Frequent Citations

Safe And Sound

We've returned from our little adventure slightly damp but none the worse for wear.  It was a great weekend.  We rode through cold and rain, saw mountains and lakes and beautiful buildings, ate a couple of quite decent meals, and generally relaxed and enjoyed each other's company.

I finally got around to getting leather pants to ride in, and my timing was perfect:  we had rain almost all the way home and I barely noticed.  I would have been soaked in jeans.  I also picked up a fleece-type thing because I was (as usual) way too cold on the way up, but it didn't work as well as TFL's cashmere sweater.  High-tech fabrics are, in general, less-effective imitations of silk and cashmere, but more expensive anyway.  Such a scam!

Riding Season Again

It was a truly beautiful weekend, so TFL and I took off on a ride last Saturday.

Man, it was good to be back on the bike.  We went up 95, which is horrid, but branched off on 7 and then stumbled upon the 33 to 35 route--stunning.  The perfect road, all twisty and hilly and charming.

I'm trying to concentrate on that pretty ride and the hope of another this weekend to distract me from the news of the day, and the amoral idiots who are making me spitting mad.

It's like an equal opportunity slime fest, where the game of the day is to mangle language and logic to make the awful seem . . . acceptable, even laudable.  I've been livid about this issue for years, and appalled at the willful blindness and nauseating apologetics, and now those who should be cleaning house are all about sweeping things under the rug.

Shame on them.  And more shame on us if we let them get away with it.

Scenic Drives And Tofu Ranches

TFL and I took a long ride on the motorcycle today.  It was a gorgeous sunny day with not a cloud in the sky and, being the end of October, maybe our last chance for a longer ride.

Work? What work?

So we headed out on a scenic parkway.  And around here, when they say "scenic" they ain't kidding.

Here's Bonnie overlooking a valley. 

The drive was lovely, with the hills clinging to some color while the scent of fall filled the air. This land has charm and a quiet strength.  Tiny and ancient graveyards crop up here and there in the woods; creeks thread through the hills glittering in the sunlight, molten and somber in the shade.

We went quite a ways up the road and finally pulled up at this awesome diner, one of many on this parkway:

Yes, I am a stinky photographer.  The diner was awesome both for its style and for its blueberry pie. It was really quite acceptable pie. The coffee was good too. 

On the way back, though, we took a detour off the parkway and made a discover which will thrill my mother to her toes, I am sure:

We rode past this arch and I instantly shouted to TFL to stop! Stop the bike now!! We must have a picture of this source of so much torture in my youth!  In case you can't read the sign, here's a close-up:

How fantastic is that?

It was a wonderful ride on a stupendously beautiful day. TFL takes great care of me, doesn't he?

Forests Of Oak And Pine

I had plans for Sunday--plans that involved looking at a whole lot of case law and doing a lot of writing.

But rosy-fingered Dawn was in fine form on Sunday, and TFL lured me onto Bonnie with talk of wandering out to a neighboring island and finding the ocean. To be fair, he would have let me work. But the combination of a gorgeous day and the motorcycle ready to go...I could (and did) work later and faster.

So we headed out of the Emerald City (I've decided that's what I'm going to call it because it's a rather magical place and it's all about the green(backs)).  It was amazingly quick to get out of urban grime and out to hilly and well-forested suburbia. We rode by a woefully-overdone Viper (no dignified car would wear that paint job) and a superb white Rolls Royce, which really did "sail" down the road in majestic manner.  But eventually we ditched the superhighway for the side roads.

An inquiry at the gas station yielded the information that the ocean was a "few miles" up the road. We passed a few and a few more miles, no ocean in sight. Then I noticed that the forest along the road had changed. The land had flattened out and the forests were no longer mixed hardwoods with thick underbrush, but now were made up of oak and pine trees with only a short, sparse undergrowth covering the ground. The forest stretched away, tree trunks visible in rank upon rank.

It was the sort of forest you're likely to find near an ocean. And suddenly, over a rise, there it was! Bright sparkling blue at the end of the road. We hopped off the motorcycle and wandered down to the quartz-strewn shore. All the pebbles were made of quartz, some so clear they looked like glass and others in every beautiful shade of pink. The only noise was the sound of waves hitting land.

It was a splendid ride. And when we got back to the Emerald City I went back to work and was far more productive than I would have been if I'd skipped the ride. It reminded me how much I need that time away, that time to go out and explore and enjoy nature, to restore my perspective and sense of balance.

We Saw Everything

One day TFL rode his bike downtown to work and parked behind an SUV. He was a bit nervous about it, but was able to park very far back in his space so the SUV had plenty of room, and everything should have been fine.

Naturally, it wasn't.

He came out to find Bonnie on her side. (For those of you less familiar with motorcycles, this is Not Good.) Amazingly, the only damage was a knocked-off foot peg, meaning he was out $45 and a week of riding. But the note he found was priceless. One of the employees actually came out and told him all about it, too. It took me a while to hook up the scanner, but here it is (you should be able to click on it for a bigger image, if you like):

The employee said that the SUV backed right into it. Then it pulled up a little and two guys got out and set the bike back up. One of the guys stayed out to guide the driver out of the spot. And the SUV backed right into the bike again, knocking it over again. This time they didn't pick it back up. They just left.

You know it had to be egregious for the staff to go to such trouble as to write down the license plate number. I am not happy it happened, obviously, but I do love this note.

And yes, I just posted the license plate number in public and everything. Shame on you, whoever you are, for knocking over a motorcycle and then just driving off, not leaving your insurance information or a phone number or anything. Also, please learn to drive.

One Pretty Spot

We (TFL, GirlChild, and I) got up at the crack of dawn to head down to a state park. Photo op for GirlChild, who needed to shoot several rolls of film, and an excuse for TFL and I to take Bonnie for a spin. The area we headed for is perhaps the only non-flat part of the state; it's a series of canyons along a river, with good hiking paths laid through and nice windy roads for the bike.

First, I had forgotten how long it takes to get down there. An hour of driving and we were still in Urban Sprawl, and then another long stretch of nothing but cornfields did not make for an edifying ride first thing in the morning--especially because I was in the car instead of on the bike. Then, the camera sputtered and died. This was not a happy event, and although TFL later at least partially resurrected it GirlChild was not able to take many pictures this morning. So she was ever so slightly cranky about that.

She headed back early and TFL and I went to another area with TFL's brother's family and admired a quite lovely little canyon with a long waterfall at one end of it. That was quite enough of nature for one day.

Off we went (on the bike at last!) back to the city. Although there were plenty of motorcycles downstate--and it was a perfect day for riding--we noticed that none of them were European bikes. We found this lack not surprising, but sad. Not everyone has to have a Bonnie, of course, or even a Triumph, but where were the BMWs or even a Moto Guzzi? Nowhere. But when we stopped for gas, what should pull in right behind us but another Triumph!! It was a beauty, a restored 1972 Tiger.

Knight On A Shining Bike

TFL has marvelous timing -- he pulled up to the law school last night just as I emailed off the wretched cite check. It was wonderful to be able to abandon the library and ride off with him on Bonnie.

I'm Pretty Sure This Is Working

It's so beautiful outside today. Since the library doesn't open until the absurdly late hour of 9 am (I know -- it's shocking) TFL and I went for a teeny tiny smidgen of a ride before he dropped me off at school.

I really didn't want to get off the bike. I miss her! She's so much more fun than working on my Bigelow brief.

This is the Brief or Die Weekend. I've heard rumors that there's some sort of a holiday this weekend, but all I know is that I'm going to be chained to the library table until I get this blasted thing done. Where's the glamour? The thrill? The late-night partying and early-morning networking? Oh, yeah, I remember.

That's all at the business school.

Dang.

Light Reading

I suspect that this weekend will be typical of the next two months.

Reading for Monday:

• Torts -- 15 pages
• Elements of the Law -- 35 pages
• Contracts -- who knows?
• Legal Research and Writing --
• Civ Pro -- around 35 pages

Naturally I have to brief the cases in my multi-color system. This is merely an excuse to have more fun with office supplies.

Boy's football game is an hour away, so that will be the entire afternoon today. However, it is a gorgeous day so we're going to take the motorcycle. I can squeeze some of my reading into a saddle bag.

I'll yell my little heart out at the game, happy that one of my teams, at least, is winning.

The rest of the weekend will be an exciting non-stop blur of trespass, breach, remedy, rules, and memos. Whee!

Spring! Happy Spring!

At last some really wonderful warm weather. I filled up three enormous garden waste bags, laid down some of the new mulch, pruned the roses and a couple shrubs. The house has to look good on the outside if we're going to sell -- that whole curb appeal thing -- so I didn't feel at all guilty about shirking indoor duties for a while yesterday.

We finally hopped on the bike toward late afternoon and went back down to Hyde Park. It looked a lot better since there were actual live people there. I could swear I saw the dean of the law school on the sidewalk,  but maybe not.  It was a nice ride along the lake, and zooming through Lower Wacker is always a blast we of course were extremely cautious at all times and never exceeded the speed limit.