Common Ground

Yeah! I like the idea.

It seems like a couple months ago that talk radio had discussion about the initial proposal to erect a bronze statue of "The Fonz" somewhere in downtown Milwaukee as a tourist attraction. I believe that some hoity toity (I'd rather use the adjective artsy ******) art elite threatened to move out of Milwaukee should that happen.  Gee, we're going to miss you guys!

Assuming that it becomes reality in Milwaukee, should Waukesha capitalize on it and erect a statue of The Fonz's visit to his cousins who fictionally lived in Waukesha? Yes! Only, it should be a bit more than a statue or two of the cousins. It should be one of the Fonz himself and it'd be better if it were him on his motorcycle chatting with his cousins.

I bet it would become a huge attraction for not only the many motorcyclists riding in the area to have their picture taken with it but also become a destination for riders who otherwise would never visit Waukesha. While the Fonz rode a Triumph, perhaps one of the cousins could be astride a Harley Sportster.  I tell you, the HOG clubs and motorcyclists in general would flock to it.

My first choice for location would be the roundabout in Frame Park.

What can you say but, "Heyeee"?

I see that the Malamute club's sled pull was canceled due to the cold.  Good thing that Kanook, a Siberian Husky AKA sled dog, and I didn't change our dog park plans for the day!

We first visited Minooka Park's Dog Exercise Area and there was only one car there with mine and another pulling in. In that neighboring car, out popped a Siberian Husky and her owner.  We entered the park and found the sole occupant running around the fence-line to greet us. It was another Husky! The three of them had a grand time with two of them doing the nose surfing through the snow that Huskies like to do.  Next Kanook was rolling in the snow. Of course, none of the Huskies showed any notion of being cold.

After a while some other hardy people showed up with their Retrievers, Collies and some other Husky mixes. The fact of the matter is the dogs don't mind the cold.  It's the owners. I suspect that was the case with the sled pull event.  Malamutes look identical to Huskies to most people, but are larger and stronger. The Huskies have a bit more stamina though, so are the best known sled dog breed.

After visiting with the other dog owners, Kanook and I hiked around the perimeter of the area a couple times and it was time to leave for lunch.  As usual, Kanook was not ready to leave and needed a little (lot) of coaxing to leash up by the gates.  By this time more people had come to the park and were still entering as we drove down the road to pass the check-in booth where the attendant must have been thinking that there are warmer ways to make some spending money on a subzero Saturday!  I like to take a census when I'm in the park and as expected, the dog area was the sole host of users of the park.

After warming up with some lunch and coffee, it was time to head to Brookfield's Mitchell Park. This is the first off-leash dog area in the county. The park was devoid of people and sledders but for the few cars at the dog exercise area. After the big thaw recently, the south side of the dog park had turned to a lake.  Today it was frozen and with the dusting of snow melding to the ice, it was good hiking over it.  We detoured off of the trail and walked through the woods that are normally nothing much more than a junk yard of cars and trucks from some 1960's enterprise and other machinery and old tires.  The snow covered it all today and it was actually a pretty respite from suburban and urban scenery. Mitchell Park is a bit more open than Minooka so the west winds were biting cold to my face once out of the woods. However, the pleasant hike through the woods made it worth it, even in the subzero temperature.

One fact about sled dogs that I learned from watching the Iditarod race shows is that the dogs can overheat when the temperature is above zero. When resting in the cold and snow, they curl up with their tails covering their faces and show no affects of the cold.

I hope the Malamute Club reschedules the pull soon. I also hope that they hold it at Minooka Park where dogs are welcomed and are helping to pay the bills.

Though I do not do much ice fishing lately due to my dog activities, there was a time that Pat and I would do a lot of ice fishing on Pewaukee Lake. The cold weather today reminds of a tactic that we once used to keep warm while jigging for perch.

We had a not so old Mercury station wagon at the time, but in the 70's cars would begin rusting out before they were rolled off the truck and into the showrooms.  This one had the floor pan in the back rust out and eventually had to be taken out before it became a road hazard.  A piece of plywood filled it's place to keep the kids from dropping onto the road. When you're young and not making much money, you do what you have to.

One very cold day on the ice, I decided to use this to my advantage. I augured two holes side by side. Backing the car over them we were able to sit on the third seat and jig away is comfort! This is stuff that memories are made of.

When one wants to find their way back while moving through a maze of tunnels or in the forest, a trail of pieces of bread were said to be dropped at intervals in order to show the way back.

While flopped back on the sofa and flipping through the hundreds of TV channels, you may have seen some government sponsored commercials suggesting some easy modifications to our lives that can burn up a few more calories. Small steps add up. By the way, as a certified channel flipper myself, did you ever notice that all the commercials seem to come on at the same time on all the channels? Yesterday I elected to let Pat drive home from Christina's and I'd walk back home to try to help burn off the bacon and eggs. I now realize that I could have accomplished more had I had her turn the engine off and I pushed the car home. More exercise, some savings on gasoline and of course I would have helped make the planet hospitable to our existence for a nanosecond longer in eternity.

If you don't walk much, try it if only to see more detail of the neighborhood than while driving. Walking along Summit, I became aware of candy wrappers every few houses. Soon the container was seen on the sidewalk.  A few more houses later a different color of wrapper was seen every few houses. Someone had been munching down these candies and tossing their garbage along, caring not about the disrespect to property owners, other pedestrians and the planet in general. I was reminded of the commercials that small steps add up. Do they teach this stuff in schools anymore?

I always like to give the benefit of the doubt to people. Perhaps they were unfamiliar with Waukesha and were only leaving the trail to help find their way back to where ever. Too bad they weren't munching on a sandwich instead.

Today's front page was about an electric car call the ZENN which is all electric and plugs into an regular outlet to recharge. All well and good until I saw it had a top speed of 25 MPH. Uh, can we say golf cart here?

But it has ZERO EMISSIONS! False.  It is possibly dirtier than your Ford Explorer hoping to make it between gas stations before going empty. Don't get me wrong. Electricity is the future. The question unanswered here is how much pollution does the electric company turbines emit to create that electricity? We are an "Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind" people. As long as our toilets flush, we don't care too much about where it goes. As long as our electric car is pollution free here, we don't care about how much pollution is made to create that electricity there.  Oh, it has lead acid batteries. Did you know these spent batteries often are shipped to the Pacific Rim where recycling the lead fouls the land and poisons the underpaid workers there? To be fair, perhaps the same thing happens to the nickle batteries used in current hybrids. That I don't know.

Putting all of that aside, let's encounter one on the streets. It goes up to 25 MPH. What good it is for just going around the subdivision? Oh, you are going to try to get downtown with one? Lets see, Moreland is 30 MPH and 35 MPH in places. You can't drive five over the posted speed limit without someone blowing your doors off to the right because you aren't going fast enough to suit them. Then again, maybe a bunch of these things slowing down traffic might make things safer.

The article did say that some owners of the Zenn do have wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity. Bravo! That is true green, but also the exception.  So until we know how many kilowatts these things require to move about and how much the power company's pollution output is to generate that versus that of a somewhat comparable subcompact, lets not get too excited over humming along at 25 MPH.

I was going to write about an internet purchase experience and a local experience but a news item begs for comment.

As I opened WaukeshaNow, I saw a headline that the Sentry next to Walmart on the Les Paul Highway is closing. Such is competition. I'm in the minority, it would seem.  I don't like the huge supermarkets. It seems everything I want is about a mile away from the entrances or I have to sort out through expensive gourmet stuff that I'd never consider buying, but somebody must.

I miss my Sentry on Moreland and Delafield and the one that was downtown next to the bank. I can't help but blame those who were in power at the time for allowing that to happen. Would a tax exemption have helped the bottom line? How about the state helping out by eliminating some or all of the payroll taxes for a struggling food store? We are talking about a basic necessity of food and not spas or car dealers.

In the business section of Sunday's paper, an article about Buell reminded us about the government's tariff on Japanese motorcycles to allow Harley Davidson gain some footing to keep it alive. This was done by a Republican, Nixon, if I recall correctly.
 
Does all of this sound out of the question in the near future? Somehow it is something that I think presidential candidates Obama and Edwards just might consider. My votes during the last 20 years have been solidly Republican. However, I'm listening to the messages that have the Democrats so enthralled with these two people. It seems that people are indeed looking for change that is real rather than change that is only rhetoric. I think this also explains Mike Huckabee's rise in favor. Thus far I am still supporting Rudy Guliani, but until the pencil has made its mark on the ballot, who knows?

Could it be that true conservatism is gasping for air?