New Beginnings

 This year's July 4th was like many in the past in that it was hot at about 95 degrees, but unlike many others in the past when there has been a month or more of drought and very dry ground conditions, this year there had been several rainy days in the past couple of weeks so the fear of fire resulting from the barrage of fireworks for days and nights on end would be reduced. Unlike most Independence Day firework celebrations which usually start around here the weekend before and run through the following weekend, this year was much more quiet. Some folks around here don't celebrate the day, it is more like Independence 2 Weeks including an unknown amount of money spent because the last time I bought any was many years ago and you could spend a couple of hundred dollars very quickly back then. This year the 4th fell on Saturday and there were fireworks a plenty that night and only one other night that lasted until about 1:30am. Our kids came over about 4:00pm a little after the...

 My need for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in these days of retirement has little to no use in my everyday life, however I believe I would have been a grand user of it while I was still working. During my working years I have created many work flow processes, manuals, policies, etc. where AI would have been a great tool for me and a huge time saver. While I have used it for real value recently while working on my classic car and it was a real benefit to me, but now the main engine of use for me is ChatGPT and it is a real whiz at creating entertaining images from old photos and adding in a few interesting prompts. It may be considered by some as a waste of time, but while it is fun and novel for the moment, I am about out of ideas for new pictures. A couple of the following are created by Jacob and they make me laugh. I thought I would share a few of them in this episode.  This photo is me at 17 years old shaking hands with my 68 year old self. The younger picture was taken my ...

 In 2003 I developed a terrible case of tendonitis known as 'tennis elbow'. I had heard of it but this was my first experience with it and it was very painful. I was in the business of meeting people and it hurt so bad when I had to shake hands. It had gotten so bad that I could not extend my arm when shaking hands so I had to stand close so as not to extend my arm and work hard not to grimace every single time. I tried pain relievers and anti-inflammatories of all kinds without success. It was not going away or getting better so I bought one of those velcro styled strap forearm thingies that was supposed to help. It did help some, but it was uncomfortable to wear and did not stop the pain. During that time I was experiencing chronic lower back pain and would see my chiropractor a couple of times a month. After a regular visit, I saw that he offered acupuncture as one of his services. After an adjustment I asked him if he thought that might help my problem. I had known him for ...

 When I met Carol Ann her brother law Jimmy drove a small pick up truck that was branded under the name Datsun. This was many years before Nissan bought out Datsun. It was a cool little truck, it was small and easy to get around town in. His was a 1973 white truck with a cute little 4 speed standard shift transmission and was a solid little truck and I really liked it. Growing up all my dad drove was the half ton Ford truck with a full 8' long bed. The first one I remember was a light blue1967 with a standard shift known as a 3 on a tree. That being the shifter was on the steering column an with no air conditioner. The next one he bought was in 1972 which was blue and white and was an automatic transmission and it did have air conditioning.  In 1976 I bought a 1972 Datsun pickup from a friend of Jimmy's that looked almost identical except it was red in color and Larry had taken off the factory 14" rear tires and replaced them with 15" Firestone Super All Traction (or ...

 It was January 1971 I was 13 years old and we had been living in the country for about a year and a half. Since we had lived here on this 45 acres my dad had purchased several cows over the past year and a couple of them had been bred so we were expecting to have some calves soon. As I find out, ideally you would like to have calves born during the winter as there are fewer germs and the cow's labor is usually not as hard on them as it is in the heat of the summer.  It was quite cold that night and one of the cows delivered a calf that was still born. This does not happen often in my experience, but it did that night. When we get up that morning and find the dead calf, we bury it and go over to our nearest neighbor, Mr. Frank Davis. Mr. and Mrs. Davis were both in their mid 80s and had lived in their current house for many decades and they kept an eye out for me and Danny as both of my folks worked in Denton. Any time a storm would blow in, Mrs. Ella Davis would call us and l...

 When I retired last year one of the things I wanted to do was to get back to riding my bike. Another item on that list was to get back to riding the Hotter n Hell Hundred bike ride in Wichita Falls again. As it turns out I did not ride many miles at all and I chose not to ride it last August. Though there are multiple rides to choose from 10k, 25 mile, 50 mile, 100k (62 miles), and 100 mile. I was afraid that since I had not ridden at all that even the 25 mile ride in that heat would have been more than I could handle.  Over the 8 or 9 times I have done this ride I have seen many people get sick from heat stress and I was not going to be one of those. Back in Episode 26 of this blog I tell the story of how I got started with this ride for the first time. I started riding once a week or so at the beginning of this year since I was determined to get back to it and logged around 100 miles or so and for one reason or another I simply got away from it. Habits sometimes are so hard...