Time to catch up, finally....

This week has been extremely busy. The 2nd to last post, I was bitching and moaning about how it's really slow around here, then bam! the bottom falls out. The last post I had, the bottom did indeed fall out and we were up to 5 actual calls and 2 pending. That night it got worse. We ended up with 2 more, plus the 2 that were pending. That brought the total to 9, with an upcoming holiday weekend. Yea. Not so much. The cemeteries are very strict about when you can and can't have services on Memorial Day weekend. Therefore, we had 5 services yesterday and 2 today. Then, 2 families get to wait until next week to have theirs. At any rate, I am thankful we got no more calls last night, since I'm the only director on this weekend. After Monday, though, I'll be off the rest of next week. I plan to use my time wisely and put many, many miles on my bike. Have a good holiday, everyone!

The bottom dropped.

Ah, no sooner than I gripe about being slow, I pay for it. I got 3 new calls last night, 2 more that are pending and 2 that I already had. That's not too bad. 7. Good times.

Work is a drag.

Not for the obvious reasons; I'd rather be riding my motorcycle, I'd rather be mowing, I'd rather be fishing, etc. But it's a drag because this business is so cyclical. There is a definite "slow" time down here at the dead zone. And, there is a definite "slammed" time. Generally, the slow time is in the spring (now), then picks up a little in early summer, then drops off again by July or August. That's if we don't have a heat wave.

It's not that I wish people harm in order for us to be busy. It's just that if it could ever be steady throughout the year, it would be nice. Having a few slow weeks is not a reward for getting 8 calls in a night. It just makes you restless, waiting for the bottom to drop out. So, until the bottom drops out, I wait. I am working this weekend, and it's a holiday. That in itself generally makes for a busy time.

While I'm talking about the holiday, I'll also say this. Be careful. Dangerous things happen on holidays. Trust me, I've seen it. Too many idiots on the lake, road, etc and usually too much alcohol. I never like those to be the reasons I'm busy. Never. It's too damn hard.

I am Reaper, hear me ROAR!

The pipes are excellent! We rode to Goldsby (south of Norman) yesterday. It's only about an hour ride from here and it took us 2 1/2 hours. We got stuck on some country road, kind of got lost, but it didn't matter. We had our good friend, Joy, with us. She rode on the back with Dee the whole way there and back. I don't know how her butt took it. On the way, we saw a cow that had just given birth (we could tell by the large gooey thing she was eating, gross) and saw a hawk flying over us with a large snake in his mouth. We ate catfish in Goldsby, then decided to get back on the highway to head to Norman. That trip took us 5 minutes. Then we went by the OU Softball game and stopped to have dinner on the way home. We were gone about 12 hours.

The pipes are nice. I'm sure I irritated the other drivers, because I can't help but hit the throttle when I'm sitting at a red light. Too bad. I'm sure I'll get over it, or not. We are getting back on the bikes in about an hour. The farm looks like crap. I need to mow. Guess I'll do it after work tomorrow...

Jackasses.

I left my bike at the shop yesterday with high hopes of picking it up tomorrow with new pipes. I think that will be a miracle. I called earlier and he says they are 10 days behind in the shop. WTF? Another guy told me yesterday that I could pick it up this afternoon and I said I wouldn't because of the fact that it was going to be stormy. So, who is right? The service guy or the guy at the counter yesterday? Who the hell knows, but I'm sure going to be pissed if I'm sitting at home all weekend because of their little oversight. Dammit. I guess I should have waited until winter.

Bike is at garage!

Good news, I left my bike at the shop this morning and should be able to pick it up tomorrow afternoon. I'm certainly anxious to hear how it sounds. And, the weather looks good for the weekend! Maybe I'll have some tales to tell come Monday!

Cemetery in the Ocean?

Since I worked this weekend, I did no riding. Therefore, I will bore you with more very, very interesting stories from the funeral business. :) Tomorrow, however, I drop my bike off to get her new pipes installed. Watch out, OKC, I'm riding this weekend!

Artificial reef near Miami is cemetery, diving attraction
Associated Press

MIAMI - About 45 feet beneath the ocean's surface lies a cemetery with gates, pathways, plaques and even benches. The Neptune Memorial Reef, which opened last fall, is seen by its creators as a perfect final resting spot for those who loved the sea. They hope that one day the reef will cover 16 acres and have room for 125,000 remains. "This is simply as good as it gets," said Gary Levine, a diver who conceived the reef and is now a shareholder in the company that owns it.

The Neptune Memorial Reef is located in open waters 3 1/4 miles off the coast of Key Biscayne, which means any certified diver can visit. The artificial reef's first phase allows for about 850 remains. The ashes are mixed with cement designed for underwater use and fitted into a mold, which a diver then places and secures into the reef. A copper and bronze plaque is installed with the person's name, date of birth and death. There is also a line for a message. Jim Hutslar, who manages the construction and deployment of the placements, said he wears sunglasses when he mixing the remains with cement to hide his emotions, especially when the family of the deceased is present.

"I intentionally try to think about the person," Hutslar said. "I am pretty sentimental anyway."
In one instance, a mother wanted to mix the cement and ashes of her son. She also left the imprints of her fingerprints and put a note into it. "It's sad to see someone die, but this is almost a celebration of life," said artist Kim Brandell, who created the reef's design. "We call it 'life after life.'"

In March, the remains of 93-year-old diver Bert Kilbride — who called himself "The Last Pirate of the Caribbean" — were placed atop a column of the reef's main gate, because of his contributions to the sea. Kilbride was named the oldest living scuba diver in this year's Guinness Book of World Records. "I think he would feel very honored," his son Gary Kilbride said. "This is somebody who has been connected to the sea his whole life."

Originally, the reef was named after the so-called lost city of Atlantis, but it changed after its owners Afterlife Services Inc. partnered with BG Capital in 2007 to form the company, said Jerry Norman, president of the Neptune Society, which is marketing the reef. The company specializes in cremation services across 11 states. Brandell said he was given no parameters in the reef's designs, which grew as they waited three years for permits. "It just kept getting larger. When we went to get permitting, it took so long. During that time I kept developing the ideas," Brandell said.

The structures are 90 percent cement. Some of the sculptural elements are in bronze and steel. It is the same pH balance as the sea, he said. "I designed it to be a divers' location. I am hoping and planning it be to the most dived location on the planet," Brandell said. "I didn't want it to look like Roman or Greek architecture. I wanted it to be contemporary or modern in design."
As a diver swims down the pathways of the reef there will be themed areas, like dancing or sports. "If it's music I might have concrete or metal musical instruments," Brandell said. "Nothing is going to be in words to describe these features — it will be sculptural elements."
Location and temperature made it an easy-to-make reef, Norman said.

"It's very conducive to marine habitat growth. You've got marine organisms, light and water," he said. "It's an easy dive for beginners and well as (the) experienced." The cost of a placement starts at $995 and can go to $6,495, for those who want to be placed inside the base of a lion statue for all eternity. Hutslar said the reef is designed to last forever and engineered to withstand the harshest hurricane that has hit Florida in the last 100 years.

Stephen Blair, chief of the restoration and enhancement section of Miami-Dade County's department of Environmental Resources Management, which has oversight of the reef, said it will become a tourist attraction. "I think the combination of the structure, the dive-site aspect as well as the how it's being used, makes it a unique site," Blair said. Keith Mille, an environmental specialist with Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, said another method of burying ashes inside reef balls creates a habitat for fish and corals to attach. But he was impressed with the engineering concepts for this reef and the environment that it creates for divers.

Dive companies on the reef's Web site said people have been calling with interest in diving it.
"I am sure once it's completed ... it's going to be spectacular. It's definitely a beautiful site," said Alex Nunez, an instructor at South Beach Divers.

http://www.nmreef.com/

Dissolving Bodies with Lye ~ A New Idea in Mortuary Science

I'm not a huge fan of cremation and that's a fairly normal process. I don't think I could ever get on board with this idea.

AP NEWS -
CONCORD, N.H.—Since they first walked the planet, humans have either buried or burned their dead. Now a new option is generating interest—dissolving bodies in lye and flushing the brownish, syrupy residue down the drain.

The process is called alkaline hydrolysis and was developed in this country 16 years ago to get rid of animal carcasses. It uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers.
No funeral homes in the U.S.—or anywhere else in the world, as far as the equipment manufacturer knows—offer it. In fact, only two U.S. medical centers use it on human bodies, and only on cadavers donated for research.

But because of its environmental advantages, some in the funeral industry say it could someday rival burial and cremation.
"It's not often that a truly game-changing technology comes along in the funeral service," the newsletter Funeral Service Insider said in September. But "we might have gotten a hold of one."
Getting the public to accept a process that strikes some as ghastly may be the biggest challenge. Psychopaths and dictators have used acid or lye to torture or erase their victims, and legislation to make alkaline hydrolysis available to the public in New York state was branded "Hannibal Lecter's bill" in a play on the sponsor's name—Sen. Kemp Hannon—and the movie character's sadism.

Alkaline hydrolysis is legal in Minnesota and in New Hampshire, where a Manchester funeral director is pushing to offer it. But he has yet to line up the necessary regulatory approvals, and some New Hampshire lawmakers want to repeal the little-noticed 2006 state law legalizing it.
"We believe this process, which enables a portion of human remains to be flushed down a drain, to be undignified," said Patrick McGee, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester.
State Rep. Barbara French said she, for one, might choose alkaline hydrolysis.
"I'm getting near that age and thought about cremation, but this is equally as good and less of an environmental problem," the 81-year-old lawmaker said. "It doesn't bother me any more than being burned up. Cremation, you're burned up. I've thought about it, but I'm dead."
In addition to the liquid, the process leaves a dry bone residue similar in appearance and volume to cremated remains. It could be returned to the family in an urn or buried in a cemetery.
The coffee-colored liquid has the consistency of motor oil and a strong ammonia smell. But proponents say it is sterile and can, in most cases, be safely poured down the drain, provided the operation has the necessary permits.

Alkaline hydrolysis doesn't take up as much space in cemeteries as burial. And the process could ease concerns about crematorium emissions, including carbon dioxide as well as mercury from silver dental fillings.
The University of Florida in Gainesville and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., have used alkaline hydrolysis to dispose of cadavers since the mid-1990s and 2005, respectively.
Brad Crain, president of BioSafe Engineering, the Brownsburg, Ind., company that makes the steel cylinders, estimated 40 to 50 other facilities use them on human medical waste, animal carcasses or both. The users include veterinary schools, universities, pharmaceutical companies and the U.S. government.

Liquid waste from cadavers goes down the drain at the both the Mayo Clinic and the University of Florida, as does the liquid residue from human tissue and animal carcasses at alkaline hydrolysis sites elsewhere.

Manchester funeral director Chad Corbin wants to operate a $300,000 cylinder in New Hampshire. He said that an alkaline hydrolysis operation is more expensive to set up than a crematorium but that he would charge customers about as much as he would for cremation.
George Carlson, an industrial-waste manager for the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, said things the public might find more troubling routinely flow into sewage treatment plants in the U.S. all the time. That includes blood and spillover embalming fluid from funeral homes.
The department issued a permit to Corbin last year, but he let the deal on the property fall through because of delays in getting the other necessary permits. Now he must go through the process all over again, and there is gathering resistance. But he said he is undeterred.
"I don't not know how long it will take," he said recently, "but eventually it will happen."

Pipes are ordered!

I ordered a set of Vance & Hines Cruzers. He did suggest I get the fuel management system (whatever that is), so it's on order, too. They sound pretty good from the youtube videos I've watched. Kind of a low rumble. I think I would like that better than the ones that sound like they are screaming. Maybe by next weekend, I'll be in business!

Downed Biker Association Poker Run

Greetings! It was a fabulous day to ride on Sunday. Dee and I did our first poker run. I was seriously nervous, but I made it. I was very happy with the group of girls we rode with. Every last one of them kept asking if I was ok and if I'd rather take the back roads. I appreciated them understanding that I was nervous. That's me on the right and Dee on the left (ON THE HIGHWAY!), courtesy of Shelly Moe taking the pic over her head (she was riding, not driving). Anyway, we left home at 9 and got home around 7:30. I was so tired and was shocked when I looked at the mileage and we had only gone about 120 miles (and about 60 of those miles were from the commute into town and back). There were 5 stops in all, and the cards I drew at each location were crap. But, I did win 50 bucks on a raffle. We also bought some patches. I bought one that says "Fear the Reaper" another one is an Army one and the last one says "These are my church clothes". Makes sense since I usually only get to ride on Sunday (and I'm PRAYING a lot while I'm riding). All in all it was a great day and they raised quite a bit for the Sherriff's Deputy that got injured while riding. Oh, and major sight-seeing. The state fair has nothing on bike runs. Trust me.