The Rough Draft

Things So Far

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— Steve Abbott @ 9:48 pm

Hmmm. There is a lot of hurry up and wait right now. With this many projects in play, your sort of like the Colonel waiting for his bombers to come back from a mission. Some will hit the target and others will never be heard from again.

So far a good portion of the feedback has been good. Everybody seems to like my dialogue from both scripts and everybody seems to like the structure, again, with both scripts. However, there’s a big economic meltdown going on right now so the fallout vis a vis funding for films will need to be seen. The good news is were in a funding bracket that can get made, without incurring too much risk for the investor.

Stuff is happening in the wings that I can’t really talk about yet but it is happening Sooner, it would appear, rather than later.

About bloody time.

And as a PS: Bill C-10 was taken off the table. No, the Canadian people did not want their film industry effectively censored by the Govt. Hopefully this election on the 14th will take the Conservatives down a peg or two.

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Motorcycle Diary 09/13/08

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— Steve Abbott @ 6:28 pm

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Reno, Nevada

The Reno Air Races finally and yes, they were awesome. The Unlimited Class were worth the price of admission alone. The Thunderbirds were, well, The Thunderbirds. Unfortunately everything is served up with a heavy dose of jingoism, the irony unfortunately rhetorical.

In one very poor moment during the opening ceremony, a flag was suspended below a parachutist while, “The Star Spangled Banner,” was sung. So down comes the flag swinging below its bearer and I’m expecting there to be a number of catchers waiting to receive the flag before it touches the ground. Which as you know, is a real flag etiquette no, no. No such luck, it hit the ground in a crumpled head a good five seconds before the guy carrying it. A low grumble went through the crowd. Diverted only by an F-16 fly past.

The Thunderbird Demo was a fifty minute recruitment ad for the Air Force, complete with a thirty minute dance number. Lots of verbage, very few facts. Same old same old. I actually feel sorry for the general public because it sort of comes across as chest thumping in the darkness. You’re not protecting your country from enemies of democracy or terrorism, you’re subjugating the rights and freedoms of others with an ill defined plan and an even less defined final outcome. You don’t fight terrorism with aircraft, you fight it with obscure grey men well skilled in deadly arts. Men with a cold heart and a steady aim. It’s also not a good idea to announce your, “War on Terror.” So here the US sits, their economy in shambles, two wars on the go with no end in sight and a planet which is rebelling in ways which will be hard to predict, harder to stop and even harder to fix.

But hey, they’ve got the coolest toys in the world. Too bad they’re bankrupting themselves to deploy it. Beware anybody who says, “This is God’s will.” They will do anything regardless of the outcome. I miss political terrorists. They at least had a manifesto. You knew which way those assholes would jump. The ones who use God as their yardstick… Well they’ll go to a whole other place to win their moment.

Quite a rant, I know. Rampant nationalism gets my goat every time. Love your country sure just take a moment to think, “Is this the right course.” Don’t trust your politician to get it right after all, these are the same fools who suspended Habeous Corpus and that never works out well for any society.

There are more pics available at
by sabot03196

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Motorcycle Diary 09/12/08

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— Steve Abbott @ 5:56 pm

reno

Reno, Nevada

Made it out to Virginia City today. Kitchy and tacky yes but with a killer road leading out to it. A real snake of a road rising up almost 2000ft and about a hundred twists and turns all on grade.

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We picked up a couple of B Passes in VC proper and took a ride on the V&T Railroad on what’s left of the original old line. Their steam engine was down so we headed up the track behind an old Navy Mule engine.

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We then did a mine tour (which started in a bar) led by an old coot so liquored up that a good portion of his speal was unintelligible. He was monotone to the point of parody.

“Here we have the first pneumatic drill, also known as the Widowmaker.”

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We also checked out the newspaper where Mark Twain used to work. A deep basement with stone walls that must have made it a deafening space to be in when the presses were running. It sure explained to me why he was so obsessed with automatic type setting in his later years.

Tomorrow, the Air Races.

Finally.

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Motorcycle Diary 09/11/08

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— Steve Abbott @ 5:20 pm

Reno, Nevada

So we went over to Carson City today. After an initial rough start, we made it over to the Nevada Railroad Museum.

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They’ve done an amazing job of restoring a number of locomotives. An interesting thing is the number of old railcars saved by their use in Hollywood Westerns. After that we wandered around Carson City proper. I saw an SAS belt buckle in a display case in the very back of an antique store. Surreal.

So after a filling lunch, we decided to ride around Lake Tahoe. Round trip I’m guessing around a hundred miles or so but it was some very good riding. Spectacular scenery. At one point after following the lake pretty much at water level, we went through a sharp series of rising switchbacks. The last of which brought us out on top of a ridge, they’d simply laid the road down on. Two lanes wide and no guard rail. I was laughing my ass off, with a shear drop on either side of the road. A new experience to say the least.

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We ended up coming back through Donner Pass

at which point I realized that I’ve been in Ontario long enough to lose a good amount of my mountain riding skills. I’m not as comfortable as I used to be. Still, it didn’t slow us down too much on the way back.

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Motorcycle Diary 09/10/08

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— Steve Abbott @ 1:51 pm

So this morning I found a good bike shop fairly nearby. RMS Motorsports dropped a new chain on the bike and changed the oil for me. I ordered a new tire as well, it’ll be here Friday. All I could get was a V rated Pilot Road. I guess the Metzlers will have to wait till next year.

So after the bike stuff was done, we took off to Stead Field to buy tickets for the big show on Saturday and Sunday. Everybody was very friendly and helpful. They even let us park by the WILL CALL booth as we went off and got our tickets. Then we headed back to the hotel as I took a short detour to get some laundry done. When that was done, we decided to walk down to Reno’s downtown and rubberneck.

We encountered a guy who had lost his girlfriend’s cat on the way downtown. I wonder how he made out?

reno Downtown is a strange mix of huge Casino’s, Pawnshops (or as we called them, the stores of broken dreams), Souvenir shops (tacky, tacky, tacky) and very run down motels. All surrounded by the desperate, the dispossessed, and the semi mad. After touring the pawnshops (always interesting), we decided to hit Circus Circus a surreal experience at best. Three dollars apiece lighter and a serious buffet meal heavier (there must always be one every trip), we waddled slowly back to the hotel. Tomorrow, Carson City.

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Motorcycle Diary 09/08/08

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— Steve Abbott @ 9:40 pm

jerome

Coming up on one, still waiting for Kelly to show up, which should be in a little while. Went out to Mammoth Cave this morning only to find it closed. Can a cave go bankrupt?

Got to say, the news down here is frustrating, very little about the world, which didn’t use to be the case with CNN and Fox? Well it’s really just a 24/7 Op/Ed piece for the right. Fair and balanced if you’re a Nazi. Phones also seem to be an issue here. The hotel either doesn’t have them or they don’t work for obscure technical reasons.

There’s an old (mostly scrap) Beech 33 out at the Jerome airport. I believe the Navy designation was PV2.

Coming through Arco yesterday, I was surprised to see the conning tower of a Sturgeon Class submarine mounted beside the road (#666 SSN Hawkbill).

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I went over to take a look and was confronted by a fairly elaborate Submariner’s Memorial. Not exactly what you expect to find in the middle of Idaho.

I also rode through (past) Craters of the Moon National Park.

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About 60+ miles of ancient lava bed by our standard but just a geological blink as far as the planet is concerned.

Of course once you hit the Prairie, your old friend the wind shows up again. I think Idaho feels more like Wyoming population wise, though I’m hearing more Spanish spoken here. A good number of the vehicles are real junkers and they drive with an abandon that’s a little scary to be around. I’m glad we’re out of here and on to Nevada tomorrow.

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Motorcycle Diary 09/05/08

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— Steve Abbott @ 9:52 am

yell

West Yellowstone, Montana

I’m rolling yesterday and today into one entry. Yesterday was a cold and overcast one. I worked my way over to the Old Faithful Geyser Area which took most of the day. I guess the trick to seeing the Geysers go off is a sense of timing with the natural world which I do not seem to possess. Then again, you’re dealing with chaos in its purest form. I missed most of the big shows but that’s okay, plenty to see otherwise. Most of my pictures here try to reflect Ansel Adams. He loved Yellowstone and I can see why. We’ll have to see how they’ll turn out in the end.

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A couple of young Bison Bulls mucking about.

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One of the Geyser Fields. You can see by the steam how cold the day is…

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A Bacterial Mat
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Old Faithful

Today I hit the Norris Geyser Field. I hit Gibbon’s Falls on the way up and got some nice shots there. Had a minor worry with the bike as I went to leave the falls. The DL-650 has a ton of sensors designed to protect the bike from the operator. Sometimes the safety interlock / operator interface can get a bit confusing. I tried to roll away in gear and of course the side stand cut off kicked in. It was early, it was cold and my brain wasn’t at it’s deductive best. I’ve had problems with the clutch switch in the past so that was the first place I looked. Needless to say, I had the whole damn bike apart before I realized I’d had it in gear and had hit the kill switch and forgotten about it (idiot). Kill switch set to on and she fired right up (moron). Reloaded the bike and got out of there. Glad the old German guy and his boyfriend on the back of his BMW weren’t there to see that.

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Norris has a great skyline - uninterrupted by the hand of man or at the very least, you can shoot around it.

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Oh yeah, I had half my lunch stolen there. I’d put a couple of pieces of pizza from last night’s dinner in two ziplock bags in my tank bag. So I walk around the geyser basin which takes a good couple of hours. I had seen a lot of Ravens the last few days and hadn’t paid them much mind. I had no idea they continuously case the parking lot for points of easy access. When I got back to my bike, the tank bag was half open on one side. As a rider, you’re always worried about thieves, mostly the bipedal kind. I should have been worried about the avian ones. The Raven had gotten by the double zipper no problem and grabbed one of my pizza slices. I know it was a Raven because the thief was two spaces over working through the bed of a truck and the bags in the back. These birds must do okay cause they almost seem too fat to fly.

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Motorcycle Diary 09/03/08

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— Steve Abbott @ 6:26 pm

yell

West Yellowstone, Montana

319 Miles, 10 hours total travel, 7 hours in the Saddle

I started my day at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis.

One of the coolest dinosaur exhibits I’ve ever seen. A super friendly staff and I get the feeling a good number of them work the actual dig the museum sits nearby. I asked one of the women behind the counter if they ever got any, “Nuts,” there.

“Plenty,” She said. “They pay their money and check us out and then leave their tracts at the counter. You’d like to think it must be very hard for people like that to hold onto their belief systems about the origin of the species when confronted with the cold hard facts of evolution staring them in the face. Alas this is not usually the case. You fan them with gentle reason and they scream and yell and nail you to a tree (and then set the tree on fire).

So I worked my way over to the Grand Teton Range because it looked like a good idea on the map. I could hit the bottom of the Tetons and ride my way up through the national park to Yellowstone. The Tetons have always been one range I’ve wanted to see and to tackle. And yeah, they’re spectacular. So I headed South on US20 down through the Wind River Canyon which turned into another great ride.

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I hit Riverton and headed up US26, through the Wind River Range proper. I have to say though it was a pretty cold and overcast day which does tend to get a bit weary. I was sort of between storm cells the whole way. I could hear thunder and occasionally see lightning in the distance but none of it ever seemed to get to me other than an intermittent drizzle that kept my rain gear on.

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It turned out they were ripping up and repaving US26 through Grand Teton National Park. So a bunch of the ride ended up on dirt, which the bike handled pretty well even with the Pilot Roads. I even got to stand up on the pegs a couple of times.

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Of course the real saga began when I got to Yelowstone’s South Entrance. It was getting on in the day and the temperature was dropping. It even tried to hail at one point! Once in the park, you’re dwarfed by its scale. It turns out the accommodations in the park are really expensive and seeing as I was on a budget, and I had a number of days set aside to explore the park, that wasn’t in the cards for me. It was all to rich for my bank account, so I was off to West Yellowstone in Montana. About 60 miles from where I was. Pretty demoralizing but there it was. At least I was able to get gas in the park. Did I mention it was bloody cold?

So I ride and I ride, and I ride some more. One of the neat things about the park is the wildlife is everywhere. It’s also one of the more dangerous aspects as your risk of a creature encounter goes up exponentially and some of he creatures here, outweigh me and my bike by a good 1300lbs. Which means that whenever there’s wildlife on the roadside, everybody either stops or pulls over. They mostly just stop.

So I’m five miles from a warm hotel, my ass is sore, I can’t feel my balls and this guy in front of me is stopped in his SUV in front of me. He moves to the left and there’s a Bison Bull fifteen feet in front of me. SUV guy stops again, blocking my escape route, should Mr. Bison decide to have a go at me. Mr. Bison is 2000lbs if he’s an ounce and he’s got really sharp looking horns and I’m thinking about how much I’m Bison shaped on my bike in my black rain gear… and how bad Bison eyesight is. Anyway the Twat in front of me decides he’s seen enough of the big shaggy and maybe he’s causing me some amount of distress and takes off down the road again. I creep past Mr. Bison and as the sting of a horn in the ass never occurs, I breathe a big sigh of relief.

Twenty minutes later I was checked in to the Westward Ho Motel. $66 a night and no phone. Once the sun goes down, they roll up the streets of this place and put it away. If the clouds would go away, I could get in some good star gazing but no such luck.

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Motorcycle Diary 09/02/08

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— Steve Abbott @ 6:47 pm

Thermopolis WY,
326 Miles covered today. As for time, well I really wasn’t keeping track.

It was a bitter 40 degrees F this morning and it never really warmed up until I got to the other side of the Big Horn Mountains Glad I brought my cold weather gear. Though I could kick myself for forgetting my neck sock.

I made it to the Crazy Horse Memorial for about 8:30am. Everything they got wrong with Mt. Rushmore, they got right with this one and I’m thinking that a big part of that is the fact that it’s a completely not for profit undertaking. Because it’s privately funded, there’s none of the interfering bullshit that turned Rushmore from it’s intended subjects into what we see today. All that being said, there’s a palpable feeling of reverence for the ground and the subject. Not to mention the sheer size of the project is astounding. The four heads of Rushmore would fit into the single head of Crazy Horse.

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I left the Crazy Horse Memorial after about three hours and headed over to Jewel Cave but left there after about twenty minutes because it felt pretty wankerish. Plus I didn’t feel like waiting an hour and a half for the next tour. I beat feet out of there and headed over to US16 from Buffalo to Worland through Ten Sleep Canyon. A road made for motorcycles if there ever was one. Long sweeping corners with good camber, so you could take them at speed (70mph) and really roll it on in the turn. Though it was a bit cold, so I didn’t trust my tire as much as it’s starting to develop a really nasty flat spot from all this riding. I hope it lasts till Reno. Still, it was a great ride and over way too fast.

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So now I’m in Thermopolis, staying beside the world’s biggest mineral pool. A mineral pool that gave this place it’s start as one of the earliest spas in North America. But that’s not what makes this particular hotel special, oh no. You see the owner and his wife appear to be avid hunters and have traveled the world subtracting a breathtaking variety of animals from their ever shrinking populations. Now I don’t mind hunting to eat but I’ve never been big on trophy hunting for sport and I really hate taxidermy. I find it both creepy and weird.
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So I had dinner in, “The Safari Room,” surrounded by the stuffed remains of at least one hundred slaughtered animals including at least two tiger skins. The meal was overpriced, overcooked and underwhelming.

Coming back to my room I happened to look at the Wallpaper in my bathroom wall. In keeping with the Safari theme of this crazy place, it has an Elephant, a Giraffe and a Tiger on it (a Tiger? In Africa?) all cavorting in palm trees. You know, Palm Trees cause they’re jungle like. Forget that Elephants and Giraffes live on the Savannah (Grassland). Mind you, if that’s an Indian Elephant, then it all fits with the Giraffe being the odd man out.

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Motorcycle Diary 09/01/08

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— Steve Abbott @ 9:08 pm

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Hill City, South Dakota about 8 Miles from Mt. Rushmore
10 Hours of Travel 6:48 of them in the Saddle
382 Miles covered

A brutal day of riding. High winds all of the way. Early in the day they came from the left and later in the day they switched it up and came at me from the right. The wind was so strong that if I hadn’t had my chin strap done up so tight, they would have sucked my helmet right off of my head. My face is wind burned, my eyes are stinging and I had my face shield down for the whole day!

The weather was shit too, with a light to steady rain constantly falling. The temperature dropped pretty steadily too once I hit the Black Hills. The Badlands were pretty cool to ride through even though it cost me $10 for the privilege.

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Natural beauty aside, everywhere I pass through seems to look depressed and worn out.

Rushmore is a good photo op but pretty jingoistic in the worst sort of, “Isn’t it cool to be American.” sort of way. I’m not saying it isn’t cool to be an American, I’m just saying broadcasting it like some sort of desperate punter isn’t cool at all.

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The Rough Draft

10/10/2008

Things So Far

9/13/2008

Motorcycle Diary 09/13/08

9/12/2008

Motorcycle Diary 09/12/08

9/11/2008

Motorcycle Diary 09/11/08

9/10/2008

Motorcycle Diary 09/10/08

9/8/2008

Motorcycle Diary 09/08/08

9/5/2008

Motorcycle Diary 09/05/08

9/3/2008

Motorcycle Diary 09/03/08

9/2/2008

Motorcycle Diary 09/02/08

9/1/2008

Motorcycle Diary 09/01/08