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North Down River Road
Aug. 17th, 2005 07:45 pm
Thanks to a few conveniently-timed refinery fires, gasoline prices (and profits) have jumped to record levels. However, I'm glad to say I can still fill my vehicle's tank for the same cost as this time last year. The bad news is that this year it's the tank on my motorcycle instead of the pickup truck.
Not that riding to complaint investigations is all bad. Riding is fun in any semi-reasonable-or-better weather, and riding the side roads in this area on a day in the middle of the week even more so. Traffic is at its lowest. And the weather today was just about perfect.
I did discover that getting hit in the face by a bug STINGS. I've been riding for years now and i've never been hit in the face by a major bug; today I got hit by three. Left temple, right cheek, and the exact end of my nose. I've got a windshield too. I really don't know how that happened.
But what I was really thinking about as I rode North Down River Road today (in a desperate attempt to drive Al Hirt's rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee, aka The Green Hornet Theme, out of my head) was signs along the road. Two that I saw along the way today, one that I'll confess I actually saw along another area road a week or two ago.
Tank Crossing. There's one to catch your attention. I doubt there are all that many places in the world where they put up a sign that says Tank Crossing, and they mean it.
Then there was Stagg Taxidermy. I had to ask myself-- was Stagg the owner's name, or the owner's specialty?
But the one that really had me thinking was on a Jesus place. "Make a mistake? God has a big eraser." Indeed he does, and for a motorcyclist it is probably in the form of a logging truck with a drowsy driver.
There really isn't that much else to think about along North Down River Road. It's a good road, and a pretty one, which is why I take it instead of the state route three or four miles south. But it goes through a lot of state land, just square miles of jack pines, the most worthless trees in the known universe as far as I'm concerned. Pretty enough if you don't look at them too closely, small gnarled soft-wooded diseased-looking lichen-infested pitch-oozing shabby-needled gag-me-with-turpentine-scented ugly things if you do.
A sign in the midst of the jack pines said something about a Youth Conservation Project maybe twenty years ago (by the age of the sign) as part of a "jack pine forest rescue." Jack pine forest rescue would mainly consist of throwing a lit cigar butt out the window as you drove past, because jack pine is a fire tree. it burns like rocket fuel. It takes a fire, and a hot one, to even get jack pine cones to pop open and release the seeds. Then you see jack pine's one good point; it will grow like the weed it is in dead sand that's had all organic matter burned out of it.
Which might beg the question why anyone would bother to rescue a jack pine forest. The answer is the Kirtland's Warbler, a pretty little bird and a big troublemaker.
The Kirtland's Warbler nests only in northern lower Michigan, and only in jack pine forests. Not only that, only in recently-burned jack pine forests, such that the jack pines are still small. It's endangered because of its very limited habitat, all the more endangered because of course humans tend to want to put OUT the forest fires the Kirtland's depends upon.
It's also endangered because with farming cowbirds came into the area. They lay their eggs in the warblers' nests, becaue that's what cowbirds do. The warblers are completely unable to handle this form of parisitism, since in their natural habitat the cowbird was never present.
The Kirtland's is only a summer resident. It winters in the Bahamas. So, in short, it's dumb enough to insist on living in a disaster area any sane creature would leave; it's being anihillated by foreign competition; and every winter it flies away to warmer places. Naturally there's a move to make it Michigan's state bird, because it's the perfect avian symbol of Michigan's human inhabitants.
The crazy things I think about when I'm motoring along on North Down River Road. But ah, isn't that a great name? Some names speak poetry, and that name speaks poetry to me. Maybe not to you, but perhaps it doesn't take much to please me. Motorcycling down that road does please me-- jack pines or no jack pines.
Not that riding to complaint investigations is all bad. Riding is fun in any semi-reasonable-or-better weather, and riding the side roads in this area on a day in the middle of the week even more so. Traffic is at its lowest. And the weather today was just about perfect.
I did discover that getting hit in the face by a bug STINGS. I've been riding for years now and i've never been hit in the face by a major bug; today I got hit by three. Left temple, right cheek, and the exact end of my nose. I've got a windshield too. I really don't know how that happened.
But what I was really thinking about as I rode North Down River Road today (in a desperate attempt to drive Al Hirt's rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee, aka The Green Hornet Theme, out of my head) was signs along the road. Two that I saw along the way today, one that I'll confess I actually saw along another area road a week or two ago.
Tank Crossing. There's one to catch your attention. I doubt there are all that many places in the world where they put up a sign that says Tank Crossing, and they mean it.
Then there was Stagg Taxidermy. I had to ask myself-- was Stagg the owner's name, or the owner's specialty?
But the one that really had me thinking was on a Jesus place. "Make a mistake? God has a big eraser." Indeed he does, and for a motorcyclist it is probably in the form of a logging truck with a drowsy driver.
There really isn't that much else to think about along North Down River Road. It's a good road, and a pretty one, which is why I take it instead of the state route three or four miles south. But it goes through a lot of state land, just square miles of jack pines, the most worthless trees in the known universe as far as I'm concerned. Pretty enough if you don't look at them too closely, small gnarled soft-wooded diseased-looking lichen-infested pitch-oozing shabby-needled gag-me-with-turpentine-scented ugly things if you do.
A sign in the midst of the jack pines said something about a Youth Conservation Project maybe twenty years ago (by the age of the sign) as part of a "jack pine forest rescue." Jack pine forest rescue would mainly consist of throwing a lit cigar butt out the window as you drove past, because jack pine is a fire tree. it burns like rocket fuel. It takes a fire, and a hot one, to even get jack pine cones to pop open and release the seeds. Then you see jack pine's one good point; it will grow like the weed it is in dead sand that's had all organic matter burned out of it.
Which might beg the question why anyone would bother to rescue a jack pine forest. The answer is the Kirtland's Warbler, a pretty little bird and a big troublemaker.
The Kirtland's Warbler nests only in northern lower Michigan, and only in jack pine forests. Not only that, only in recently-burned jack pine forests, such that the jack pines are still small. It's endangered because of its very limited habitat, all the more endangered because of course humans tend to want to put OUT the forest fires the Kirtland's depends upon.
It's also endangered because with farming cowbirds came into the area. They lay their eggs in the warblers' nests, becaue that's what cowbirds do. The warblers are completely unable to handle this form of parisitism, since in their natural habitat the cowbird was never present.
The Kirtland's is only a summer resident. It winters in the Bahamas. So, in short, it's dumb enough to insist on living in a disaster area any sane creature would leave; it's being anihillated by foreign competition; and every winter it flies away to warmer places. Naturally there's a move to make it Michigan's state bird, because it's the perfect avian symbol of Michigan's human inhabitants.
The crazy things I think about when I'm motoring along on North Down River Road. But ah, isn't that a great name? Some names speak poetry, and that name speaks poetry to me. Maybe not to you, but perhaps it doesn't take much to please me. Motorcycling down that road does please me-- jack pines or no jack pines.
