Hall_Monitor's blog

Horses seem to hold a special place in the American psyche. I’ve received many phone calls since reporting on the herd of horses abandoned in Del Puerto Canyon almost two weeks ago.
They range from people who feel the county animal shelter isn’t doing enough to save the horses to folks who say they should all be put down to prevent further suffering.
Everyone I’ve talked to opposes the slaughter of horses for meat, which takes place in Canada and Mexico, but not in the United States.
There seems to be two issues involved: inhumane slaughterhouse conditions, and the bigger question of whether horses should be butchered for human or animal consumption.
Much of the objection to horse slaughter I’ve seen centers on inhumane conditions, accompanied by gruesome pictures of mistreated horses.

We are our own worst enemies.
The fellow accused of riding a motorcycle on Briggsmore at 80 miles per hour with the front wheel in the air made me cringe. He is innocent until proven guilty, of course, but the news story doesn’t do much to improve the image of motorcyclists among the non-believers.
The folks who pull such stunts on the street are in the minority, as are the bikers who are truly thugs.
But they contribute to a negative image of motorcycling that taints us all.
I have nothing against stunt riding, and in fact enjoyed a stunt riding show at the International Motorcycle Show last month in San Mateo. But it was in a fenced off area of a parking lot – not the middle of Briggsmore Avenue.
Once when I was riding down in the Los Angeles area, I saw a guy riding a wheelie around an on ramp into the traffic on I-10. I didn’t know whether to admire his skill or curse the idiocy of doing something like that in such heavy traffic.

The year-end statistics for the Stanislaus County Animal Services shelter are in, and the numbers remain grim.
The shelter took in 22,404 animals in 2008, and euthanized 13,660 during the year. Another 462 died at the shelter, and another 1,719 were dead on arrival. The shelter adopted out 2,662 animals in 2008.
That's a lot of unwanted animals, and a lot potential pets killed. The Animal Services Department has made some progress in reducing the euthanasia rate at the shelter, but the number of stray and discarded animals continues to grow.
A new shelter is on the drawing board, but that in itself won't solve the problem. It promises to make adoptions more pleasant and cut down the number of animals lost to disease.
Almost everyone agrees that the real solution is cutting down the number of unwanted animals through spay and neuter programs.

The notice of hearings on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's Hetch-Hetchy water system improvements says the Modesto hearing will be held at "Thomas Dewey High School."
Wasn't he the guy who beat Harry Truman in the 1948 presidential election? (It must have been true, I read it in the Chicago Tribune....)
For the record, the hearing is at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 13 in the Thomas Downey High School cafeteria.
And as for the famous Tribune "Dewey defeats Truman" headline, it taught us all a lesson about assuming the results when election returns are too slow for deadlines.

- Tim Moran

The recent Cycle World International Motorcycle Show in San Mateo included an intriguing racing relic with local significance.
Amid a display of flat track racers, including an example of the dominant XR750 Harley-Davidsons, was a homely, cobbled together yellow motorcycle that looked nothing like the other flat trackers.
It looked like something a mad scientist or someone with a very perverse sense of humor would conceive: it had a flat tracker chassis and running gear, but stuffed in the engine bay was a four-cylinder, two-stroke Yamaha road racing engine.
This was the bike that Stanislaus County native and racing legend Kenny Roberts Sr. used to win the Indianapolis mile in 1975 – a win that was highly improbable and demonstrated Roberts’ prodigious talent on anything with two wheels.

Discretion is the better part of valor, as they say. Sunday was a fine day, and to my delight, my wife suggested a motorcycle journey up to Snowshoe Brewing Co. in Arnold for a late lunch.
No beers for me, of course – drinking and riding a motorcycle is several degrees stupider than drinking and driving a car. But I digress.
Highway 4 is a great motorcycle trip, and didn’t disappoint Sunday. Everything was fine until several miles above Murphys. Snow showed up on the ground, and on the pavement in shaded areas. I continued, figuring we were only a few miles from Arnold. But then the pavement turned dark in those shaded areas. Either it was wet, or it was black ice.
I slowed to 40 miles per hour, and became paranoid about leaning the bike through corners. Will there be traction? Do I dare touch my brakes if I need to? I thought about the story in The Bee last week of the car that rolled over near Ceres after encountering black ice.

So I went to the motorcycle show Sunday, and bought myself a beautifully restored 1973 Norton Commando, and a 2009 50th anniversary Triumph Bonneville, along with a restored 1959 original, in matching colors.
Well, actually, I bought raffle tickets to win those bikes, but that’s the appeal of buying a ticket, right? You probably aren’t going to win, but it’s fun to think about until the drawing.
I’d post a picture or two, but I was on the road to San Mateo before I realized I had forgotten my camera. I took a couple of fuzzy shots with my cell phone, but I don’t think they would reproduce well.
The show was fun, lots of machinery to ogle, ATVs, watercraft and trucks as well as motorcycles and scooters. One surprise was the lack of presence by Harley-Davidson – I gather they had the demo fleet there, but it was raining, and there was very little on display inside.
They did have the XR1200, though, and that’s the one most people were curious about.