In Bellingham

Last Friday, right after chemo, I headed up to Bellingham to take pictures of Kelsey for acting jobs. Unfortunatly, I haven't really been able to take any pictures because I had a whole roll of fast slidefilm in my camera, and I needed to use some slow B&W. I managed to finish that roll last night, but the weather's been crappy today, so I don't know if it's going to happen. Hopefully, it will be nicer tomorrow when she isn't working.

What I have been doing is hanging out with friends. On Saturday I had dinner with Risa and her boyfriend, who is looking for a job in Tokyo starting around July. We sat in Boundary Bay having a beer and talking about teaching and my quest to not teach. The anwser? Beer. (It may just be the answer to everything) Later than night, I met up with Louise and Michael, who's house I'm staying at, and went to the Chicken House for more beer, a big fire, and music. On Sunday, I went to Eyone and Jessie's where we had a BBQ. On Monday, I spend the day scanning negatives on campus, and wondering if someone wanted to come play. Just on time, Jenn called, and we agreed to meet up at her place, where I made some pizza for her and Dave from scratch. Scratch scratch. She was scared of that, but I assured her that it was easy (it really is). We had happy full stomachs. Today, I weent out for lunch with Susan and Rick from my old job at Western. I think there's something going tonight, but I don't know what yet. I'll be taking the train home Thursday morning.

Bellingham is great.

Here's Frankenbike

Here's my bike. The orange and white on the head light look out of place, but it's actually everything else that's out of place. The tan tank and side covers are from the other CL, and are on this bike until we strip everything and repaint.

Thanks to some helpful posts on USENET, I tore apart the carbs again last night to squirt some cleaner into some of the smaller holes, and realized that there was something not lined up right. This is what was causing it not to run right. So this morning I fired it up, and dad fiddled with the mixture a bit, and took off on a ride. He got it up to 80 going up the 410 hill, so it's running pretty good.

So today I've been riding around, getting the hang of it on some back roads. I'm not going to take it anywhere too far or fast until I get some new tires on it.

Bike

"Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like"
-Queen

I've been fiddling with the bike for a while, and it's running pretty good at slow engine speeds, but I've been having trouble getting it to rev as high as it should. I've posted in USENET and gotten some good tips though, and I think my problems can be mostly fixed with some carb adjustments. It kind of looks like franken-bike right now because it has parts off of two different CLs, and it hasn't been cleaned up at all. Probably I'll trip it all down again once the weather gets nicer so that he frame can be blasted and powdercoated and the tank and headlight housing repainted. I'll post a picture of franken-bike once I find where the digital camera has wandered off to.

On friday, dad and I went to the DOL and got the bike licensed, then stopped at the DMV and picked up a motorcycle endorsement hand book. By 3:30 I had read the whole book, and was ready to take the test, so I went down the the DMV again and passed the written test to get a 90 day permit. I think that mom and I are going to take the rider corse together to get out endorsements. It costs $100, and includes one full day of classroom instruction, and a day and a half of riding. After passing the class, you receive a certificate that will get you an endorsement without having to take the riding test at the DMV.

On Thursday I went to meet Kay Jones, my highschool Japanese teacher, at Starbucks. We had a nice chat about everything, and she invited me to join the Japanese classes that she goes to once a week. Her class is taught by a UPS Japanese professor, and the students include some other area Japanese teachers. Kay and I are actually at about the same level of Japanese now, so her class should be a good fit. I will start at the end of March after she gets back from her trip to Osaka.

Car Crash Bonsai

I haven't done anything with bonsai since mom killed mine a few years ago, but this is inspiring. Who thinks of these things?


In the chemo realm, I've got only two more (again). Everything is going fine with that, and I still expect to be done with everything and free to leave the country again in July.


Two weeks ago I started tearing about the carbs on one of the CL350s. I cleaned them all out in Simple Green (so much less toxic than carb cleaner, and seemed to work just a well), and put them back on the bike, got a battery, cleaned out and put new gas in the tank, and fired it up. There was a mysterious electrical problem for a while, but I've got that solved, so now all I have to do is get it and me licenced. I think I'll sign up for a motorcycle class pretty soon.

They Were Fucking With Me

(Please remove necessary 'u's if you are not old or mature enough to view such letters.)

Yesterday afternoon, right after my last post, I got a call from my doctor. He and the radiation oncologist had been discussing the rest of my treatment. My doctor had intended to follow my chemo with 4 weeks of daily radiation, which is pretty standard practice for my type of Hodgkin's. My radiation oncologist however didn't like the location of my tumors, and didn't think that radiation was right for me. So my radiation oncologist gathered up some studies showing that more chemo is just as effective as radiation following chemo, and the two of them had an arm wrestling match. I don't know if the radiation oncologist is younger, but he's in a bit better shape, so he won the arm wrestling match. So now I get 8 more weeks of chemo with no radiation. Although I was very happy to have finished chemo two weeks and never wanted to have to do it again, I guess it's for the best. If I'd had radiation, there was a good chance that end up with damage to my heart and lungs. Heart problems probably wouldn't show up for a few decades, but this is something that I'd rather not deal with. With chemo only, the likelihood of heart and lung problems is much lower. So tomorrow at 9:45, I get to go back and puke on some nurses.

Living in a Black and White World

For the last couple months, I’ll I’ve shot are B&W pics. Back in November, I bought about 6 rolls of Illford FP4 and HP5, and I still have one more left. The reason is that I have a B&W darkroom set up, but I’m bored with it. It’s time for color. Spring is coming soon, and plants are begining to spring from the cold dirt, and color is beginning to return. Last week, I picked up a few rolls of Ektachrome and Kodachrome slide film, and have them in my LC-A and new Canon. So now I need to get some color equipment. I have a color head for my enlarger, which is the biggest part of printing color. Now I need a print developing tube and some chemicals. I think I can make a hot water bath out of a plastic tub and aquarium heater, and the print developing tub I might be able to make too. I’ll have to go to a photography shop and see how they’re made. Paper and chemicals can be picked up on eBay.

Speaking of chemicals, they’re not being injected into my veins anymore. Last week I had a PET scan and CT scan, which my doctors will use to determine what comes next. Probably, I will have about 4 weeks of radiation starting soon. My doctor will be contacting me sometime today to tell me what’s up with that.

Good thing I have insurance

We actually opened a statement from the insurance company today. The envelopes have just been piling up since I started treatment, but last week we started wondering how much all this is costing. The price? The day which we have the statement for cost just over $5000 for injections and "misc expenses". I'm not sure if I saw the doctor that day, but I doubt it. So for the entire treatment, we're guessing the cost will be over $100,000. Good thing I don't have to pay for it, because I wouldn't be able to.

Snortin Norton

Mom got a dog. Here are some pics of it.

I only have 2 more chemo sessions to go before I'm done. The last two are Jan. 19th and Feb. 2nd. After that, I will have four weeks of radiation, and I will have to go to Seattle every day for that. We still haven't worked out how I'll get there but I might just get a month bus pass or something.

For New Years I went up to Bellingham to hang out with the friends that are still there. On the 31st, a bunch of us went to see La Push a local funk band at the Nightlight, the club that they were building in the basement of the building that I lived in during my last year in B'ham. What a cool town. I love going up there.

My posting's been kind of sparse lately, so I'll try to post more and keep you all updated on my exciting life.

What the heck is a BlackBerry?

And why do people actually use it?

Ai and I have been discussing this. What exactly is a BlackBerry. As far as I can tell, it's just a wireless handheld device that can send and receive emails. That's it? All Japanese cell phones can do that, and the last cell phone I had in the US could also. So what's the big fuss? Why do I need a blackberry if my cellphone can do email? Granted, my last cell phone didn't come with it's own email address like the ones in Japan did but that only meant that I could use any account I wanted to. Why don't he cell phone companies add that feature for five bucks so that people don't have to spend the extra forty to fifty bucks a month(?!) and take the business away from the company that makes BlackBerry devices? I guess I just don't get it.

Test

This sunday I have my Japanese Proficiency Test Level 2. I've been studying for it for a while. I'd originally planned on taking it in Japan, but since it's only offered once a year, on the same date all around the world, I signed up to take it in Seattle. The level 2 test is the second highest, and tests reading, listening, and about 1000 kanji.

New toys

Ever since dad went to Randy's race back in September, dad's been wanting to get a motorcycle that he can fix up and race. His goal would be to not be lapped by the person in first place. So for the last few weeks, dad's spent his Wednesday, through Friday nights on craigslist.org looking for pre-70's Honda's. So every Thursday morning that I don't have chemo, dad's been waking me up to be a carpool dummy on his way up to look at bikes that he's called on. This Thursday, he woke me up at 9 am and said "we gotta leave quick". The add that he called on just said that it was a 63 Honda Dream. He really didn't know what it was, but it was old, so he called, found out that he was the first one to contact the seller, and that the bike had a title. When we got there, we saw it under an awning at the apartment complex that the guy lived at, and almost turned around without getting out. The guy had torn a bunch of it apart, so it looked like a bunch of it was missing. But I said "You might as well take a look at it", so we got out just as the owner set down the box of parts. He was just taking his fourth call of the morning as we approached the bike. Once we got a closer look at it, we realized that it was pretty neat looking. After seeing that the tank was in almost perfect condition besides the paint, and that most of the body parts were there, dad handed him the cash and we went in to get the key and title. Once inside, the seller could find neither the key, nor the title. The key had been a victim of "organization" by his girlfriend, and what he though was the title turned out to be the title to a 38 Harley that was mistakenly given to him by the original owner... He said he would track down the key and the title. His girlfriend should know where the first is, and he knows where the original owner lives and works. Even if that doesn't work, I'm sure we'll be able to track down the registered owner through the state listening dept.

Once we got it home, we started to track down what it actually is. It turns out that it's not a Honda Dream. This seems to be a common misidentification. I found the engine serial number, and from that found out that it's a Honda CA95 Benly Touring, a street bike that did only okay in the US, but quite well in Europe and Asia. It has a distinctive frame stamped out of sheet metal, forming a solid frame from the head to the tip of the fender. It's no racing bike, but it's such a cool little thing that dad and I are going to restore it. We've already found quite a number of parts for it. Obviously, at least once we got it home and started looking at it, we'll have to find the correct seat. The one that's there is in pretty good shape for an original seat, but we don't know what bike it's actually for. We should be able to sell it and buy the correct seat. It's also missing the tool kit and battery covers, and the head light. One thing that we have that's probably very rare to have is the frame mounted tire pump, in working condition. I think this is going to be a fun project, and I hope that it's not going to be too hard to tack down the title.

First is a picture of the bike sitting in the garage. Most of the body parts are in the plastic bin on the left. The body had been painted white, by brush, and the guy we bought it from started to sand it down and primer it.

The next picture shows what it looks like in original condition. Ours was originally white, but they came in black, red, or blue (And in rare cases, pink).

Here is another example of the Benly in white, the original color of ours.
In other news, Ai just got back from a trip to Hong Kong with her mom. You can see her Hong Kong pics at her page.