rainbow, Styx and Van Halen to name a few. 

Written in the oral history format with interviews with members of the groups, it reads like a book version of "Behind the Music." All seemed to have the same story, drugs got in the way, egos got too big, management screwed them over and the groups had many bumps along the way after reaching the mountain top.

Ozzy Osbourne - Last Rites

Ozzy. Thankfully he had a co-author as it reminded me a bit of Keith Richards bio where you get a few "as I recall" references but could hear his voice in the dialogue. Instead of the word 'because', we have many references to 'cos instead, which works.

The book speeds through Ozzy's early years and focuses more on his later years, his health issues and his final tour before he passed. I would have to believe if it weren't for his wife Sharon, I don't think he would have made it as far as he did. 

Northern Exposure

The tour headed north this past week to dip my feet into the Alaska experience, and met up with a couple friends while doing so. 

I signed up for a trolley car/bus city tour along with a guide supported mountain bike ride at Chugach State Park ahead of the trip so I had all my ducks in a row. 

The trolley/bus tour was outstanding as we learned about the earthquake of 1964 and why the mud flats off of the shoreline prevented some serious tsunamis from happening. In addition, we got a sprinkle of some Iditarod dog race history, fireworks in the daylight (it's light at 11 PM on July 4th in Alaska) along with learning that every person with multiple generations growing up in the area seems to have a two seat Cessna plane, handed down from each generation. 

The mountain bike ride unfortunately got cancelled. The company doing the ride also do guided tours on the Coastal Trail, a paved path along the coast that has a bit more demand than the mountain bike ride. Not too many vacationing senior citizens go mountain biking for some reason...   Long story short, one of the guides for the paved path tour threw his back out so they pulled the mountain bike guide onto the paved tour and cancelled our ride. I was bummed but understand as there were only two of us mountain biking and probably about 10 on the paved tour. Alaska has a short summer tourist season and it came down to numbers. I ended up taking the paved tour and enjoyed it; saw a couple moose in the process.

While winding down after the ride, I texted friend Rob as he sometimes works in the state and it turned out he and wife Wendy were in town and we had dinner with another couple. 

A great, beautiful state. While I don't think I could ever live there on a permanent basis, I will be back to get that mountain bike ride in, guide of no guide next time. I'll just make sure to pack the bear spray.

Trail Head

Chugach Mountains

salmon snaggers

large melon in tourist mode

Iditarod dog tribute

Breaking the Law

I got three notifications in the mail this past week from the U.S. census bureau. I honestly can't remember ever completing one but don't recall getting strong armed with threats on the packaging that it is "required by law." That makes me more inclined to throw it in the shredder. Doing your taxes is required by law, why not eliminate the census bureau and capture the census data on a tax questionnaire?

Census bureau renegade, signing off.

99 Bottles of Whiskey on the wall...

Ninety-nine bottles of whiskey on the wall, take one down, pass it around, 98 bottles of whiskey on the wall...

Yes, the song is different but I had to do some tweaking for my achievement this weekend as I finished drinking the 99 Irish whiskeys a local establishment has available (no, not in one sitting) and became a member of the Whiskey Club. They give you the attached sheet to keep track/date your progress and put comments for each. For me, it didn't matter if the whiskey was 27 years old or just out of the barrel, it all tasted like whiskey to me with the exception of a handful that made my lips numb. Not sure if that is a good thing or not.

https://www.mlive.com/news/2020/09/why-this-restaurant-has-the-largest-irish-whiskey-collection-in-northern-michigan.html

Bicentennial Minute

Fifty years ago I was just figuring out that this life was going to be more than cartoons; year 1976. I hadn't reached year nine yet on July 4th that year but things were starting to form in my pea brain. The bicentennial year! Spirit of '76 fever was everywhere, they even made a car by the name (a bad one at that). The Tigers sucked, as did the other Detroit teams, but we had "The Bird." Besides the Bird, the one thing that stuck out for me that year was the minute long "Bicentennial Minute" segments that ran at night. My dad was a big "All in the Family" watcher and CBS ran them so I saw quite a bit of them. I couldn't tell you the difference between Thomas Jefferson and Joe Schmoe at the time but found them entertaining.

Go America!

Trail Head