Category: Brian Layman

You may not have noticed it, but I’ve started an “Friend Search” page.

I’m thinkin’ that since every now and then I search for my own name to see what is out there about me, others probably do the same. So, maybe, just maybe, some of the people I’ve lost track of over the years might find my site and drop in and say “Hi!”

So, here it is:
Friend Search
The following are people I’d LOVE to get in touch with again, just to say “Hi!”. Posting this is somewhat risky. Please don’t be offended if you are not on this list. It doesn’t mean that you were/are not a dear friend. It probably just means that I have some idea of where you are and what’s been happenning with your life. There are many friends I’ve actually researched and for which I’ve discovered public history. So those are not on this list, but they are still important to me…

It’s also likely people on this list are tied emotionaly to other significant events in my life. For instance, many here are tied to Adventure Camp at Jumonville. So, when I think of adventure camp, I think of them.
— Pastor John Logan
— Jennifer Marie (Carr) Rabaey
— Matthew (Matt) Hildebrand
— Elizabeth (Beth) Hildebrand
— The Cornerstone Crusaders
— Adventure Campers – and Jumonville staff from 86-90 era
— Michelle (Camp) Croyle FOUND!!!

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This page is VERY much under progress and will be edited and updated over time. Hopefully the search engines will revisit it or I’ll have to come up with another scheme that gets it refreshed… Every now and then I’ll repost this to get the search engines to dig back into that page and resurface it in the search results…

You sass that hoopy Douglas Adams? Now there’s a frood who knew where his towel was. You are invited to join your fellow hitchhikers in mourning the loss of the late great one. Join in on towel day to show your appreciation for the humor and insight that Douglas Adams brought to all our lives.

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What do I do?

Carry your towel with you throughout the day to show your participation and mourning.

When do I do it?

May 25th.

Where do I do it?

Everywhere.

Why a towel?

To quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

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Please join me in celebrating Towel Day. And feel free to share pictures either here or at http://www.towelday.kojv.net/

Update: Well, what do you know? Will Wheaton celebrates Towel Day too! More on Will later…(And yes, somehow since I’m on a first name basis with Wesley (Crusher of Star Trek: The Next Generation), as any true geek is, I’m on aparently on a first name basis with Will…)

Oh, and of course there’s also Democratic Rep. William Jefferson (I have to work not to say William Jefferson Clinton), eight-term congressman for New Orleans and neighboring districts.

This morning the affidavit for his arrest warrant was disclosed. It stated how they found $90,000 of a $100,000 bribe disclosed by a former Jefferson aide. The money was wrapped in zip lock bags and placed in plastic containers in the freezer.

Gee, he’s been there for 8 terms. Do you think the governmental system in New Orleans could have already been broken before Katrina?

Do you think perhaps that newly re-elected Mayor Ray Neagan (SP?) might have know that there could have been something not right in the state of Louisiana?

That site just bugs me… If it were truely out for making a change, don’t you think that Jefferson would have at least a mention on their campaigns page? Isn’t ousting an corrupt 8 term representative an important thing? Hasn’t he been shown to have failed New Orleans? He isn’t one of ColorOfChange’s “Black folk and allies”, shouldn’t he be one of the things that change? Or maybe he is one of the”Allies”.

Monday nights are my nights off. I can go wherever I want. Unfortunately that often doesn’t amount to much. But this week it actually meant getting outside and having some fun.

I finally got to go ride the West Branch State Park Mountain Bike Trail. It was a blast even if I am not quite up to that skill level yet.

All winter long it is maintained by CAMBA – the Cleveland Area Mountain Bike Association.

They put in bridges and other challenges along the trail. I even met two of the officers that night, Brian Lennon, president, and Mike Ryba, Treasurer. Unfortunately I can’t remember the names of the other people they were riding with, not even the one from Puerto Rico, but they were all really nice people. All winter long their members maintain the trails.

I tried out the camera on my new phone and got some quarter decent shots (they definately weren’t half decent) while it was still light. However, the exposure time must be really high when it gets dim. You can see that as the envening goes on, the shots get blurier. When taking pictures in twilight with the phone, I will have to stabalize it. Holding it by hand just isn’t sufficient (plus chances are mid-workout I wasn’t all that stable anyway…)

The CAMBA web site has a great map of the park, but it’s a 2.5mb 1 page PDF. I mananged to convert it to a 45K JPEG that hasn’t lost much detail. This is a little handier to keep on PDAs and what not…

I even got myself a couple of badges… This all was mostly from one very tall root near the beginning of the trail. It was an up hill section that I’d started in the wrong gear and the root required about a foot worth of travel to get up and over it, though the root itself was probably just under 6 inches high. Anyway, I decided to push it and try it anyway. The result was I was slumped against the tree with only my front wheel making it over. The scrape was from sliding backwards down the bark as I got my footing…(Kneeing actually I guess)

I’m proud of the skinned knee… I probably haven’t skinned my knee falling from a bicycle in 20 years… Boy that makes me sound old…. Anyway, it meant I was pushing limits again, which is what living is all about and when you stop doing that, that’s in large part why people grow old… I had a few more bumps and bruises. For instance my right arm is scraped simply because there wasn’t enough room for me to get through between the trees that were there… All part of the fun and I’m smilin’ as I type…

I had a wonderfully fun weekend. I was pit crew for my friend Tom Moyer. He came up to race and the Nelson Ledges racetrack. It’s a nice track but VERY bumpy. We had to do some structural reenforcement of his tachometer and fairing, but it went really well. He reported that turn 7 was interesting because of the washboard right before it. He said he hit that washboard at speed and thought he’d be dead when the corner came. But then it smoothed out.

My jobs were to help get the bike fueled with premix – measure the tire temp before and after the races to make sure the tires were heating up enough to be sticky during those corners and not so much that he’s flinging chunks of rubber all over the track.

Other than the cold weather combined with the sunburn, it was a very good day. BTW, Tom’s the yellow Yamaha RZ350 #262. It’s a two stroke and a blast to ride… (Yes, I speak from experience 🙂 )

Here’s a couple videos:
Movie 1
Movie 2

Learn more:

Images:

And Tom certainly had some admirers at our house afterwards. He’s the apple of Caleb’s eye at the moment…

“CycleMan!”