The California Files

Scotland on a Wing and a Prayer, Part II

Now let's see, where were we? Ah yes, we were in our second week here, and continuing our ramble (as opposed to the very programmed first week here) in Oban, on Scotland's west coast. This is a very popular destination so there is no shortage of lodging choices. We wound up staying in a B&B called the Wellmark, found for us by a lady working in the Scotland Tourist Information office. This is a good way to go about finding a room. The service costs you 4 pounds, about 7 bucks, and saves you scurrying around to find what you want.

One of our reasons for coming here, beside the promise of fresh seafood - the place bills itself as the seafood capital of Scotland - was the presence of a small wildlife preserve. That was our goal the next morning. Small indeed and privately owned, apparently, but very nicely done. We made the acquaintance of a pair of sea otters, some seals and a whole aquarium-full of fish. As always, you can click on these photos to see them a bit larger.

Some interesting characters here, including a tank of little guys with no fins at all. What they had instead were legs and feet. Four each. Called Axolotls, these guys walked around the bottom of their tank. Darwin would be proud.

Oban also boasts a distillery (Oban single malt) right there in town, which we toured. Of course we did. These places always are interesting because they all work just a little differently and each distillery's whisky is different from the next brand.

About the spelling: Scotch is always whisky. Other kinds - bourbon, rye, etc., that is whiskey. And if you make single-malt somewhere other than Scotland, it's not Scotch. And even if you do make it in Scotland, if it is in the oak barrel for less than three years, it is not Scotch - it is merely spirit. The least amount of barrel time you will find is 10 years, though many distillers go to 12 years for their youngest product. Of course you can buy Scotch that is much older than that. If you do, you'll pay a lot more money. This stuff gets scary expensive. I suspect that's one of the reason that blends are widely enjoyed in Scotland (Famous Grouse is the most popular brand here, Bell's is the most popular in Britain, Dewar's holds that honor in the U.S.), with single-malts supposedly consumed on only on special occasions.

As always, we were on the hunt for good Scotch of any kind, so the plan was to take a ferry over to the island of Islay (pronounced, Eye-leh). Ah, but the car ferries were packed, with no reservations for the next several days. Islay is big, so you want a car to visit all the cool places, which include distilleries, ancient chapels, stone crosses and stone circles. So it was time to punt.

The punt went east on a tiny, single-track bit of pavement through farmland across the Kintyre peninsula that took us to Claonaig, where we easily drove aboard a ferry headed for Lochranza, a tiny town on the island of Arran.  We'd never heard of it, so this was just what we like - an adventure. This island is quite remote and is very lightly populated. At least by people. It does have lots of sheep. It's also got a distillery, naturally, and is a very beautiful place. Once there we drove south for a bit and pulled into the Kinloch Hotel in a tiny town with the unlikely name of Blackwaterfoot. Very nice place, good restaurant, great views. We could not have been any closer to the ocean without getting very wet.

On the way to Blackwaterfoot we'd passed a sign pointing to a stone circle. This turned out to be a set of a half-dozen of them called the Machrie Moor Stone Circles, said to be about 4,000 years old. To reach them, we walked a couple of miles down a farm track, though several gates, past the ruins of an ancient stone farm cottage and through a mist and many sheep. I suspect the sheep outnumber the humans on this wonderful island. The circles are there, alright, silent and mysterious, making us wonder about the humans who created them so long ago.

That visit out of the way, we drove the island and walked on the beach, all of which was a fabulous way to relax. Been a long time since I've seen my sweetie so completely chilled out.

We awoke the next day ready to ramble, so we took the ferry from a town called Brodick east to Ardrossan, back on Scotland's mainland. We drove south to Kirkcudbright, said to be an artists' town. We stopped for gas in the picturesque little village of St. John's Town of Dalry, where we lunched in an incredible country pub called the Clachan Inn. This place is a sportsman's paradise and was maybe the find of the trip. I shot several photos to capture the interior, which was replete with ancient fly fishing gear and trophy fish, antique shotguns and more.  It would be great fun to spend a weekend here and maybe do some fishing. But not this time.

Once in Kirkcudbright, where we snagged another great B&B, this time in a magnificent old stone house that dates to 1886 called the Anchorlee. While here we prowled gardens and galleries, then drove down to Portpatrick, where we lunched outside in  fresh  lobster.

This was a good day for gardens. Visited the Castle Kennedy and Logan Botanical gardens, the latter of which displayed some of the finest nature photography we have ever seen. These two gardens were very different, both very beautiful and extensive. The Logan, especially, is impressive, looking more Mediterranean than you might expect, thanks to the temperatures and directions of nearby ocean currents - or so we were told. But it was the photos that got our attention. These were samples from the 2013 Scottish Nature Photography Awards and included some of the finest work I've ever seen. You can find them here: http://www.scottishnaturephotographyawards.com/. It's really incredible work, some of it by teenagers. Very talented kids, for sure.

We awakened the next day with heavy hearts - this would be the final day of our ramble: It was time for us to meander back toward Glasgow and the airport.

On the way, we visited the Dumfries & Galloway Aviation Museum, a real gem built around an old three-story control tower on the remains of an old airfield. The tower contains more artifacts than you can count - most of them from WW II and many of them Spitfire bits, and the yard contains a selection of newer, but still ancient, aircraft fading away out in the hard Scottish weather. Wish I had money to donate to them, as the volunteers who run the place spend their free time discovering and exhuming ancient aircraft wrecks from the area's hills and lakes. And there are many wrecks. One of them was a Spitfire, which the volunteers here have rescued from its crash site and are slowly, painstakingly, restoring. Good on 'em, I say!

Finally we arrived in Glasgow, where we turned the car in. We drove about 900 miles in two weeks, all on the wrong side of the roads. Spent about $290 on gas. It is very expensive here. But we made it without a scratch on us or the car, in spite of very narrow, winding roads and enormous lorries driven by maniacs who seem determined to badly frighten us. Cheated death again, as we always assure each other at the end of such trips.

We checked into a Holiday Inn at the airport, a hotel that wanted to charge for everything. I mean, everything. First time in two weeks that free wi-fi was not provided. No free breakfast, either, again, a first for this trip. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant, easily the worst meal of this trip and the worst value for money. The place ought to be declared a crime scene. (Laura has remonstrated with me for this choice of language; she says at least the hotel is better than any Holiday Inn property has ever been; a dubious distinction, to be sure. She's nicer than I am. But you knew that.) 

But there is one thing: Turning in the car, then walking across the street to check into the hotel, then walking across another street to the airport terminal the next morning, is handy as hell.

Saturday morning, the 12th, we are up early to catch our flight, during which this report is being cobbled together. We have a six-hour lay-over at Heathrow, London's maddeningly huge, complex and busy airport. We expect to unlock our own door and greet our two cats at about 9 p.m. Saturday night.

It will be good to be home, even if that means that our two-week reverie is over and now I can get back to worrying about the things over which I have no control that worry me these days (see a previous post titled "Thoughts on Aging." Sometimes I'm more like my dad than I'd like to admit. Still, it will be great to see the cats, who as always have been cared for in our absence by their Auntie Lois, great to sleep in our own bed, great to settle back into routine, great to have shower controls that I understand, great to have real coffee, great to get back to my daily 5-mile walks. And it will be great to be driving my own car on the proper side of the damned road.

At the end of the day, this was a fabulous getaway, filled with good times with my sweetie, nice people, gorgeous scenery, lots of interesting history, pretty good seafood and good Scotch. We like it here and most likely will return. But not for a while. Not for a while.

-JFT

Post Script: A couple of things - first, suitcases. We're idiots. Against our better judgment, we both took our big suitcases on this trip. And because the airline allowed 50 pounds per bag, we didn't leave much out, which means we each packed way too much stuff. So we had to lug these monsters into and out of our car, up and down B&B stairs, and more. We know very well that packing in our 22-inch roll-aboards and a single daypack each is both doable and practical for two-week trips because we've done this. All it takes is some packing discipline. We have vowed that we will return to this practice. Taking the big suitcases is just dumb.

Another thing - we left our iPhones home, as usual. Instead, we took a cheap and simple little phone that we bought in Greece several years ago. What we do is, when we arrive in a new country, we buy a cheap local prepaid SIM card for it - cost this time was $17. This gives us a local phone number and greatly simplifies calls for reservations, etc. Using our wi-fi-only iPads, we just e-mail our local phone number to relatives and anyone else who might need to get hold of us. Beats hell out of the incredible roaming charges it is very easy to rack up if you don't set your iPhone just right, something many people don't do.

 

Scotland on a Wing and a Prayer, Part I

A while back while kicking around ideas, Laura sez to me, she sez, "Vacation? Well, I think I would like to go back to Scotland."

Well, OK. I like Scotland just fine, even if the bipeds there do talk funny. Because Laura is fond of gardens and sea coasts, that would be the theme for this trip.

So after much planning and preparation, we left LAX Friday night, June 27 on a British Air flight and arrived in Glasgow Saturday evening. We checked into the Carleton George, a nice midrange hotel right downtown, where we stayed for three nights. Walked the town, window shopped, gawked at the street musicians and visited the cathedral and Victorian necropolis. This is a very interesting place that indicates that yes, you can indeed take it with you, at least in the form of a headstone.
Here are a couple of photos of those places - and as usual, if you will click on them, you will see them full-size.

Tuesday morning we picked up our car, a Skoda Octavia wagon, of all things, and headed for a comfortable country hotel, where we spent four nights.

But first, Stirling Castle, a classic stone keep with a history of battle and strife. It sits atop a commanding hill and that once was defended by William "Braveheart" Wallace. It is very impressive and has been lovingly preserved as the historically important fortress it is. We lucked into a tour with a guide named Frank, who was terrifically knowledgeable and entertaining.

Just up the road a few miles was our next stop - a country hotel called Gleneagles. Once there, I took the opportunity to amuse myself a bit while Laura was off golfing and enjoying the spa. First I shot some clays, which was far different from the trap I usually shoot. This involves shooting clays thrown to simulate the flight of birds, squirrels, rabbits, like that.

Animals are safe from me. I have no interest at all in shooting game, but clays are another story. This was a lot of fun and I found it very challenging. My coach, Jim, assured me that first, there are no easy shots, which I knew because I miss a lot of "easy" shots, and second, that I'm a good shot with good shotgun skills but I need practice. I knew that too, but he got a nice tip in any case.

Next day, a local guide, Willie, took me fly fishing. I caught two nice rainbow trout from a couple of small lochs during our short outing this morning. Catch-and-release, naturally. This was not a good day for fishing. Cloudy, wind howling. Willie also caught just two and he's supposed to know the place. Oh: I also caught my hat. I kept that.

Interesting that these lake rainbows don't fight anywhere near as hard as the smaller river fish I caught during a trip to the Eastern Sierra in May. No current for them to work against, I guess, so maybe they're just not as muscular. My hat didn't put up any fight at all. It was all a hell of a lot of fun anyway.

I should mention that here we found good, but not great, food at this stop. There was better food at Jon and Fernanda's, a bistro in an adjacent town. But then we did not sample the hotel's Michelin-starred restaurant. Probably we should have, but we were just not up to the formality, expense and stress of that experience. If you've ever done it, you know what I mean.

We had no activities scheduled for our final day here so we drove up to Perth to visit Scone Castle, original home of Scotland's Stone of Destiny, stolen eons ago by these rascally English. This is the stone that Scottish kings sat upon when they were crowned. It was returned a decade or so ago and now resides in Edinbrugh Castle, though the chair into which it fits remains at Scone Castle.

 We checked out Saturday morning and headed up into the Trossachs, a wild park in the central Highland mountains. Drove the Rest and Be Thankful, 
a wonderful pass originally opened by the military in 1740, with the old road now used for hillclimb events. The Brits built it to help tame the wild Highland clans, which of course didn't figure they needed taming at all. Excitement ensued.

Way up in the boonies that same morning, passing scores of pretty little towns and cottages, we visited the grave of Rob Roy MacGregor, who was buried there in 1734 and who, one suspects, helped cause part of that excitement in the first place. His headstone outside the ruins of an ancient church reads, "MacGregor despite them," which you have to like. He was either a bandit or a hero. Don't know which and don't much care. Sure was a pretty place.

To top off this day we visited Balmoral, the royal residence still owned and used by the royal family. It is a wonderful, isolated estate of 5,000 acres way up in the mountains. Originally bought by Queen Victoria after the bloke who built it choked to death on a fishbone. Or so we were told. The old girl had taste, I have to say, and better luck than the previous owner.

Then it was on to a B&B in Oban, which bills itself as the seafood capital of Scotland. We found plenty of very fresh seafood, which you would expect. But we found no place that seemed to be doing anything interesting with it, unfortunately. We walked the town and toured the local distillary, and sampled a Ceilidh ("kaylid") celebration said to have been endorsed by Rick Steves because we'd promised ourselves that we would hear some local music. If indeed that endorsement is true, old Rick needs to recalibrate. We left early, it was so dismal - bored woman playing accordion, bored high-school kid playing pipes, another bored high-school kid dancing. We've seen the real thing. This wasn't it.

 As an aside, a word about "Samantha." For years we navigated around Europe using the excellent maps published by Michelin at about $15 a copy. But a few years ago we bought a GPS device that contains European maps and calls out directions in the voice of a cultured British woman. We call this thing, which we stick to our rental car's front window, Samantha.

Samantha can get confused and she can make mistakes. But for the most part, she is golden. Her competence really lightens the burden on Laura, who navigates while I try to drive. In addition to pointing the way, Samantha will suss out banks, gas stations, hotels and more, even as she notes the speed limit and, er, your actual speed. We will never go back to paper maps except as supplemental information.

End of Part I

Thoughts on Aging

I've been thinking rather a lot lately about what my world has become. What got me going on this was, of all things, the Beach Boys tune "Do It Again," which popped up on my iPod during my walk the other day. What caught my attention was a verse that says, "Well I've been thinking 'bout / All the places we've surfed and danced and / All the faces we've missed so let's get / Back together and do it again." I liked it, so I pushed the "repeat" button and listened to it a second time. And that's when the trouble started.

Listening to that piece of musical nostalgia got me thinking about the late '50s and early '60s, boarding school, college, surfing and skiing - sometimes on the same day, which you could easily do in SoCal back when there was no traffic and gas was $0.27 per gallon; family members who are gone now, orange groves that are long plowed under, car clubs and their plaques, and the joy and innocence of cruise night on Van Nuys and/or Colorado Boulevards; Vietnam, marijuana, Iraq, the stunning change in political thought and in perceptions about what the U.S.'s global role should be, the cost of living, consumerism, music, technology, the rise of the corporate machine, the shrillness of politics today, college tuitions so high that few can afford to pay them, the minimum wage versus the obscene salaries paid corporate execs, homelessness, medications we can't afford to pay for, school shootings and the NRA, fringe idiots working to convince others that President Obama is really Osama bin Ladin, and much more.

Nothing, I don't think, has turned out the way any of us might have guessed. For instance: We all seem to hate each other - the country is more divided now, I think, than during the Civil War; rational debate has become a rare thing, something to be treasured when we do find it. We carry computers that also happen, just incidentally, to function as telephones. Gas is so expensive that I don't start my car if I don't have to. We have 200-mph street motorcycles that any testosterone-poisoned idiot can buy, and a drought threatens to put an end to California's ability to supply food to the rest of the country - though we seem to be able to ship alfalfa, a very thirsty crop, to China. And it seems to me that we are utterly powerless to do anything about any of this.

The San Fernando Valley, once a beautiful place covered by citrus groves broken only by a few small, pleasant towns, is now one big mess of strip malls and porn studios cross-hatched by potholed roads that Los Angeles can't afford to fix. Publications that were designed to speak truth to power while maybe making a buck are on their last legs. Parents, uncles and aunts are gone, and not only them, but some cousins, too; and not only cousins, but the children of some cousins. And dear friends, people I've known since a 14-year-old boarding-school geek? They're all of an age where an increasing number of them are either gone or are struggling.

So yeah, thoughts on aging. I see it all with some modicum of clarity when I'm out walking, pondering on what I've witnessed in the last, say, 55 years, since I turned 16. It all makes my head spin.

And it's why that clever little tune got me to wishing for a chance to revisit the world the way it used to be, the way it was before we all screwed it up so badly. Stupid, eh? I must be getting old.

The epitaph, then? I think maybe just, "It was fun while it lasted."

In the meantime, I'm counting on true friends to hang in, keep me entertained and interested, allow me to pester them on occasion, and continue to contribute to the conversation so that we all maybe can maintain a halfway decent perspective on it all.

- JFT

Bluegrass, Hippies and the Compleat Codger

Yesterday, a Friday, my pal Mike Kicenski and I went out to the Huck Finn Jubilee, in Ontario. This is a kinda/sorta bluegrass festival - the music is there for sure, but there are also non-musical attractions, including fishing contests and more, for kids.

For me, the attraction was the opportunity to see the great Sam Bush, mandolinist and violinist extraordinaire. To do that, I spent most of the day out there, starting from 11 a.m., though Sammy's set didn't start until late in the afternoon.

But the wait was worth it - saw sets by Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, a new and very cool alt band called the Salty Suites, traditionalists the Boxcars, fronted by former Union Station mando picker and singer Adam Steffy, traditionalists Chris Jones and the Night Drivers, whom we'd seen and enjoyed last year at the Mammoth Mountain festival, and more. This is Steffy and his banjo picker, Ron Stewart, here in this photo. As always, to see larger photos, you can just click on them.

Finally, Sam Bush's set. Here are a couple of shots from my trusty little Sony RX100 - though capable of stunningly fine images, not the easiest camera to use for this sort of thing but a lot easier to carry around than my Canon DSLR.

Downsides? No security at all, hippies (Hippies, for God's sake!) who insisted on standing and dancing in the middle of the audience so that nobody could see, rather than moving to the sidelines, where dancing was supposed to take place. 

(But wait, this business of dancing at bluegrass festivals seems a little odd. It's OK, I guess, as long as the inconsiderate bastards don't block anyone's line of sight to the stage. Still it's weird, though.)

We bailed to have some dinner and head home after Bush's set - but what a set. High-powered, to say the least. What he does can be bluegrass, but more often than not, it isn't. It might be newgrass, it might be reggae, it might be a bit of jazz, it might be blues, it might be rock, all with drums and an electric bass  - this guy is the complete artist. He's been a favorite for a long time, so it was really cool that I finally got a chance to see him in person, and even cooler that I lured "I Hate Bluegrass" Kicenski, who had never heard of the guy, along for the ride. Needless to say, he came away with a changed perspective.

Not me. I just had a ball. Except for recalling my dad's phrase, "Gol-danged hippies!" Yes, I have become the Compleat Codger.

-JFT

The West without Water

I've just finished an interesting book called "The West without Water: What past floods, droughts and other climatic clues tell us about tomorrow," written by B. Lynn Ingram and Frances Malamud-Roam. The scenario it paints is not a pretty one.

What it does is very carefully assemble evidence of the West's weather over the past 11,000 years, known as the Holocene period, which extends from the end of the last Ice Age, using cores from dry lakes, the San Francisco Bay, current wet lakes, the ocean's bottom off Monterey, living and dead trees and many other sources of data.

They measured growth between tree rings, the contents and composition of sediment layers, and much more.

To this layman, their research, and that of others, seems exhausting. What they come up is evidence that the last 150 years, the period of the West's development by Europeans, has been abnormally wet. What's happening now, they suggest, is a return to a far warmer, drier norm. And, they say, this is happening in conjunction with what they say is irrefutable evidence that man's activities are contributing to, and accelerating, climate change.

Now, this is not an easy read. These two are scientists and are far more in love with numbers than they are with the joy and beauty of a well-turned phase and a well-organized paragraph. The result feels excessively academic - I suspect that this is their doctoral dissertation - and is available from Amazon. In any case, I found it slow going. But that is not to downplay the importance of the message.

What their models predict is warmer, drier weather punctuated with warm, strong storms that will leave much more rain and much less snow in the Sierras. Less snow means less snow pack means less long-term water storage means more problems with supplying water for drinking, irrigation, and other uses. Not the least of those uses include keeping salt water from the Pacific Ocean from encroaching into the Sacramento Delta, further impacting supplies of fresh water pumped from there and damaging the fragile hold the salmon there have on life. The bottom line, they say, is that we in the West, and especially in California, could face a future with far less water than we need.

They tell us future droughts could last for centuries, just as historical ones have. They also warn that California, especially, has a history of what they call "atmospheric rivers," chains of strong, wet storms that when sufficiently severe, can lead to extreme flooding. These have happened every 100 to 200 years. The last one, which flooded Sacramento and left much of the Central Valley under up to 50 feet of water, happened in 1862. Keep in mind that the valley supplies a huge percentage of the nation's food and much of the world's almond crop, a topic dear to my own heart.

They invite us to consider our "water footprint," which like a carbon footprint attempts to measure all the water required for our existence. This means not just what we drink and wash and irrigate our yards with, but also that helps generate the foods we eat. They warn, for example, that the grain fed to beef cattle requires 4,042 gallons per animal, while a single pound of steak requires 2,600 gallons and an 8-ounce glass of milk requires 49 gallons.

They suggest rethinking high-water-use crops like rice, grown extensively in Northern California.

This new reality is manageable, they suggest, through removal of dams that are nearing the ends of the life spans, restoration of wetlands and riparian areas, and a new policy of balance and cooperation that includes far more use of recycled water and captured runoff water. Their recommendations are far more extensive than that, but you get the picture, right? This problem might respond to careful and enlightened management.

But if these two are anywhere near right, without that management, the outlook seems grim.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times this morning published a story about a poll that attempted to measure public sentiment about anti-drought measures.

The story tells us that people are willing to take water-saving steps, but only if no expenditures are involved. That's bad enough and suggests that folks remain unclear on just what a problem the West faces. But what's really interesting is the view of one of the state's Republican lawmakers, who says he does not believe climate change is happening. You can read it all here:

http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-poll-drought-20140606-story.html

So it seems to me that the future looks problematic for those of us in the West. Especially since there are those who do not believe that the sky is falling. But if what these two scientists say is true, the sky just might be falling.

-JFT

 

Von Dutch

As with most things, this is someone else's fault, I'm pleased to testify. It is coming about because of a conversation I had yesterday with my old pal Stew Crane, with whom I worked at Autoweek back when the Earth was still new, the paper was an actual racing tabloid, actually came out weekly as its name implies, and was produced in Reno.

He mentioned something relating to Kenny "Von Dutch" Howard and his connection to Century Motorcycles in San Pedro. That reminded me that I'd been procrastinating (one of the few things I'm really good at) about posting a piece I wrote a couple of decades ago about Dutch, as he was known.

Now, there's not much out there. One Pat Ganahl has produced a book about Dutch, but this came after my piece, which I titled, "The Last Beatnick." I have not read Ganahl's book, it's probably pretty good. Doesn't really matter; if you want to know about Dutch, you just don't have a lot of alternatives.

And by this late date, most of the really important sources - Ed Roth and Bud Ekins, for instance, along with Howard himself - have left us, so one suspects the future does not look bright for modern writers looking to do Von Dutch biographs. So be it.

Anyway: This story appeared in Cycle World during a brief period of time when I, as one of the editors there, was able to do long-form stories. I'm posting it here because it is not available anywhere else, as Cycle World, at least as far as I can tell, has not put its morgue (that's journalism talk for archives) online.

So here it is, for what ever it may be worth:

Download VonDutch

-JFT

A Wonderful Future Behind Me

Having read a previous post, which involved a PDF of a magazine feature I wrote long ago, a friend suggested I find a way to make the photos more readable.

OK, reasoned I, how 'bout I scan the original color magazine pages, rather than the Xerox copies I'd made to preserve some of the work I liked the best.

I've just returned from my way-too-thick clip files wondering a few things. Who wrote all that stuff? Was it me? It must have been. But I scarcely remember doing so. I mean, I found a clip of a crime story written after I'd returned from the home of Mickey and Trudy Thompson the morning they were murdered. Their bodies were still lying in the driveway when I was up there. Terrible stuff.

I found interviews of Formula 1 heavyweights Sir Frank Williams and Bernie Ecclestone. That all seems so long ago as to belong to another age. And perhaps it does.

In any case, I found the color copies I was looking for - I'm doing this because the magazine in his vineyards I toiled has not put them up in its digital archives - at least I don't seem to be able to find them. There aren't a lot of upcoming episodes; the period at Cycle World in which I was free to do long-form journalism didn't last long. But there are a few. One of them is a piece on VonDutch, the famed automotive and motorcycle pin-striper, customizer and artist. Another deals with the Vincent Black Lightning motorcycle ridden to a Bonneville speed record by Rollie Free - the bike still exists in near-original form. He rode prone, on his stomach, kitted out only a leather helmet and a bathing suit - our lede foto is the iconic shot of them taken, I think, from Life magazine. And there are a few others.

Thing is, these stories, and others like them, were the product of a lifetime - well, nearly 43 years - of meeting deadlines. I rather miss the creative process, and the freedom and incentive, to dig out stories. But I don't miss the deadlines.

So I guess this is an indication that old scribes never die, they just retire, if they're lucky, and muse about past stories and assignments. Now I think I'll have another beer. Which is another thing old reporters do. But you knew that.

-JFT

"A Changing of the Guard: How the classic four-stroke racebikes lost their race against time."

About a zillion years ago I toiled, reluctantly, in the vineyards of the world's largest motorcycle magazine. Whilst there I, for a short time, had the time to pursue stories I thought were worth telling. 

These stories seem not to be in the aforementioned magazine's archive. So I thought I'd scan the clips and post them here. What follows is one of those stories. It deals with the hows and whys of the change from the great British four-stroke bikes to the much smaller, but much faster, Japanese two-strokes, using information from the men who rode and worked on them. I hope it entertains and informs, at least a little. As all of them were, it sure was fun to research and write.

  Download A Changing of the Guard. How the classic four-stroke racebikes

A Fish Tale

Well, Laura decided some time ago that I, newly retired and indolent, needed to go fly fishing. So she bought me a really nice rod and reel. Then she decided I had better take nine hours of fly fishing instruction offered by the good people at the Pasadena Casting Club. It was fun and I thought maybe I could do this. So now the logical thing to do would be to go somewhere to put those lessons semi-learned into practice, wouldn't you agree?

So that's what I did this past weekend. The club sponsored a "beginner's trip" to the streams of the Eastern Sierra, around Bishop, and teamed each two or three beginners from the class with a "river helper," kind of a super-instructor/guide to show us the ropes.

The result? I learned how to catch fish with a fly rod plus a lot more than I bargained for. This is me, on the right, with my first fish. As always, click on the photos to enlarge them.

The image I had of this sport is one perhaps you share - a tranquil scene in which a fisherman throws graceful loops of fishing line over a placid, beautiful river, a scene in which big fish jump up to take the fly on the end of the line. Artistic and serene. Just like in "A River Runs Through It."

It ain't like that. At least not exactly. For starters, this sport is amazingly technical, and on several levels. Those knots, for instance. I practiced the knots needed to tie leader to tippet, and to tie tippet to fly (yes, and all that is tied to the floating fly line - don't worry, it gets even more complicated), intensely. I became fairly adapt with them, even though the tippet, the final element in the chain between fisher and fly, is about the size of a human hair. But tying those knots while seated in the comfort of our garden furniture and tying them out in nature with the sun glaring and the wind howling are two different things. Here's a nice shot of Jim and I fishing in Hot Creek after a long hike to get to this spot.

Also, you perhaps think of fly fishing as involving dry flies, those things that float on the water while attempting to resemble some insect a fish might eat? I surely did. But it ain't so. I'm told that 80% of all trout are caught on wet flies, called nymphs, that are meant to be fished under the water's surface. And you don't just fish one of them. You fish them in a rig that includes at least two, plus weights, but not too many or too few of them, to get them down to where the fish are; and a floating marker so you can see when somebody eats the nymph. This means more knots and more tying in the howling wind. Yes: The learning curve is very steep, and the knowledge so arcane that it might as well be part of some mystic religion. And in a way, I suppose it is.

And about that placid, restful river. First of all, you hike your ass off to get to it - across dusty, alkaline pasture, up and down the walls of steep river gorges, and more. Oh, and for God's sake, watch out for rattlesnakes! After four days of this, I came home thoroughly beat and dehydrated.

Finally, that restful, placid river isn't necessarily restful and placid. Where we waded in the Lower Owens, the flow was about 200 cubic feet of water per second. Think about it: That's a whole lot of water. It comes at you fast and batters hell out of your legs. My waders and boots worked well and I stayed warm and dry, but you have to be careful to avoid losing your footing on a streambed that can be firm, and then soft and slippery, from one step to the next, thus becoming one with the water supply for Los Angeles when you fall in so deeply that your waders fill with water, rendering struggle futile. I found myself losing equilibrium while standing in the hastening flood as it raged past me. Eventually I overcame this but it was weird and disconcerting while it lasted.

The rivers can be very technical. I mean, it's all technical, but some are more technical than others. One of the ones we fished, called Hot Creek, where the above photo was shot, certainly is. I had luck there on Friday, our first day, but this place is not easy. It's shallow, the flow is relatively low - "pocket water," I was told this is called - and the fish are incredibly wary. None of this is good of you have a low tolerance for frustration.

So anyway, the fishing trip. I drove up with the river helper to whom I was assigned, a gent named Jim Graves, who happens to live here in the same town where we reside. Nice guy, great fisherman, terrific instructor. I am deeply indebted to him for his patience and wisdom. It is because of him that I caught fish and feel that I could return to the area and fish on my own. This photo is Jim fishing upper Hot Creek.

So we drove up Friday and got to Hot Creek at about 11 a.m. We fished there for the rest of the day. I caught my first fish on a tiny #20 dry fly called an "Adams Parachute." This was the only fish to take one of my dry flies for the entire weekend.

This little guy hit the fly like a cement truck hits a Smart car. It felt as though a bolt of lightning had struck my rod, which came alive as this plucky little fish fought to get free. I brought it in, carefully removed the hook (barbless, of course) and turned it loose in the stream. No more luck for me the rest of the day. Maybe just as well because the experience supplied such a shot of adrenalin that I needed to sit and rest for a bit afterwards.

Luck got much worse on Saturday. We went to fish the Upper Owens River, which is up at about 7,000 feet of elevation not far from the Mammoth Airport, not far from Hot Creek. I was standing by the bank trying to retie a nymph rig when someone walked up behind me. I turned to find a California Fish & Game officer. Nice guy, pleasant and polite, but decked out in a phalanx of firearms. Asked to see my fishing license. I handed that over. Asked to see my driver's license. I handed that over.

"Come with me," he said. Yikes! Busted.

And it wasn't just me. He instructed everyone in our party to follow him back to his truck, where he wrote us all citations for fishing on restricted water. We had walked right past a sign telling us that this section of the stream was closed. I didn't see it - it was a couple of fence posts down from the gate and smallish in size. None of the others saw it either. This pretty much put a damper on the rest of the day, which we spent by fishing on the Middle Owens, which is just a few miles outside Bishop at about 4,100 feet. Not much happening. Tired, worried and a bit discouraged (at least I was), we called it a day.

Back to the Middle Owens for Sunday, where everyone in our group caught fish. I managed to get through the day without losing a single fly, unlike Friday, when I lost six of the dad-blamed things, and Saturday, when I lost two more. And this was where finally I got to that romantic image of fly fishing - standing in the stream, doing a cast called a "water haul," and tending a fishing rig while enjoying the beautiful scenery, listening to the symphony of birdsong set to the tempo of the river's gurgle and flow. It is restful and hugely enjoyable, with fish or without them. 

It was all great fun and a testament to the quality of the instruction we received from Jim Graves and the Pasadena Casting Club's other members.

Most folks headed home Sunday afternoon but Jim and I stayed to fish on Monday morning. We call this "beating the Sunday traffic." It worked and I caught another nice fish, again with a nymph rig and a tiny wet fly called a "WD40," again in the Middle Owens.

Interestingly, I got to chatting with a gent who said he'd fished this section of the river for 30 years. He'd been skunked. Zero, zinch, nada. "They're just not interested," he said of the river's occupants, which are present to the tune of about 9,000 fish per mile, according to empirical measurements, I'm told. But I wasn't skunked. Neither was Jim - bless him, this was the only day of the weekend where he was able to go off on his own and fish just for the joy of it without needing to ride herd on his students. He deserved every fish he caught.

And then we headed home. Tired, dusty, sunburned. But rich in experience, and knowing a little bit, just a very little bit, about how to do this sport.

I just wish we'd seen that "no fishing" sign. Dumb mistake. It was an honest, innocent mistake, if one for which we'll pay dearly, I fear.

And my poor car! It has never been so filthy, so dirty, so dusty from all the dirt roads that lead to the fishing areas. First official act this morning, before I even dig into my gear bag to sort through, clean and restock things? Get the poor thing detailed. Then I'll start thinking about when and where I might next go fishing.

-JFT

Volker Rauch: "The Natural"

A long time ago I worked for a motorcycle magazine. Late in my tenure there the editor decided to let me do pretty much whatever I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was write stories about things and people that interested me. Especially people. Here's one of them. It's about a German motor racing photographer called Volker Rauch. He pretty much set the standard for high-quality photojournalism art. And then he committed suicide.

Download Volker

Hope you like it.

-JFT