Riding The Storm Out – Wheels on Walls Part 4

This is the fourth post in a series of images from my travels for the  Wheels on Walls motorcycle scavenger hunt sponsored  by Team Strange Airheads. For it, I need to collect photos of my motorcycle and rally flag taken in front of outdoor murals. The primary goal is to get photos of murals featuring wheeled vehicles. I can also collect up to ten that don’t feature wheels in them.  The winner of this year’s grand tour will get a lovely plaque and bragging rights for the year, and everyone who finishes will get an enameled pin. 


I was scheduled to meet my friend Mike at his house at 7 this morning so we could get out on the road early before the brutal heat that’s been plaguing us could get into full swing for the day. (Yesterday’s high, out here on the prairie was at least 101 degrees Fahrenheit.) But I woke up at 5:45 a.m. to hear the sounds of heavy rain, thunder, and high winds – a major storm that had not been in the forecast when I went to bed last night. Clearly we were not going to be getting an early start.

We ended up going to breakfast here in town and hit the road a little after 9.  There were still some moderate winds, and rainclouds that had passed us off to the east, but overall it seemed like a pretty good day to go collect murals north of Kearney.


Given the late start, we skipped heading northwest to all the way to Anselmo, NE and instead went north to the tiny burg of Arcadia. Although this town has fewer than 400 residents, it has several thriving businesses and at least three nice murals featuring wheels. Since I’m only allowed two murals per town, the mural of a service station with car tires out front had to get skipped.

July 29 – This agricultural-themed mural is largely hidden by the Arcadia, NE Post office.

July 29 – Arcadia also has one of the seemingly ominipresent city name and scene murals. This one was particularly nice, featuring a historical look at downtown Arcadia, including a little boy and his dog in the middle of the street. (Thanks to Mike for the photo.)


July 29 – Is this town named “Howard City” or “Boelus” Nebraska? Both the mural and Wikipedia assign both names to the town, while Google Maps labels it as Boelus, but will find it if you search for Howard City. Why? It’s a mystery!


July 29 – Cairo, Nebraska is pronounced “Care-Oh” but it clearly is referencing the city in Egypt – elsewhere in town there is a sign featuring a camel.


Wood River, Nebraska was our last stop today on our way home, following the Lincoln Highway. Unlike most of the murals I’ve collected on this grand tour/scavenger hunt, which are located at street level, this one was up high above a roof covering a restaurant’s porch. The featured vehicle for this mural is an older woman in a wheelchair, who can be a bit hard to pick out from a distance. But believe me – she’s there!

July 29 – This is the mural above a covered porch in Wood River, Nebraska. If you look carefully, you can see the older woman in a wheelchair.

Here is the detailed image that makes the woman in the wheelchair easier to see.


You can view all of my Wheels on Walls Grand Tour posts here.

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Riding with Strangers – Wheels on Walls Part 3

Wheels on Walls Grand TourThis is the third post in a series of images from my travels for the  Wheels on Walls motorcycle scavenger hunt sponsored  by Team Strange Airheads. For it, I need to collect photos of my motorcycle and rally flag taken in front of outdoor murals. The primary goal is to get photos of murals featuring wheeled vehicles. I can also collect up to ten that don’t feature wheels in them. Finally, there are several “special” locations around the world. The winner of this year’s grand tour will get a lovely plaque and bragging rights for the year, and everyone who finishes will get an enameled pin. 

On this ride, my friend Mike and I rode an area south of I-80s between Kearney, NE and York, NE.


July 15 – Mural on a small store in Minden, NE. It wasn’t the mural I thought I was looking for. Possibly it was painted over the old one, or perhaps there is still another to be found.


There were two murals in Hastings, NE – one from 2013 featuring the people in town on a community building, the second from an older section of town celebrating the area’s German heritage.

July 15 – This mural was painted by members of Hastings community as a part of the Mid-America Mural Project. Click on the photo for more information about this project. Notice the silhouette  of the steam locomotive in it.

July 15 – This is the “Guten Tag” mural from the south side of Hastings on the side of an old store. Notice the horse cart in the middle of the street.

If you need a hearty breakfast while traveling through Hastings, I would suggest a visit to the Goldenrod Cafe. Mike and I enjoyed our meal. Be advised – You will need to bring cash as they don’t take plastic. Mike talked to a couple of gentlemen at another table who were able to point us to the Guten Tag mural’s location.


Fairmont was one of several places we stopped where we only knew of one mural in advance, but quickly found several others. Given that I’m only allowed to use two per town, that’s all I included here. But public art seems to spread through these small towns once it gets started.

July 15 – This mural of a covered wagon and an older car was the one I was looking for in Fairmont.

July 15 – This one of the WW II bomber was the bonus mural we found nearby in Fairmont.


Exeter was another town with multiple murals.

July 15 – This older mural on the side of the Exeter, NE fire department was a little worse for wear around the edges, but was still a great bit of public art.

July 15 – This was a patriotic mural honoring veterans in Exeter. Love the airwoman in the upper right who reminds me of the badass dropship pilot out of the movie “Aliens.”


The three final murals from this Saturday ride through south-central Nebraska were all community-themed ones with the name of the town featured prominently.

July 15 – On the side of a downtown building in Shickley, NE.

July 15 – This mural from Carleton features the omnipresent steam engine, but also an image of the dry-lands crop milo/sorghum, raised as animal feed. Click on the photo for more information on this alternative grain.

July 15 – We closed out our mural hunting for the day with this one from Davenport, NE featuring a combine and other farm equipment. We also had an excellent lunch at RW’s Dining and Drinks in downtown Davenport. Click on the photo for more about this bar and grill. (And if you are out motorcycling, they serve an ice-cold Busch non-alcoholic beer that did a good job of dealing with the hot weather we had been riding through all day.)


You can view all of my Wheels on Walls Grand Tour posts here.

 

 

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The Highs and Lows of Living with Diabetes

I have been living with Type II diabetes since 2001, and it affects almost every aspect of my life. Like many diabetics, I really can’t go more than a couple of hours without having to actively think about it. I’ve written about diabetes both in popular culture and in my own life several times here over the years. Back in 2011 I wrote a guest essay for Kerri Sparling’s diabetes blog “Six Until Me.” The blog archives are no longer up, but I  highly recommend every diabetic buy the book that collects her posts in a printed volume

Since it’s no longer online anyplace else, I’m reposting what I wrote about having a horrible high blood sugar incident 12 years ago after eating Thai noodles for dinner. 


I’ve always been more afraid of low blood sugars than highs.

But then again I’d never been through a really bad high before.

Killer lows, those where you drop into the 50s, the 40s, the 30s… the kind that leave you twitching, bathed in sweat and incoherent… are the quintessential diabetic horror story.

But highs, serious highs, can be brutal in their own, more subtle ways.

It all started with Thai noodles.

I know better than to have something like Pad Thai or Phad See U or Drunken Noodles for dinner.  I know I’m going to be bumping against 300 or so all evening if I do this.  Lunch with an afternoon to work it off?  Maybe.  Dinner? No… just no.

But I’d been running low all afternoon.  And everyone else in the house was talking about Thai, and my thoughts never went far beyond “Yum.”  I wanted noodles.

When I got home with the food, I checked my blood, and the meter showed I was up in the 200s.  How’d that happen? (For you non-diabetics in the audience, you want to be somewhere around 100.  Anything lower than 80 or higher than 200 is not a good thing.)  So I dish up about half a container of noodles, pop a metformin,  and take a big dose of insulin from the pump to compensate for the high starting blood sugar and the honkin’ serving of carbs.

After dinner, I went to work at my computer.  But I soon had all the symptoms of a high creeping up on me.  My mouth was dry, I was really thirsty, I was getting irritable, and I really, really had to pee — the whole constellation of symptoms you live with before you’re diagnosed.

I took my blood, and the meter showed 395.  This was not good.

I took a big bolus of insulin and went out for a 20 minute walk to help bring it down.  When I got home, I had to pee again.

Bad.

I took another reading.  Crap.  My blood sugar was up to 422.  I can’t remember the last time it got that high.

I took some more insulin and sat down to try to work.  Half an hour passes;  I have to go to the bathroom again, and the meter shows I’m now up to 480.  This is getting scary.  I don’t remember being this high before.  I bolus more insulin.  And that makes me nervous about how much insulin I’m taking.  It’s been 12 units in the last hour. I don’t want to rage bolus my way into a serious low.

Another 20 minutes pass, and I’m feeling really bad.  Nothing as specific as a low.  Just bad.  The thirst is terrible.  I simply can’t drink enough.  I check again, and my blood is up to 565.  I’ve know I’ve never seen a reading like that before.

As a symptom of the high, I’m starting to get angry.

I didn’t do anything that bad.  I had half an order of drunken noodles.  They were spicy, not sweet.  Why is this happening?  This isn’t fair….

If I can’t get that meter to head down, I’m going to have to go the ER.  In addition to being expensive, it will upset the kid, my wife, and my mother-in-law — everyone in the house who worries about me.

I don’t take any more insulin, but I get on the exercise bike for 45 minutes.  But halfway through I have to stop to pee one more time.

When I’m done, I test my blood again.

I’ve never been so happy to see 460 on a meter before. What’s more, my pump says it’s safe to take another several units of insulin.

The trend over the next hour or so continues down, but the work I was intending to do is a complete loss.  I can’t focus, I’m exhausted, and I feel lousy.  I give up and go to bed, knowing that sometime during the night I’ll pay the price for all the insulin and have a low.

Which I do.

Lows are scary because you’re on the ragged edge of passing out, but the treatment is easy as long as you have juice, or glucose, or Cap’n Crunch around.   The worst that will happen if you over-treat the low is that  you’ll end up pushing 300.

But a high that won’t come down is dangerous on its own, but it can also prod you into taking more and more insulin to the point that you could take yourself down into dangerously low territory.  And I must confess I don’t really understand the dangers of venturing into the 600s, though I know they’re bad.

What really scares me is I don’t really know what triggered this high.  I mean, I know I had a bad dinner, but it wasn’t the worst I’ve eaten as a diabetic. What combination of factors made my blood sugar soar this time?

I was angry and railing about the unfairness of it all when I went high.  I know the anger is a symptom of a high because my wife still talks about how angry I was all the time before I was diagnosed 10 years ago. (Editor’s Note: Now more than 20 years ago.)  I’ve long ago quit worrying about fairness.  The world isn’t fair, and I have a pretty good life.  But I’m not going to have Thai noodles again anytime soon.  Fair or not.


Update: Twelve years later and I have never eaten rice noodles again. In popular culture, people always make a big deal out of the fact that diabetics should not eat sugar. Fair enough. But that doesn’t begin to tell the story. Your body eventually turns every carbohydrate you eat into sugar, so the real villain diabetics have to control is the amount of carbs they eat. Too few and you get low blood sugar. Too many and it goes high. I have a friend who has been recently diagnosed with diabetes, and a conversations  with him over the last few weeks prompted me to track down a copy of this essay.

If you are interested in the history of the treatment of diabetes, I wrote an essay for World Diabetes Day back in 2019 telling the story of three diabetics and their relationship with insulin.

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Riding With Strangers – Wheels on Walls Part 2

Wheels on Walls Grand TourFor the last ten years or so, I’ve competed in a large-scale motorcycle scavenger hunt sponsored annually by Team Strange Airheads. This year’s event is called “Wheels on Walls Grand Tour.”  For it, I need to collect photos of my motorcycle and rally flag taken in front of outdoor murals. The primary goal is to get photos of murals featuring wheeled vehicles. I can also collect up to ten that don’t feature wheels in them. Finally, there are several “special” locations around the world. The winner of this year’s grand tour will get a lovely plaque and bragging rights for the year, and everyone who finishes will get an enameled pin. 

This post will cover some murals I collected close to home


South of the tracks - Kearney Junction

June 8th – A classic historic image mural south of the railroad tracks in Kearney. Seems like most of the wheels I have in these murals are from trains.

June 8th – The Lincoln Highway (US 30) runs through the middle of Kearney and is a part of our local culture. I love how it takes the perspective of looking through a convertible’s windshield.

June 9th – Another of the historic image murals in central Nebraska – this one from the small town of Ravena to the north and east of Kearney.

July 5th – I would love to know the story behind these frontier Nebraska scenes with the town name and year of founding arched across the top. This one is in Pleasanton, straight north of Kearney.

July 5th – Despite it being the Fifth of July in central Nebraska, I was actually cold while out riding this morning to Sumner, to the north and west of Kearney.


You can view all of my Wheels on Walls Grand Tour posts here.

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Writers and actors striking for better contracts dealing with new world of streaming and digital media

For the first time since 1960 both the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are on strike at the same time against Hollywood shutting down virtually all production and promotion of scripted movies and TV shows.

In the 1960 strike the Screen Actors Guild was led by Ronald Reagan, who would go on to become the only union president to become president of the United States. According to Variety: 

In that strike, both the writers and actors were wrestling with compensation issues arising from the dawn of television. Together, they won residuals for TV reruns and for broadcast of films on TV, and established the first pension and welfare plan.

This time the unions are dealing with the decline of legacy linear television and the move to streaming and digital video — a transition at least as transformational as the rise of broadcast television in the 1950s and 60s.

Until recently, actors and writers could count on getting paid when a show or movie was initially created and screened or broadcast. They would then receive residual payments each time a show was aired on broadcast/cable TV as a syndicated rerun. (Think about how you might have watched old episodes of Friends or Sienfeld in the afternoon on your local television station or on a cable channel such as TNT or TBS.)

For many writers and actors, there can be long gaps between big, successful projects, and the residuals are what help them pay the bills during those lean times. (Remember, for every high-paid star in Hollywood there are literally dozens of journeyman workers who are just hoping to make ends meet.)


For the 2023 strike, writers and actors have a number of new concerns:

  • They want a bigger, better defined share of the income from streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, Paramount Plus and Hulu. Given that’s are where most viewing is moving, that’s where the people who work in the industry feel they need to be getting more of their income.
  • Both writers and actors worry about how studios might use artificial intelligence computer programs to write scripts or create photorealistic recreations of actors for movies or shows.
  • According to film and TV professor Andrew Susskind, TV shows traditionally have lasted 20-24 episodes a season, giving staff writers eight to 10 months of work per season. “And being around for all the episodes, it offers writers the opportunity to grow, because they’re there for script writing, they get to see preproduction, maybe get to see postproduction; so they get to learn production and maybe one day get to be producers or showrunners,” Susskind said. Now shows are more likely to have 10 or fewer episodes, and the writing staff will be smaller with more freelancers being brought in to work on just a single episode.  This gives the writers employment of weeks rather than months.

These strikes will, of course, delay or cancel the production of a wide range of projects. The actors’ strike will also mean that the stars will not be turning out for promotion of new movies. The first of these to be hit was the Christopher Nolan summer blockbuster Oppenheimer, where stars Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh were only available for a single red carpet appearance before the strike sent them to the picket lines.


The studios see things a bit differently than the unions, stating that the strikes are coming at “the worst time in the world,” according to Disney head Bob Iger. Speaking to CNBC, Iger said:

“There’s a level of expectation that [the unions] have that is just not realistic. And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”

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Everyone’s Gone to the Movies – Summer Flix 2023

We are in the heart of summer movie season, so it seems like now would be a good time to take a quick peak at what’s going on this year.  It’s been a rough time for movies since the world has reopened following the worst of the pandemic. Two years of restrictions put people out of the habit of going to theaters routinely, and families seem willing to wait for movies to show up on streaming.

For example, Pixar’s Elemental had to worst opening weekend (adjusted for inflation) of any of the fabled animation studio’s features, bringing in a scant $29.5 million on a $200 million production budget. And while it’s reviews were decent, they were certainly more praise for competence than for over-the-top creativity.

DC’s (Warner Bros.) The Flash also opened weak with a weekend gross of $55 million and decidedly mediocre reviews.

There’s no question what is happening. The bigger issue is why?

There has been substantial speculation that Disney squandered a large portion of Pixar’s “specialness” by sending their last three movies (Soul, 2020; Luca, 2021; Turning Red, 2022) straight to Disney+ to help build subscriptions for their streaming service. And during the pandemic, that may have made sense. But it also taught audience members that Pixar films were really just home video content, not movies.

I also think that as Jessica Winter writes for The New Yorker that recent Pixar movies have been been much weaker than their earlier films, in part because of an outflow of talent. Dear Wife and I tried to watch 2022’s Lightyear, an origin story for the Buzz Lightyear toy from Toy Story, on Disney+ and bailed on it within 15 minutes. I found Luca slow going, despite having a Vespa scooter as a major story element. Turning Red was the only one of the recent Pixar releases to really impress me with a great story and fabulous animation.

The Flash has suffered from weak reviews both from critics and audience members. The DC Extended Universe has been in creative trouble since at least 2016, and the huge number of super hero movies has led to a level of fatigue with the genre. And the personal problems of star Ezra Miller certainly haven’t helped either.


This is not to say that the entire summer movie season is a bomb. Sony’s animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse tells a complex multi-verse story largely targeted at teens and adults and has been massively successful at the box office, bringing in more than $300 million in just over three weeks of release. It has also been a critical and artistic success,  getting a 96% on the Tomatometer and praise for both its storytelling and incredible animation.

Spider-Verse has had praise for its organic diversity — most obviously for having a Afro-Latino hero in teen-ager Miles Morales, but also for having the India-based Spider-guy Pavitr Prabhakar slinging webs around the incredible New York-Indian mashup of Mumbattan. And there is an understated support for trans-teens in the world inhabited by Gwen Stacy (Spider-Gwen) with a “Protect Trans Kids” flag in her room and her police officer dad wearing a trans flag on his uniform.

The major criticism the Spider-Verse sequel has had to face is that animators reportedly were working brutal hours completing the innovative film, and that a substantial number of animators left the studio over working conditions. Producer Amy Pascal has drawn fire for her comments dismissing the concerns of animators:


There is still a majority of the summer yet to come with highly anticipated blockbusters such as the final Indiana Jones movie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenhiemer bio pic. (Dear Wife and I have had second-day IMAX tickets for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny since the day they went on sale.) So we have yet to really see how willing audience members are to go to theaters, but there will certainly be a host of interesting things to see.


In closing, Dear Wife and I had a fantastic time Saturday afternoon going to see Buster Keaton silent short films with live piano accompaniment from pianist Rodney Sauer at our community-run World Theatre. The video below is of Sauer playing along with Harold Lloyd’s silent classic Safety Last on Friday evening .

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Getting Started with Team Strange’s Wheels on Walls Grand Tour

Wheels on Walls Grand Tour For the last ten years or so, I’ve competed in a large-scale motorcycle scavenger hunt sponsored annually by Team Strange Airheads. This is a Twin Cities-based organization that got its start as a bowling team that evolved into a  BMW motorcycle club that now primarily sanctions a variety of short and longer-term motorcycle events.

This year’s even runs from April into November and is called “Wheels on Walls Grand Tour.” To get required 20 points, I need collect photos of my motorcycle and rally flag taken in front of outdoor murals. The primary goal is to get photos of murals featuring wheeled vehicles, for which I get two points for each.  I can also collect up to ten that don’t feature wheels in them for one points apiece. Finally, there are several “special” locations around the world – primarily in the US, Canada and Australia, that I could visit for larger numbers of points.

The winner of this year’s grand tour will get a lovely plaque and bragging rights for the year, and everyone who finishes will get an enameled pin. So as you can see, it’s all really about finding fun places to ride your motorcycle to.

Mary Jane Skala, an excellent reporter for our local newspaper, wrote a great story about my involvement over the years with Team Strange Grand Tours:

So, here are my initial photos collected so far this year. Many left to come:

May 6th – My first bonus location for the 2023 Team Strange Wheels on Walls Grand Tour. This roof mural honors the Southwest High School Rough Riders of Bartley, NE. (No-wheels photo #1)


May 25 - Shelton, NE, No Wheels #2

May 25th – Taken in Shelton, NE on my way up north to the Twin Cities. (No-wheels #2)

May 25 - A great railroad-themed mural from Central City, NE.

May 25 – A great railroad-themed mural from Central City, NE. Lots of wheels here.


May 27 - This series of three overhead door murals is part of an incredible collection of murals in a south St. Paul industrial and arts district. These three depict scenes in the history of the area and are on one of the buildings of the Can Can Wonderland Brewery.

May 27 – This series of three overhead door murals is part of an incredible collection of murals in a south St. Paul industrial and arts district. These three depict scenes in the history of the area and are on one of the buildings of the Can Can Wonderland entertainment complex.

May 27 - Another mural on a separate building that's part of the Can Can Wonderland complex in St. Paul, MN.

May 27 – Another mural on a separate building that’s part of the Can Can Wonderland complex in St. Paul, MN.

The rules of the Wheels on Walls only allow two murals per city, and since I already have two for St. Paul, I’m just posting this mural by Claudia Valentino and Dani Bianchini because it is so exciting and vibrant.


May 27 – Tree of Life on the New Brighton, MN civic building and county library. The way I see it, those “pinwheels” are delivering tree seeds out to the world. No one living around maple trees this spring could doubt that… (Will be interesting to see how TeamStrange Airheads refs judge it…) So, I hope this counts as a wheel post.

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A Rough Week for Fox and its Hosts Part 2 – Bye Bye Tucker Carlson (& CNN’s Don Lemon)

The popular right-wing cable talk network Fox News has had a rough couple of weeks. In a previous post we talked about their settlement of Dominion Voting Systems $1.6 billion defamation suit. And in this post will discuss why popular Fox host Tucker Carlson was forced to leave (and how CNN may have used the Carlson news to bury their firing of Don Lemon).


On Monday, April 24, Fox News surprised the world by firing Tucker Carlson, the network’s (and cable TV’s) most popular talk show host. Technically, Fox and Carlson decided to “part ways,” but no one believes that Carlson left the right-wing talk network voluntarily.

Carlson had hosted his show on the previous Friday with no sign that he was going to be leaving the network. In fact, on the morning April 24 there had been a promo airing for his evening show. Washington Post media analyst Erik Wemple wrote that the fact that Carlson was not given a farewell episode meant that management didn’t trust him on the air.  This is in sharp contrast with how CNN handled the dismissal of their media critic Brian Stelter in 2022, who was given a final episode to say goodbye.

At the time of Carlson’s dismissal from Fox, there was a lot of speculation on why he was let go.

One theory is that it was the discovery materials from the Dominion lawsuit featuring sexist/racist messages from Carlson:

While there was speculation that Carlson’s negative messages about former President Donald Trump led to his dismissal, the Wall Street Journal suggested that it was Carlson’s negative messages about Fox management that did him in:

A few days after Carlson’s firing, the New York Times argued that it was a racist text message about “how white men fight” might have been the triggering cause, but lots of his critics note that Carlson routinely said things like that on his show.


Lost in the fog of gossip-worthy media has been the fact that CNN may well have used the timing of Carlson’s firing to minimize the news of their firing of long-time host Don Lemon for making sexist comments, including a disparaging remark that GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley was “past her prime.” If so, it seems to have been largely successful. Though to be fair, Lemon’s firing really didn’t approach the level of Carlson’s:


 

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The Second Annual(ish) Sehnert’s Bakery & Cafe Ride To Eat

There’s an old Harley rider catch phrase that says, “Live to Ride, Ride to Live.” Not a bad sentiment. But a bit general.

For members of the Iron Butt Association (which includes many Harley riders), there’s a more measurable version of the phrase which leads to a specific activity – Ride to Eat.  At its core, a Ride to Eat (or RTE) is a group of long-distance motorcycle riders getting together for meal and then turning around to head home afterwards.

So back in the summer of 2019 I hosted the inaugural Sehnert’s Bakery and Cafe Ride To Eat in McCook, Nebraska. The inspiration for this even was when Sehnert’s won a James Beard Classics award. The James Beard awards are essentially the Oscars of the restaurant and food business, and the classics award is for:

“Our nation’s beloved regional restaurants. Distinguished by their timeless appeal, they serve quality food that reflects the character of their communities. We anoint these locally owned restaurants with a James Beard Foundation Award and designate them as America’s Classics.”

Don’t the pastries at Sehnert’s look great? (Mike Konz photo)

The inaugural event was a great success with Iron Butt Rally finisher Bill Norris riding in from Texas just to have lunch and then turning around to ride straight back home to work an overnight shift. (See, I know my AP Style and that there is no such thing as a first annual event…) We also had riders from Kansas, South Dakota and Nebraska showing up at Sehnert’s for bierocs (also known as Runzas in Nebraska) or other excellent sandwiches.

The Second Annual McCook RTE was scheduled for May of 2020, but… we all know how that turned out!

It is now the spring of 2023, and if everything is not back to normal, whatever that is, motorcyclists are at least once again able to ride long distances to get together for lunch before heading back home.  So our gathering on Saturday, May 6th can’t really be called an annual event as there were three years and a global pandemic in between we’ll just call it the Second Annual(ish) McCook, NE Ride To Eat.

We had a beautiful day for riding Saturday with cool temps in the morning and bright sun the rest of the day. (Though a tornado and sever thunderstorms passed through our ride area not long after Mike Konz and I got home to Kearney.

There were six of us who gathered Saturday for coffee outside and then lunch inside the cafe. Iron Butt Rally finisher and winner of the 2023 Heart of Texas rally Paul Meyer rode in from Herrington, Kansas; and four-time IBR finisher Mike Riley rode in from Mustang, Oklahoma. Then from Nebraska, along with Mike Konz and myself from Kearney, were John Seberger from Lincoln, and John Koller, from Arapahoe. If there were an award for the shortest distance ridden J.K would have won, given that he lives just 40 miles away from McCook.

Kicking tires outside around the bikes is standard activity for our lunch crowd, including (l-r) Mike Riley, Paul Meyer, John Seberger, and yours truly – Ralph Hanson. (Mike Konz photo)

The six of us gathered for lunch included Paul Meyer, Mike Riley, John Seberger, John Koller, Ralph Hanson (me), and Mike Konz. Interesting that two-thirds of our group had shared names. 

This is the route Mike K. and I followed to and from McCook, NE. A great day of riding followed by heavy weather not long after we arrived back at home.

At any rate, we all had a great time and hope that the actual Third Annual McCook RTE will be able to happen in May of 2024 without any difficulties!


Meanwhile, on this trip I also got the first photo of a building mural for my Team Strange 2023 Grand Tour. Always great to get the first photo in the bank. This roof mural honors the Southwest High School Rough Riders of Bartley, NE.

My first bonus location for the 2023 Team Strange Wheels on Walls Grand Tour. The real goal is to have murals with wheeled-vehicles on them, but you are allowed a limited number of non-wheeled murals. This is one of them. (Mike Konz photo)

 

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A Rough Week for Fox and its Hosts Part I – Dominion Voting Settlement

The popular right-wing cable talk network Fox News has had a rough couple of weeks. Today, we’ll talk about their settlement of Dominion Voting Systems $1.6 billion defamation suit. And in our next post will discuss why popular Fox host Tucker Carlson was forced to leave.


The Fox News network announced a settlement Tuesday, April 18, with Dominion Voting System’s libel lawsuit that claimed that Dominion was defamed by Fox’s false claims that the company helped rig the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump. There was never any evidence that this happened. Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million to the voting equipment company to bring the lawsuit to a close. According to The Washington Post, this was the “largest publicly disclosed monetary settlement ever in an American defamation action.”

While Dominion got a massive financial settlement, they did not get a substantial apology from Fox. Instead, the network issued a statement that said, “We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”

The settlement was announced two days into what was to be the start of the trial. Numerous people critical of Fox were unhappy that Fox did not give a meaningful apology. But it’s worth remembering that this was Dominion’s lawsuit, and by settling they got a guaranteed large financial settlement without an extended trial.

Washington Post media commentator Erik Wemple notes that Dominion had massive amounts of evidence they said showed that Fox knew the claims made by Trump and his supporters about Dominion were false, and that the claims were being broadcast to help keep Fox’s audience happy.

Journalist Charles Fishman had an excellent Twitter thread last week where he explained why it made good sense for Dominion to settle without a trial. His key points included:

  • There would be no audio or video from the trial to highlight the lies Fox hosts propagated.
  • There would not be great social media materials to go viral.
  • There was a good chance that it would take years for a court case to settle.
  • A cash settlement now would give Dominion 80 times its annual profit with a single check.
  • The only thing Dominion is not getting is a clear apology from Fox.

Would you settle under these circumstances?


Settling would also seem to be in Fox’s best interests. Wemple, writing the day before the case settled, gave multiple reasons why Fox News would want to avoid going to trial. These include:

  • The trial would be a public relations disaster for the network. Every day of coverage of the lead-up to the trial included more dirt on the company coming from e-mails and texts from inside the company.
  • The judge was not sympathetic to Fox’s arguments. He was continually criticizing their attorneys’ behavior.
  • Fox winning in court could result in the Supreme Court changing the long-standing “actual malice” standard for public officials to prove libel. Several members of the court have indicated that they would be interested in reconsidering that standard, making it much easier for public officials to sue for libel. That kind of decision would clearly not be in Fox’s best interests. (Or, to be honest, that of any news company.)

Up Next:  Why Fox fired popular host Tucker Carlson.

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