Don's Blog

As a young lad my father’s prize possession was a BMW R69S motorcycle (’67 or ’68 year). Years passed, I came on the scene, the bike became a thing which was polished rather than ridden, and then a thing in the drive shed that was ignored.

Somewhere between the pilot of Seinfeld and Friends, the bike was sent “to a guy named Ray” in Cornwall to see about some tuning and restoration steps. Something happened w/ “Ray” and it was handed to “Tom”. Some years ago Tom retired, and it was forgotten, lost, location unknown.

Recently my father passed away. His last request to me was to find it. And, well, mission progressed! It was slumbering away for the last 25+ years at Irwin Supply in Cornwall Ontario.

Below you can see the bike, sans wheels and handlebars, located, and now strapped to a skid to get it in my truck.

The wheels and handlebars were sent out to be rechromed sometime in the last few decades, and, well, lost. But, the rest is there and in good shape.

Below you can see it loaded in my truck, ready for the drive back to Waterloo.

What’s next? Well, a discussion at Air Support BMW in Kitchener

June 4. Image search ‘tank man’ on Microsoft Bing. Blank. Censored. Shame.

is what Microsoft’s Bing shows. Wikipedia explains what you should see, below

Its often been said that the Internet’s natural enemy is the backhoe. But in this case, its a set of beavers who needed some more fibre in their diet.

Many years ago I did a very complete tour of a telecom facility. The inside plant, the outside plant, the sewers, the batteries, the roof, the cold-war-era emergency call centre bunker. There was a lot of Nortel brown switches IIRC. But one of the most interesting things to me was the constant war with nature. Paper-wrapped wires? Pump air into conduit. Rodents? Armor the cable. Tree roots? Concrete.

Seems like this area needed a bit more armor in the fibre. Score 1 for the beaver! A bunch of kids will have an interesting story to tell about why their homework is not done. “No really, a beaver”. Maybe they needed to floss some spruce from their teeth?

Roughly 50 years ago I got the very first vaccine, for smallpox. It came from ‘cowpox’, and, for today’s trivia lesson, the word “vaccine” derives from the Latin word for cow (Vacca), in its honour! So, a 50-year old cow-shot that was then already a hundred years old.

Today I got another shot in the same spot at the local pharmacy. Sure it came from a political scandal-plagued factory in Baltimore with poor quality control. Sure our elected leaders had to beg our neighbours to allow a small amount of export of a vaccine that isn’t even planned to be certified for use. But, that’s behind me now. I have joined the (as of now) 35% of Canadian adults with a shot in the arm.

The best part? The odds of me accidentally infecting someone go way down. Imagine how bad you would feel if you waited for a “better shot”, got mildly ill, but made someone else more ill?

The booking system worked great (I used the pharmacy one linked from https://covid-19.ontario.ca/book-vaccine/). The pharmacist got 600 doses at start of week and was now out of supply.

Its not a panacea, but the best shot is the one you can get right now. I hope all of you have or soon have yours.