of motorcycles, handball, and odes

I should have picture of my motorcycle to post in a day or so—My local motorcycle club had a tech day yesterday, Saturday, and one of the guys took a couple pictures of me and my bike. For my part of the technical activity I changed the oil on my "new" (1984, had it less than a year) bike for the first time. It went a lot smoother than changing the oil on my 1981. Even though it's the same make and model, they tweaked things a little here and there so the process went more easily. I could actually reach the nuts and bolts, the parts moved far enough out of the way, and the filter slid right in. Here's a picture of the event:

The bike on the left belongs to the guy on the ground. The bike between, toward the front, belongs to the president of our club, Davis. The one on the right belongs to the guy in the dark shirt. I think. Mine is inside the garage waiting for me to finish taking pictures so I can go run some errands, which eventually I did. After I enjoyed a bowl of Mrs. Davis' excellent clam chowder.

Speaking of Davis, he and I play handball twice a week at the YMCA in Elkton. It's the only place around with courts that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. (It costs only an arm.) I think today is the first day we both rode our bikes there, and we've been playing all year. Two things about handball: 1. Your hand is smaller than a racket, so it's fairly easy to miss the ball. 2. It hurts when you connect. You get used to the pain, though. It stays frustrating to miss the ball. But it's fun, especially when you get a good volley going, and you get about the same amount of exercise whether you hit the ball or not. For $7.00 you can join us. Give me a call.

Odes. Several formal kinds exist (mainly Pindaric, Sapphic, Horatic, lyric, and Anacreonic), but poets nowadays tend to call anything they want an ode. Originally an ode was supposed to be commemorative of something, like a victory or a coronation. The main thing to know about odes is that they are typically divided into three parts. The first part, the strophe, describes something about the coronation, or the first bird of spring, or whatever the poem is about. The second part, the antistrophe, is a contrasting statement—perhaps a disagreement, or another point of view. The third, the epode, either unifies the two, or picks one as correct. The vote, as it were. Here's a three-sentence, non-metrical ode: The king is walking nobly up to his throne. Or maybe he's just taking over because his dad is dead. Well, both actually, and that's okay. Ahem, not much of an ode, but you get the organization. Odes originated back in classical Greece, so they were not originally rhymed. Nowadays rhymes are often in couplets (aa, bb, cc, etc) and they are usually in iambic tetrameter, but you can get away with doing about anything you want. If it has three parts and fits on a page or so, it's an ode.