The little joys in life

Years ago I stepped out the back of our house to find Osh the cat, looking skyward into the trees, mesmerized. I'd seen the look before as he keyed in on some bird, hoping beyond hope that it would land nearby and he could pounce. This was different though. He was rooted, tail twitching, gazing high into the tree. I stopped, looked up and saw, perched on a branch about 25 feet above, a red tailed hawk; head cocked to the side, looking down. Each of the these creatures was riveted upon the other. I let out a roar of laughter. Osh briefly looked at me with that "What the hell is so funny" gaze of his before returning to the hawk. I sat down next to him, as any responsible pet owner would do, to have a little "Come to Bill The Cat" chat with him.

"Osh...Buddy, THAT is not your standard sparrow/morning dove/cardinal your licking your chops and having kitty fantasies about. That is a Hawk and you don't want to mess with him." Here before me were these two natural adversaries eying each other up and down. Two pea sized brains rapidly assessing the situation and both coming to the same conclusion....LUNCH! I chuckled, told Osh to be careful and walked off.

My reason for sharing this vignette...There are a few things in this world that give me unbridled pleasure. One is being on my BMW. I love and live to ride. Another is Birds of Prey. I love seeing them. Eagles, Hawks, Owls, Falcons, the list goes on. Soaring gracefully above the water or gliding above an open field, looking for their next meal.

I travel an easy 26 miles to the office each day. Past open fields and farmlands. Without fail, during my ride to or from the office, I'm rewarded with a falcon or hawk, either perched on a wire surveying their domain, standing just off the shoulder of the road, some small creature clutched in its talons, or swooping across one of the fields in pursuit of a meal. Seeing these creatures stirs something deep inside of me. I want to haul down on the brakes of the big Adventure bike, stop and take pictures. I resist. My chances of one of these amazing birds sitting still for a dumb bipeds kodak moment are minimal and stopping on the side of the road is an invitation for some twit in a cage to target fixate and run me over.

So I continue on my way, each morning or afternoon ride made all the better by these amazing birds. I silently thank Mother Nature or The Supreme Being of Winged Creatures, for affording me the opportunity to see them and wondering if maybe, just maybe, I'd been a falconer for some royal entity in a previous lifetime.

Technology 1, Humans 0

On Saturday we wandered out to one of the local grocery stores for a few items. Having filled the cart, we proceeded to checkout. As we put our items on the belt, the cashier swiped a carton of Newman's Own Lemonade across the scanner for the lady in front of us. BEEP! Rejected. BEEP! Rejected. She stopped, looked at the offending item and tried one more time. BEEP! Rejected.

Calling a manager for assistance, she said "The scanner isn't registering this item" and handed it to him. He tried a couple of times before announcing "I'll go and check it." Off he went. We waited. Approximately five minutes with still no return, we were joking that the refrigeration units had swallowed him and he was never coming back. At the same time we were invited by a neighboring cashier to bring our items one register over to complete check out.

As we started check out in the next lane, our intrepid manager returned with a duplicate carton of Lemonade. Scan...BEEP! Rejected again! At this point, completely perplexed, he offered what I affectionately call a "BFO," or Brilliant Flash of the Obvious, by announcing to the lady who wanted to purchase the product that they could not get a price, because it would not scan. She told them not to concern themselves with it and move on.

Said manager then promptly picked up his Motorola radio and called to the back. "The Newman's Own Lemonade isn't registering on the scanners, you have to pull all the product from the shelves."

I stopped. WHAT??? Had I heard this guy correctly? They were going to pull fifty or so cartons of lemonade because the price couldn't be scanned at checkout? I waited a moment. Sure enough, that was the plan.

I was aghast! The term "Mindless Drones" jumped to the forefront of my brain. Here was the perfect example of the human race relying solely on technology to accomplish their mission. Technology failed to recognize the product. Why did this happen? In all likelihood...simple human error. Someone forgot to input the SKU of this product into the system. Thus, the Drones, unable to rub two brain cells together, shut down. No one thought, "Hey, I'll go back to the cooler, get the price, grab a bunch of sticky notes, scribble down the information and post it at each register. That way, if a customer wants it, we can accommodate their purchase and sell the lemonade by inputting the price manually." A quick fix/solution until such time as the stores system can be updated. Instead, they choose to lose money (albeit, not great amounts in the grand scheme of things...but that's not the point) by pulling all the product.

I am not a Luddite. Far from it. I embrace technology and use it to my advantage at every possible opportunity. Should that technology glitch or fail for some reason, my whole world does not crumble, I don't freeze like a deer in the headlights and my synapses don't overload and kick off line. I increase the cycles of the OODA Loop, attempt to come up with a fix and more often than not, am successful.

This was a simple fix, yet the humans failed miserably. It was embarrassing to see. Instead of engaging that supposedly superior gray matter known as the brain and overriding the technology, they allowed the technology to control them.

We're supposedly the top of the food chain on this planet. I think not.

The Hypocrisy of the IIHS

I can only laugh. As I thumb through the latest issue of AMA's monthly magazine, American Motorcyclist, I marvel at the hypocrisy of the nations insurance companies. Proudly displayed on the back cover is an advertisement from Allstate Insurance Company, the "Good Hands" people. Inside are ads from Geico, Progressive and others. The images of their agents conveying to the motorcycling world "Look, I'm a motorcyclist, just like you. One of the guys/girls and I sell insurance. I'm on your side."

Yet Allstate,Progressive and Geico along with eighty-eight other companies are members of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). Purportedly an "independent, nonprofit, scientific, and educational organization dedicated to reducing the losses — deaths, injuries, and property damage — from crashes on the nation's highways."

Far from it. The IIHS is a partisan organization whose agenda, for more than three decades, has been the outright destruction and demise of motorcycling in the United States.

In the early 80's the IIHS, using tainted, flawed and skewed data pushed for a ban on all sport type motorcycles in the US. Claiming bogusly, both then and again in 2007, that sport bikes are considerably more dangerous than other types of motorcycles. This of course is crap. The fact that there are more idiot squids (squirrely kids) on sport bikes than on other types of motorcycles doesn't make the bike the problem.

Recently, the IIHS again took aim at motorcyclists by requesting the NHTSA mandate Anti-Lock brakes for all new motorcycles, claiming that ABS would reduce crashes by approximately one-third. This of course was based on IIHS data.

The NHTSA threw down the Bullshit Card. Their own National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA), using case-controlled comparisons for motorcycles with and without ABS, concluded "There were no statistically significant results to suggest that ABS affects motorcycle crash risk."

So, the IIHS and their data is proven to once again be flawed and not surprisingly a detriment to the motorcycling community.

The ultimate hypocrisy is that these same companies, with smiles stretched across their faces, glad hand us and readily, greedily accept premiums from motorcyclists to insure them; all the while actively running an anti-motorcycle campaign in an attempt to destroy motorcycling, through the auspices of the IIHS.

Sadly, trying to find a reputable company to insure us, which is not an IIHS member appears to be an effort in futility. We must deal with the devil and all of his hypocrisy. However, in doing so, motorcyclists must remain vigilant. We cannot afford to let our guard down for a moment. Doing so would have dire consequences from which we may never recover.