Listening to Movie Music

Posted on August 21, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

Years ago, back when my Dear Wife and I lived in Arizona, we saw film composer Jerry Goldsmith conduct an evening of his music with the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra. Now, more than 25 years later, I still think about what an incredible evening it was hearing his music and the stories behind it.

Jerry Goldsmith’s music from Star Trek 

And from Chinatown – which I consider his masterpiece of scoring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=aOSxC_HFAKo

Great scores by composers like Goldsmith, James Horner, Michael Giacchino, and – of course – John Williams are such a key part of so many movies that I love. Lately at the gym I’ve been watching movies with isolated scores – that is, with no dialog or sound effects, just the music. And in many cases this is with a more complete score by the composer, much of which didn’t make it into the finished film.

I got interested in looking for these when it was announced that Star Wars: The Last Jedi would have an isolated soundtrack as an online bonus feature where there would be no sound effects, no dialog (and no subtitles), just the soaring John Williams score. That got me interested to see how many movies I own copies of that have an isolated score.

John Williams conducting the Star Wars fanfare.

So far I’m working my way through science fiction/horror movies with Jerry Goldsmith’s Alien, James Horner’s Aliens, and John Williams Star Wars: The Last Jedi. And while Dunkirk does not offer an isolated soundtrack, one might come close to arguing that the movie as shown in the theater has an isolated soundtrack. (For those of you who haven’t seen it, Christopher Nolan’s movie about the World War II boat lift has very little dialog and Hans Zimmer score that is a major part of the movie’s storytelling.)

James Horner on writing the score for Star Trek II – The Wrath of Kahn

And here is the complete soundtrack for Wrath of Kahn

Watching a familiar film this way is an interesting experience. Seeing the movie as essentially a silent film forces you to focus on the visual storytelling within it, along with the score.

Take a look at the movies you own as DVDs, Blu Ray or digital downloads. You might be surprised how many have an isolated score audio track, or even a composer’s original score track.

Take a step back and just watch and listen to the movie and its music. You might be surprised at what a great experience it is and how much more you will discover.

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Is There Ever Grace For Being Stupid on Social Media?

Posted on July 28, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

James Gunn, director of first two Guardians of the Galaxy movies.

Last week, Disney fired director James Gunn from the Guardians of the Galaxy movie franchise over a number of offensive tweets he posted dating back to 2009.  Though the tweets were not hidden, they were brought to people’s attention when alt-right activist Mike Cernovich dug them out and started publicizing them.  The tweets have since been deleted.

To be clear: Eight to 10 years ago, when James Gunn was an edgy, independent filmmaker, he had a habit of posting highly offensive homophobic, pedophiliac rape “joke” tweets.

Gunn accepted his firing from GOTG 3 with grace, and apologized for the old tweets. Gunn wrote in a statement:

“My words of nearly a decade ago were, at the time, totally failed and unfortunate efforts to be provocative. I have regretted them for many years since — not just because they were stupid, not at all funny, wildly insensitive, and certainly not provocative like I had hoped, but also because they don’t reflect the person I am today or have been for some time.

“Even these many years later, I take full responsibility for the way I conducted myself then. All I can do now, beyond offering my sincere and heartfelt regret, is to be the best human being I can be: accepting, understanding, committed to equality, and far more thoughtful about my public statements and my obligations to our public discourse. To everyone inside my industry and beyond, I again offer my deepest apologies. Love to all.”

Cernovich, of course, was not offended by Gunn’s tweets. Instead, he appears to have been looking for a way to cause trouble for Disney because they fired Roseanne Barr for a series of recent racist tweets. He also was after Gunn because he has been a vocal critic of President Trump.

Cernovich attempted to portray Gunn as a pedophile who genuinely liked what he was joking about in his tweets. This connects to a larger conspiracy theory that people in Hollywood and members of the Democratic Party have a secret pedophile conspiracy. (Dig into “Pizzagate” if you are so inclined.) (If you must read what Cernovich wrote, here’s a link. I’m a bit reluctant to give him the traffic, but I always think it is useful to see the original source material. )

That Gunn had an offensive online presence has been known about since he was first hired by Disney to helm GOTG. The feminist geek culture site The Mary Sue had a post about Gunn back in 2011 about “The 50 Superheroes You Most Want to Have Sex With.” Blogger Susana Polo wrote at The Mary Sue:

“The post is dated February 11th, 2011, and apparently sat around for nearly two years before it was noticed recently. It was still live late last night when I noticed pretty much every comics-related blog I follow on Tumblr talking in various shades of disgust about its content, but it has since been taken down. Naturally, it’s still available by Google Cache.

“Lets be clear: there’s nothing wrong about running a poll for the most sex-able superhero on your site, especially one where you embrace the fact that Batman and Gambit come in within the top five. There isn’t anything wrong, in that context, of choosing art that sexualizes the characters in it. There isn’t even anything wrong with talking explicitly about sex in your commentary on the poll results. What’s wrong is the sheer amount of slut-shaming (on only the female characters) and anti-gay language that Gunn directs towards the majority of the male characters. These are not opinions befitting somebody who’s been given the task of bringing a major part of the Marvel Universe to the big screen (a set of characters, I might add, that includes a lesbian superhero couple, not that they’ll be appearing in Guardians).”

This critique of Gunn resulted in an apology from the director that was well received by Polo and by members of the gay community:

“A couple of years ago I wrote a blog that was meant to be satirical and funny. In rereading it over the past day I don’t think it’s funny. The attempted humor in the blog does not represent my actual feelings. However, I can see where statements were poorly worded and offensive to many. I’m sorry and regret making them at all. People who are familiar with me as evidenced by my Facebook page and other mediums know that I’m an outspoken proponent for the rights of the gay and lesbian community, women and anyone who feels disenfranchised, and it kills me that some other outsider like myself, despite his or her gender or sexuality, might feel hurt or attacked by something I said. We’re all in the same camp, and I want to do my best to make this world a better place for all of us. I’m learning all the time. I promise to be more careful with my words in the future. And I will do my best to be funnier as well. Much love to all”

Gunn has had substantial support from the Hollywood community, with generally supportive tweets coming from multiple members of the GOTG cast, and this support has generated its own hashtag campaign – #WeAreGroot.

The big question to come out of all of this to me is: How long should people pay for their online sins?

Should their be some kind of statute of limitations for how long old tweets and blog posts can haunt a person? Are we all responsible for everything we wrote when we were in college? (I, for one, can be happy that everything I wrote in college existed in the pre-Internet age.) Does every ill-advised post, even when made repeatedly over an extended period of time, carry a lifetime statute of limitations? Should it matter that you like/dislike the person apart from their post? Does it matter whether the revelation comes from someone acting in good faith or as a troll? Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle asks these and several other questions that we are going to need to deal with repeatedly in the new social media era. She writes:

“We don’t have a statute of limitations for murder, of course, and I’m not advocating a blanket amnesty for heinous offenses. … But people who merely made dumb jokes should be offered the chance to apologize and to start with a clean slate, rather than seeing their lives wrecked over ephemeral missteps. Few of us are the sort of relentless prig who has never made an off-color suggestion even in jest. Which means that few of us can survive in a world that refuses to let the dead past stay buried.”

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Guest Blog Post – A former indie musician looks at the Telecom Act of 1996

Posted on July 16, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

Matthew Warder

The following guest blog post comes from Matthew Warder, who at one time was lead guitarist for a great indie power pop band called “The Argument.” In addition to providing us with lots of entertainment, he was also my eldest’s bass guitar teacher for several years. I’ll let Matt give you the background on how this post came to be. He’s now a financial and equity markets analyst. Thanks for the post, Matt.

Following a recent blog post – “The Changing Face of Media Ownership” – Dr. Hanson and I struck up a conversation on Facebook about its implications. The blog’s context, you may remember, concerned the red light-green light-red light acquisition of Time Warner by AT&T, the sordid corporate love triangle of Disney, Comcast, and 21stCentury Fox, and the divorce/reconciliation of CBS and Viacom.

Let me start off by saying it’s pretty easy to see why our government has allowed these sorts of deals to happen. While it may scream anti-trust on the surface, we found out during the 70’s and 80’s that smaller companies do have a heck of a lot of trouble staying well-capitalized, and are vulnerable to competitors – and that does not necessarily benefit consumers (or shareholders) at all.

In addition, the larger the number of entities in an industry, the harder it is for government to effectively regulate them. The banking industry leading up to the financial crisis and resulting Great Recession is probably the most obvious recent example.

But the legislation that essentially made these media mega-mergers possible – the Telecommunications Act of 1996 – also had far-reaching effects on other industries that, at least for me, hit a lot closer to home.

I met Dr. Hanson in the early 2000’s, when I was teaching guitar and bass to his eldest son Erik in Morgantown, WV. My band at the time, the Argument, enjoyed a modicum of success in the music industry, touring the East Coast and Midwest in support of our two records, both of which are still available on iTunes (hint, hint; wink, wink).

The Argument on stage

Now, it’s not exactly a trade secret that the business of touring is tremendously enhanced by the business of selling records and merchandise, which is in turn tremendously enhanced by an effective marketing strategy. But it might not be well-known that for most of the industry’s existence, that marketing strategy centered around terrestrial radio.

That’s because from the dawn of radio through the mid-90’s, radio was primarily community-based. Though record industry payola had existed in some form for a long time, regional managers and station managers kept a fair amount of latitude for their own personal tastes and business ideas. And because they were so plugged in to the community, it also meant they knew their demographics better than anyone, and they generally had a good feel for what kind of music would fly on the air, and what wouldn’t.

When it was appropriate, those station managers were great supporters and advocates for musical artists in their community; most especially so when there was a coherent “scene”. Think Chicago in the 70’s (Cheap Trick, Styx, Chicago), Los Angeles in the 80’s (Guns ‘N’ Roses, LA Guns, Motley Crue), or Seattle in the 90’s (Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Nirvana). All of those bands were at one time local acts who were bolstered by local radio.

The business model of record labels was a little different then. In order to recoup enough investment, labels had to find acts that had the potential to play nationally. And one of the most logical methodologies to use was:

  • Start with something already popular;
  • Find something similar that’s already working somewhere else;
  • Throw at wall;
  • Measure relative stickiness.

So it wasn’t exactly a leap of logic for LA-LA land A&R guys in 1988 to think, “Hmmm, this LA hair band thing is winding down…I need to call all my radio buddies here on the West Coast and see if there’s some band up there that will let me keep my awesome job”.

But after President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (TCA96 from here on out) into law, we immediately saw some of these dynamics change.

The first thing I remember noticing personally was that stations often switched formats. While I was studying jazz guitar at William & Mary, I listened pretty heavily to a small station based out of either Newport News or Norfolk, VA (can’t remember) that had about 4 hours of jazz programming every day. A few months after TCA96 was signed, new DJ’s greeted my Monday lunch with the latest hot 40 hits. The classical station based out of Richmond, VA that I’d frequently put on to study now played country music. The one Tejano station that I remembered in the area became some term called “active rock” that I had never heard before.

No more bluegrass, no more blues, no more folk…no more niche music whatsoever.

What I didn’t realize had happened was that the commercial radio lobby – the National Association of Broadcasters – requested as part of this legislation that the caps on the number of stations one entity can own be lifted…and Congress obliged. Whereas one owner could previously only hold 4 stations in a local market or 40 nationally, those limitations were now eliminated.

In short order, the radio industry went from almost entirely a locally-controlled, community-connected industry to a giant national network where two-thirds of listeners and revenue were controlled by 10 companies.

So at this point, the nature of radio’s business model had to drastically change. Instead of only having to appeal to a concentrated local market – the demographics of which were intimately known by the local station managers – radio now had to appeal to ALL markets, all at once, all the time.

And what’s the one thing that almost all adults in the country have in common?

Most of them have kids.

So instead of the next commercial evolution of grunge, music enthusiasts in 1997 were rewarded for their patronage by such heady acts as…The Spice Girls! They, of course, were followed closely by the Lou Pearlman-managed boy bands (Backstreet Boys, NSYNC), and former Disney Channel child stars like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.

In retrospect, that was probably an auspicious year for a recent college graduate to start a power-pop band with legitimate industry goals. But of all the areas in the country where I could do so, I was fortunate enough to do so in an area of the country that was still very community-centric.

My fellow bandmates and I knew most of our local station managers and DJ’s personally. We were welcomed into their world. We supported their local events wholeheartedly. And when we eventually made commercially viable records with legitimate industry producers, we were rewarded with local radio play, which turned into regional radio play, which turned into some record label interest.

Unfortunately, that didn’t quite pan out for us – I’m writing this now as a financial and equity markets analyst rather than the next teenage guitar hero – but I can’t say we weren’t lucky.

What I can say, though, is that the music industry hasn’t been quite as engaging since.

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Gone Riding, Epilogue – On Not Going Over The Edge

Posted on July 15, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

“The Edge…There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others-the living-are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there.”

-Hunter S. Thompson

My late mother, who taught first one-room school and later special ed, recognized early on that I could not sit still, and that I was always interested in three things at once. She worked with my teachers to help them see I was not trying to be disruptive, that I just couldn’t sit still. She also worked with me on better focusing my attention. I suspect on the spectrum of hyperactive – attention deficit disorder, I’m somewhere to the right of “normal.” The thing that I always appreciated is that my mother always recognized that and helped me harness it to my benefit rather than try to coerce or drug it out of me. (For the record, my mother never did approve of my motorcycle riding.)

My father also recognized it. All my life I’ve had an interest in photography and journalism, as well as science. My father, as well, had interests in all these areas. But my father went into physics – first nuclear physics and later acoustics, while I studied science journalism, anthropology and sociology. In a conversation Dad and I had several years (decades?) ago, he noted quite accurately that I did not have the patience for physics, and he did not have the impatience for journalism.

Ralph and Howard on Idaho 55.

I’ve never viewed this as a handicap or defect – rather I view it as being different. But it does mean that I’ve always been in motion. The local newspaper wrote a story about me a couple of years ago when Howard and I returned from our trip to British Columbia, the Yukon, and southern Alaska with the headline “Ralph Hanson Likes to Go.” Truer words were never written.

I’m home now, recovering from my injury. I mishandled some deep gravel on a dirt road. I’ve got a hairline sacral fracture that keeps me from putting much weight on my right leg. In addition to the mobility difficulties, I have a low level ache associated with it. Being stuck in the house and limited by crutches is pretty hard on me, but it’s even harder on my Dear Wife, who has to pick up all the slack from the things I can’t do.

I’ve long been a fan of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. He was another one who was always in motion and found excitement and pleasure from motorcycles. (Also from alcohol and drugs, which are not my style…) He wrote a lot about being in motion (The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and perhaps most notably The Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga.) Almost everything he wrote was about discovering limits. But as much as I have always admired Thompson for his writing, I’ve always found my limits at a much lower level than he has. In his legendary article for Cycle World magazine, “Song of the Sausage Creature,” Thompson wrote:

Some people will tell you that slow is good – and it may be, on some days – but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I’ve always believed this, in spite of the trouble it’s caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba….

But while I’ve never lived the sentiment of the quote, I’ve always loved it. I suppose in my own mind I’ve always substituted “motion” for “speed.” And except when I’ve been executing a pass on a secondary road, I’ve never felt a big need for lots of power and instant speed on tap.

I suspect that’s why in the 20 years I’ve been riding as an adult, more than 10 of them have been spent on two different Kawasaki KLR 650s. This is a single-cylinder motorcycle that has 35 horsepower on a good day. It has many virtues, including that it can go almost anywhere, but speed is not one of them. But the KLR excelled at keeping me in motion.

With this most recent injury, I have cause to ask myself where my limits are. I have seen how close to the edge I’m willing to go. I suspect that riding on two-track mountain dirt roads more than 1,000 miles from home is on the other side of how close I can go. But I know I need to stay in motion, and a motorcycle is a great way to do that.

Howard’s and my route through the Idaho backcountry. Funny that the track ends in what looks like a question mark.

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Gone Riding, Part 7 – I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers

Posted on July 13, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

This is one of a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels.

Blanche DuBois absolutely had it right when she says in A Streetcar Named Desire,“I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

As I write this, I’m on a pair of flights from Boise to Dallas/Fort Worth to central Nebraska. How I managed to get from the waiting room of the ER in McCall, Idaho to this point is a story of great effort by both close friends and absolute strangers. It’s also a lesson against the cynicism of our times that tells us that we can receive small miracles of the spirit from people of very different faiths and backgrounds.

McCall is a lovely place to be, and I’m sure I would love going on vacation there, but it was almost impossible to find a ride back to the motel for me and a way for Howard to get back to the ER to pick up my bike. The nice lady with long, grey hair who took my insurance information offered to give us rides once she got off work at 9 p.m., but that was still a long ways off. But she said she would see what she could do.

Before long a man came out wearing a hospital custodian’s uniform.  He had a shaved head with giant spider tattooed on his skull.  He approached us and asked, “Did you need a ride? I’m on my dinner break.”

Yes, as a matter of fact, we did need a ride.  And this man, whom I had never met before in my life, gave up his dinner break to ferry us to the hotel.  I offered him $20 for his efforts, but he said, ‘No, I’m just helping.’ This was a man who made his living cleaning floors at a small hospital. Whom I suspect could have used the money. But it was more important for this man with a scary tattoo across the top of his head to help a pair of strangers in need.

He was just the first of a series of miracles of the spirit to touch us that evening and into the next day.

While I was still in the ER, I finally called Pam to give her my diagnosis.  There was almost no cell service within the hospital, so we had several dropped connections, so it was challenging getting out the message that I was hurt, but ok. Finally, my Dear Wife and I relied on text messages.  And while Pam was clearly not happy with me, she sounded relieved that I was ok and that I had Howard there to help me.  That task aside, it was time to figure out how I was going to travel the 1,150 miles between McCall and Kearney without being able to walk without crutches.

Pizza in our room was a pretty good late dinner after a long day of riding and going to the ER.

My next call was to one of my other riding buddies, Bishop Matthew Riegel, who can use his special bishop powers to find helpful clergy anywhere in the country. Unfortunately, there were no ELCA churches in the area (Matt’s denomination), but he promised to keep working late into the night to see what he could do.

I also posted a plea for help to an Iron Butt Association discussion board on Facebook, hoping someone there might help. Again, McCall is a little, remote town, and there was no one there with an immediate connection.  But Tyler Risk, a rider I’ve never met or talked with before, said “I’ve got some ideas.  Let me see what I can do.”

Next, I  called MedJet to get my bike shipped home.  MedJet is a membership organization that’s kind of like an insurance company, except it’s not.  Were I to have been in a serious accident that required me to be admitted to the hospital, MedJet would have gotten me flown to my home hospital once my condition was stabilized, even if it involved them chartering a private jet with a nurse.  Fortunately, I didn’t need that service! More prosaically, they will get your bike shipped home if you are too injured to continue your ride.  That would be me.

A helpful operator at MedJet put me in touch with the transportation coordinator, and before I went to sleep, I had arrangements mostly completed for the bike. (Yes, I highly recommend MedJet, and not just because my Dear Wife won’t let me ride without it.)

I also got a flight booked for two days later from Boise to the airport closest to my home. It was expensive, but such is life. I still needed a place to store my bike till it got picked up in a week or two by the shipping company, I needed a way to ship my riding gear home, and I needed a ride to Boise, which was a couple of hours away.

Then, I went to sleep. It had been too late when I got out of the ER to fill my script for narcotics, and fortunately all I really needed were heroic doses of ibuprofen.

When I woke up early Wednesday morning, I had a call from a Lance in Boise who was a motorcyclist, who knew someone in Utah (I think) who knew Tyler on Facebook, who had said she might know someone who could help.  Lance had two names for me to call in McCall who could help me with both logistics and finding a ride.

I then spoke to Bishop Matt, who had contacted Pastor Robin of the local Missouri Synod Lutheran church. Pastor Robin, it turned out, already knew who I was because he had been in the ER with his wife at the same time I was there, and he saw me talking with the trauma nurse.  He let me store my bike at the church until the shipping company could take it, and agreed to get my gear shipped.  He also had to drive Howard back to the hotel after he delivered my bike to the church.

As with the Man With The Spider Tattoo, Pastor Robin refused any money to pay for the shipping. (I’ve shipped that gear before; it’s expensive.) He said it was his pleasure to do so. This was my second miracle of the spirit. Pastor Robin had no direct connection to Bishop Matt or me, but when he got an early morning e-mail asking for help, he responded.

I was still in need of my ride to Boise. I was getting ready to start calling the people Lance had recommended to me, when Pastor Robin called back.  The man who owned a small, local convenience store who just sold my new friend a Diet Coke, said he would take me to Boise that afternoon when he went to pick up his wife at the airport.  Pastor Robin told me that David was a great guy and a devout Mormon who would be happy to help me. A couple of hours later, David came by with his SUV, and I had a comfortable ride and an enjoyable conversation. My offer of gas money was politely refused. He said he was going there anyway, and that he wanted to help. David was my next miracle of the spirit.

And if any of these fine people had not come through for me, I still had several people from the motorcycling community who were willing to try to find me help.

All in all, I would have much rather not fallen and still be on my trip, riding into Missoula, Montana. But being reminded how wonderful and caring human beings can be when a wounded stranger shows up in their midst is amazing.

I could not have gotten through all this without the help of my friends Howard and Bishop Matt, of course. I always know I can count on them – and have on many occasions. And the support of my Dear Wife is always essential. But it was the kindness of strangers, from a range of faith (and possibly no faith) backgrounds,  who helped this motorcyclist find his way home.

My flight is now nearing my local airport where my youngest will pick me up, and then I will be very glad to be home.

The Platte River spread out below me was a welcome sight the I was nearing home.

But I wouldn’t have missed this for anything. As Shepherd Book said on the old series Firefly,“The journey is the worthier part.”

In a few days there will be an epilog, but this is the end of this journey.

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Gone Riding, Part 6 – Wreck-It Ralph

Posted on July 13, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

Uh-oh, that title sounds ominous…

This is one of a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels.

We had breakfast at The Corner, arriving as the early rising contractors doing mineral and energy work were leaving  from eating breakfast and taking their sack lunches. (Apparently one of the way The Corner stays in business is by contracting with these companies to provide meals, alcohol not included, to the workers. While the contractors were interesting people to talk with over dinner the night before, they were very non-specific about exactly what they did.)

We were on the road, such as it was, by 8:30, and we were now on a genuine adventure.  We had bought gas the night before from the lady who ran the other bar in town out of a couple of 200-gallon barrels. Gas was 92 octane, no ethanol, $5 a gallon.  We were glad to have it.

How you buy gas in Yellow Pine.

The Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR) at this point was a minimally maintained forest service road that got more and more minimal as we proceeded. At about the 21-mile point, Howard hit an oversized mud puddle, and his bike was not going to get out of it.

Howard’s bike stuck in the mud.

After I parked my bike, we tried to have him run the throttle and have me push, but all that resulted in was covering me with a rooster tail of mud. Eventually we had to completely strip the luggage off of Howard’s KTM and rock it out of the hole backwards. (For those of you reading who ride, he had high-centered the bike on the edge of the hole.) Once we got the bike out, we got it reloaded, and headed again on our way.

Ralph got rooster-tailed with mud trying to help Howard get his bike out of the mud. Eventually we rocked it back out of the hole and went on our way.

After we went over the top of the pass, or perhaps it was two passes, we came down into a valley where there were sandy patches popping up with little warning.  As Howard was taking the lead, he was the first to find them, and he and his bike went down.  Now, I’m a much slower rider than Howard on a smaller bike, so by the time I got to him he had already picked the bike up.  But the auxiliary light on the right side was bent at an unnatural angle, and his aluminum saddlebag had a big dent in it.  Howard also had some doubts about the condition of his ankle. (He didn’t have any real trouble continuing riding, so he likely just twisted it a little, leaving it sore.)

From there, the road became less of a road and more of a trail. I was grateful I had left my big bike (a Yamaha Super Tenere) at home and had ridden my 650 enduro. Despite the challenges of the riding, it was fun and a glorious country to be traveling with. And when we reached Elk Summit, I had somewhat of a feeling of triumph.

Elk Summit

By 1:30 we were getting a bit concerned about being able to cover the full 220 miles of the day, given that we had only made it about 50 of those miles in the morning.  But then the road widened out, started to be a little smoother, and while our pace was not fast, we were actually making progress toward our destination.

When we got near Burgdorf Hot Springs, we were ready for some lunch and fuel for our bikes.  We turned down a gravel road with lots of fresh crushed rock on it, and that’s when I had my problem. In biker-parlance, I lost the back end.  What does that mean? The back tire of my bike tried to go in front of the front tire. Yeah. That didn’t turn out well. I found myself off the bike and sliding through the gravel. A driver in a pickup truck came by shortly and helped me pick up my bike, and soon after that Howard came back for me.  We straightened out the handlebars and rode on into Burgdorf.

We stopped there for about 20 minutes to assess things.  My right ankle and hip hurt. And I couldn’t put real weight on my right leg. Fortunately I could successfully sit on the bike and make it go.  Double fortunately, after riding back across the 2 miles of fresh crushed rock, we were able to take a paved road into the town of McCall. This was really the first bail-out point of the route, so that was good.

We rode into McCall (a lovely tourist town with a major wildland firefighting base) and got checked into a hotel.  Since I couldn’t walk, I just sat outside on my bike. I also used the opportunity to press the “I’m safely in for the night” button on my Spot satellite tracking system. I certainly didn’t want to push that button, marking the end of my ride at a hospital emergency room parking lot. Yes, I would call my dear wife Pamela (the long suffering, ever patient Penelope – look up The Odyssey for the reference if you need it.) eventually, but not until I knew for sure what was going on with me.

I can’t say enough about the wonderful people at St. Luke’s Medical Center’s emergency room. Howard got a wheel chair to get me from the parking lot into the ER. There the trauma nurse did my admittance interview. For the next blessing of the day, she was also a motorcyclist who instead of mocking me for riding said she was glad I wore full gear. (I was glad, too.  Although I would eventually be diagnosed with a slightly broken bone, I didn’t have scratch on me.)

After I got out of my mud-covered gear and into a gown, the radiology staff did an x-ray of my ankle and a CAT scan of my pelvis.  There was a bit of a wait after that as the small ER dealt with a far more serious case came in by ambulance.  I will never complain about having to wait for someone else to be treated in the ER because that means my injuries are not that serious.

Eventually the doctor came back to tell me my ankle was ok but that I had a hairline sacral fracture. In layman’s terms, there was a minor break where my tailbone meets my pelvis. (Interestingly enough, this was exactly what doctor expected following our initial conversation. Apparently he had seen this injury a time or two before between motorcyclists and skiers.)  I was issued a pair of crutches and told to see my local orthopedist in two weeks.

But this also meant I had reached journey’s end. While I could technically sit on a bike, I could not put any weight on my right leg.

Coming up next: Three miracles of the spirit.

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Gone Riding, Part 5 – Yellow Pine and the Idaho Backcountry Discovery Route

Posted on July 13, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

This is one of a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels.

One of the primary goals of this trip was to ride a substantial portion of the Idaho Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR), a dirt and back road route that runs from the south edge of Idaho up to the Canadian border.  Given our time constraints, were planning on riding from just south of the town of Pine up to Pierce.

The first leg of that was interfered with by our need to go spend time in Boise, but we still had a great time riding north on Idaho Highway 55.  We had a half-hour long segment that was filled with curves, elevation changes, magnificent scenery, and very light traffic. To use the vernacular of another age, it was an E-Ticket ride.  (Which is also how Sally Ride, the first American woman astronaut, described being launched into space on the shuttle.)

We then turned east on Warm Lake Road which 30 or 40 miles later dropped us off on the dirt road/BDR route that would shortly lead us into Yellow Pine. Yellow Pine is an old mining town that’s now home to a bar, a really good restaurant, a few places to stay, and small but eclectic population.

Howard turns north toward Yellow Pine.

We had a wonderful dinner and breakfast at the Corner bar and grill, with Matt as our host. The night we were there he was the cook, waitstaff, cashier, bartender and dishwasher. I had a smoked brisket salad with black bean and corn relish that would have done credit to a fine restaurant in a major city, while Howard had a similar smoked chicken salad. They even had non-alcoholic beer, which remote, little places almost never have. Matt and his wife own and run the place, and as I noted in the first post of this series, people and places like this are a big part of why I love to travel to remote and new places.

Chef Matt (and waiter, cashier, bartender, dish washer)

That night we stayed in a room we rented behind the general store.  It was spartan, but it was clean, had decent  beds, and hot water. There was no air conditioning, but once the sun went down, it was almost cold out.

The big challenge was figuring out how to reach the guy who would be our landlord.  When I made the reservation, it was using Facebook Messenger with a couple-day interval between each response. When we arrived in Yellow Pine, we had virtually no phone service, so we went to talk to Matt at the Corner, and he made the call to the store owner for us, calling us “a couple of BDR-looking types.” Still not sure from his tone of voice whether that was a good or bad thing…. (Though  he was absolutely welcoming to us as customers.)

The only real negative we had in our stay in Yellow Pine was that the mosquitos were fairly thick, so we couldn’t sit outside and enjoy the cool night mountain air.

Ralph and Howard at The Corner.

Coming up next – our journey reaches an early and unexpected ending, (Uh-oh, that sounds like foreshadowing… dun, dun, dun….)

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Gone Riding, Part 4 – I want to be George when I grow up

Posted on July 13, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

This is one of a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels.

The night we were in Mountain Home, Howard decided that he would have to replace the chain on his KTM 1190 motorcycle before we headed out to the backcountry.  The chain had looked good before he left Texas, but after more than 1,800 miles of hard riding, the chain was near giving up the ghost. The nearest place we could get the chain replaced was the KTM shop in Boise, so instead of heading to the Backcountry Discovery route, we went west to Boise instead.

While we were waiting to get Howard’s new chain put on his bike, I got to talking with an older gentleman named George who had one of the new stripped-down 2018 Gold Wings that I think would make a great addition to my garage.

(Don’t worry, sweetie, I know… no room, no money…)

He told me about the many other bikes in his garage (including a 174 horsepower Suzuki Hayabusa, at the time, the fastest ever production motorcycle), and that this was the 12thGold Wing he had owned.  As he prepared to ride off, he casually mentioned he was 89 years old. This man is my hero.

George is 89 years young and just bought a new 2018 Honda Gold Wing.

Carl’s Power Sports did a great job of getting Howard’s bike fixed at a reasonable price, and after a quick lunch at a Greek take-out joint, we were on our way to Yellow Pine, our day’s destination.

Coming up next – Yellow Pine and the Idaho Backcountry Discovery Route

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Gone Riding, Part 3 – Ralph and Howard Have a Science Day

Posted on July 11, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

 This is one of a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels.

My former student Howard arrived up from Texas (He’s my riding buddy who went with me to the Yukon and Alaska two years ago) on the evening of Day 3, and on Day 4 we resumed traveling west. This was Science Day for Ralph and Howard.

Our first stop was at EBR-1: Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 – the first atomic power plant. It was primarily a research reactor, but the research included how to generate electricity by splitting atoms. The reactor produced enough electricity to run the plant – A first.

EBR 1 – Experimental Breeder Reactor 1, near Arco, Idaho.

It was a place Bishop Matt had recommended, and it was fascinating. It was of special interest to me, given that my dad is a retired nuclear physicist who came of age as a scientist as this reactor was going online back in 1951. What, you say your father didn’t talk to you over the dinner table about the challenges of liquid sodium cooled nuclear reactors? Well, mine did.

Would you let this man run a vintage nuclear reactor? Didn’t think sol.

One of the scariest exhibits there were a pair of experimental reactors designed to test whether it was practical to have an atomic powered jet airplane. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed, and the project was scrapped.

Experimental reactor tested to see if it was practical to build an atomic powered jet plane.

The second stop was at Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, a place I have dreamed of going from the day I first heard of it. Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin referred the actual moon as a “magnificent desolation,” and those words could be used to describe this huge, 2000-year-old volcanic lava field.

Riding buddy Howard checking out the lava field at Craters of the Moon National Monument.

While we spent quite a bit of time investigating the lava flows, cones and splatter cones, we did not go into the caves. Had we done so, we would have to certify to the ranger that we had not been in a cave or coal mine wearing these same clothes any time since 2006. Why? To keep the White Nosed Bat fungus from spreading into the bat colony there.

WNB fungus was an innocuous European species, but when it was accidentally brought to the United States, North American bats had no natural resistance to it. The fungus, which gives the bats a white nose (duh!), and acts essentially like cold. The bats have trouble breathing, it wakes them up from their winter hibernation, and then the poor little bats die of exposure. In some areas, more than 90 percent of the bats have killed by it. (If you really want to scare yourself, read the book The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert that tells the whole story of White Nosed Bat Syndrome and a host of other potential extinctions caused by invasive species.)

We ended the day in Mountain Home, Idaho. It was ok, but our motel was not the finest place we’ve ever stayed…

Not the world’s finest motel.

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Gone Riding, Part 2 – Unexpected Pleasures

Posted on July 10, 2018 by Ralph Hanson

This is one of a series of blog posts about my summer motorcycle travels.

So far, Phase 2 of my summer travels have been going well. But it is always wise to keep in mind my motto of “Proceed as the way opens” (from William Least Heat Moon’s travel book Riverhorse).

The trip started on Thursday, July 5, riding Nebraska Highway 2 through the Sand Hills country. People who think that Nebraska isn’t very interesting have likely only ridden through the state on I-80 in the Platte River valley, which has its charms but is arguably the least interesting path. Highway 2 winds through the hills, with increasing numbers of badlands rock formations as you head north and west.

I took this part of the ride with my friend, Mike Konz, a long-time Kearney newspaper man.  One of the fascinating things about traveling with Mike is that it is physically impossible to go anywhere in the state without someone recognizing him. This trip we were making a gas stop somewhere north of  North Platte, and someone Mike knows comes up to see him.

We had about 10 of 15 miles of messy road construction that reminded me of Canadian road repairs. Long segments with nothing resembling real pavement.  More post-apocalyptic roads.  My dual-sport with on-off road tires was perfectly happy, but Mike’s Gold Wing was less amused.

Ralph’s and Mike’s bikes

We finished up by spending the night in Douglas, Wyoming.

Day 2 had Mike heading south to Denver to visit family, and me going west to Idaho.  On the way I traveled through the edge of Grand Tetons National Park.  I had had thoughts of going to Yellowstone during my off day in Idaho Falls, but brutal traffic in the tourist town of Jackson, Wyoming convinced me I was better off sticking in town and getting work for my publisher done.

Approaching Grand Tetons National Park

In addition to have a nice locally owned hotel to stay at in Idaho Falls (great homemade biscuits!), I found an excellent coffee shop downtown to get work done on copyedits. But the great discovery was Reed’s Dairy.

Should you ever be fortunate enough to come to Idaho Falls, you must go to Reed’s Dairy. If you are looking for food, they have grilled cheese sandwiches (with their own cheese!) and cream of tomato soup. If you’re looking for dessert, they’ve got fantastic local ice cream. Try the two huckleberry flavors. I manage to do this by walking a mile there and back to help work it off. I was in Idaho Falls a day and a half, and I’ve went to Reed’s Dairy twice. Lots of work done, grilled cheese, and great ice cream.  I’m happy with the way things opened.

Reeds Dairy, Idaho Falls

Note – I’m posting this with extremely limited internet from Yellowpine, Idaho.  Will add links when I have a better connection.

Coming next: Ralph and Howard Have a Science Day!

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