Addendum...

I forgot to mention that when I was at McCarthy's mother's house, after we had cleared the table from dinner, it dawned on me that this would be a perfect time to Coin challenge both McCarthy and Michael. I was fairly certain the odds were well in my favor.

 I reached confidently into my pocket to retrieve my coin, got McCarthy's attention, and dropped it squarely on the table in front of him. My  confidence was high...

... but then his eyes lit up and I knew the jig was up. He eagerly reached into his own pocket, all while calling out to Michael, who also reached squarely into his own pocket.

And there I stood, with two reciprocal coins staring me in the face.

Crap.  Now I owe each of them a beer.

Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Wreaths, Racing and (Warm) Receptions

This past Saturday was the annual wreath collection/pickup at Bourne National Cemetery out on the Cape.  Wreathes Across America had lain 12,500 wreathes on service members’ graves for the holidays and now it was time to pick them up.

 

 

It was my first time helping with this and I was curious how the operation worked, how long it took, etc.  I met my friend LB there and she filled me in on the process; basically clear the wreathes to the side of the road, where the maintenance crews would collect and remove them.  She said it normally took a few hours, depending on how many folks showed up to help.  Well, the weather was damp and chilly but despite this, there was a great turnout of folks.  In addition, the start time had been announced as 10am but apparently a number of folks had shown up early and gotten to work.  When we started in, there were only a couple of fields left to clear and that was done in under an hour.

LB had a number of her friends there and they were hanging out socializing, so I said goodbyes and hit the roads.  I wanted to get some more miles on, and headed for RI.  My destination was Ocean State Harley to pick up some poker chips for King and Lynner.  (This is the part where I’m retarded.  I’d already asked Cindy to swing by here and grap the chips for me (she works in Warwick), but that didn’t dawn on my until I’d already paid for them and was back out in the parking lot.  Oh well.)

At this point I had no plan or destination so I turned to the phone.  I’d known my afternoon was open so I’d texted McCarthy earlier to see what he was up to and we’d been playing a little phone tag, but now it was time to catch up.  He’d replied that he was at his mother’s house.  Where was that?  Braintree, he said, and asked if I was stopping by.  I said I still had some riding to do and would reply again at my next stop.  When I’d stopped again and checked the phone, he’d texted the address, and said I needed to go there, that his mother had an envelope for me.

Uhm…what?

I’ve never met his mother, so naturally I needed more info.  Rather than going back and forth on text, it was easier to call; Hey Chum, so what’s this about an envelope?  He didn’t know, but when he’d mentioned to his mother that he’d been texting with me, she’d handed him an envelope to give me the next time we saw each other.  Okaaaay…what’s in this envelope?  He didn’t know but I should go there and meet his mother.  He said they were going to eat and I said that sounded good, that I was hungry (I assumed he meant on the way home to his house or something, and I’d meet him).  No, as it turns out, this was his family Christmas gathering.  Schedules are tight/busy, so this was their get-together for gift exchange and a sit-down dinner.  Hell, I’m not going to barge in on his family thing, I’d catch up with him later.  Nope, he insisted and said his mother wanted to meet me in person – apparently she reads this blog!  How about that.  Ok, I guess I will see you in a little over an hour.

Traffic through Providence was pretty bad, but I made up some time once I broke free of the city limits.  There was some kind of BMW that looked like a Ferrari (I just looked it up; BMW i8 – a very sweet looking car!) that wanted to race me.  Really?  C’mon buddy…on an open track, you’ll smoke me, but in traffic?  You’ve got no chance.  No, I didn’t cut folks off at all, I’m very careful about that.  But it’s simple physics; my bike has a much shorter wheelbase so I’m able to fit into spots that he can’t.  Plus, my weight to torque ratio is much more favorable for the short sprints.  I don’t know how fast I was going because my speedo pins at 120 but suffice to say the guy in the BMW wanted nothing to do with that and soon faded into the distance behind me.

But I digress…

I arrived safely and was welcomed in by Linda, the wonderful woman who was hosting this party.  She was very friendly, I teased her about having had to put up with raising Michael, and she and he both assured me that her other son Paul was the wild one.  And before long, he came back (he’d been out picking up the meat for the grille).  He was a riot.  I think the best way to describe him would be; he’s an excitable man.  But in a good way.  The whole family was great, and made me feel right at home.

McCarthy, Michael, and Paul were doing food prep and I don’t like standing around doing nothing (especially when getting a free meal), but fortunately they had a couple of small tasks for me to do which made me feel better about the arrangement.  Linda was the penultimate hostess, offering drinks and snacks the whole while.  I had to be careful I didn’t fill up on things before the actual dinner.  I kept hearing about how good the meat was and that I’d better bring my A game to the table.

Oh yeah; the envelope (now this is funny).  Apparently Linda reads my blog and has developed an impression that I’m a funny guy, and that I’d appreciate a good joke.  Inside the envelope were gag prescriptions for old age, pain, sleep, etc. (they were M&M’s and Good & Plenty’s).

She also gave me a small bag of multicolored “pills”…

…with an instruction sheet explaining which one was for what ailment…

Here’s a closeup of one of the labels – patient name is Forest Gump, Doc’s name is Charlie Brown.  Funny stuff!

Next up was dinner and man, what a feed!  I think there was almost a whole coop’s worth of chicken, and at least half of a cow.  And veggies, and rolls (with honey!), and mashed taters, and seasoned grilled fries, and I’m sure a lot of other things I’m forgetting.  Oh, and when I say “chicken”, I mean “pterodactyl” because the piece they gave me was enormous.

Suffice to say that I could barely move when it was time to get up from the table.  But the sun was starting to slide downward in the sky and I needed to get home to dog sit (John had dropped Piper off at my house earlier in the day).

I bade my farewells and headed for home.  I took a much slower pace on the roads this time, due to a combination of contentment from a great meal, as well as lethargy from my stomach trying to grasp what I’d just done to it.

It was an unexpected excursion, but what a great time.  I’d met Paul before at McCarthy’s 50^th, but it was the first time meeting Linda, and what a fun (and funny) person she is.  The whole family is awesome!

But now that I know she’s reading this thing I call a blog…does this mean I need to clean my language up?  Hmmm…

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Dream Bike!

The bike build project has revived itself in my head so I was looking on line lately for shovelhead bikes that I could redo.  I stumbled upon a rare find at a dealership...

It's a '67 Shovelhead stuffed into '51 Panhead rigid frame.  How incredible is this thing!

Yeah, I realize that buying a bike defeats the purpose of building one, but this thing is so close to what I have in my mind, that I couldn't just pass it by.

Stock (kicker) Shovelhead engine, stock rigid frame, FLH front end...this is what I want to ride!  I would swap the spoked wheels for solid rims, as well as chop that rear fender even more than it already is.  A lot of what's chrome now would be powdercoated either black or red.  New guages, lifted the gas tank onto the top of the framd, changed the bars, etc.  So it would have a lot of my own input to it, but what an opportunity!  To start out with something that is already so close to what my finished bike would be - I had to act on it!

I called them...

...it was sold two days ago.

Back to dreaming and searching...

Olean New Year’s…we hardly knew (remember) ye!

Sorry this is late getting posted, I’m short on time and long on stuff to get done.  This will be a high-level summary and include some pics of the madness along the way.  Any of you that are reading this may well notice that I missed things, and for this I apologize but in my defense; I drank too much to remember it all.

Zig and Kate headed out a day early to get a jump on things, Kevin and I hit the road early on Friday morning; 4am.  But we were in vaca mode and the excitement was high!  We made it out without any issues and were greeted almost immediately with beer-in-hand.

Oh, and Kate had to show off the shirt she’d given Mark….

I mugged a sad face for her but couldn’t hold it very long.  Here was my real reaction…

The plan was to meet up at the Post later and hang with our fellow nuts, which we did with abandon.  It was awesome to see everyone and the libations flowed well into the evening.

Group pic!!

We made it back to Mark and Mary’s and played some Cards Against Humanity until sometime in the late hours.

The next day I found that I’d made about 4 different plans with folks at the Post, and they were all set to start at noontime.  Whoops.  Well, the biggest plan was for folks to come by and do some shooting (at noon), so we hurried off to visit Scrobie at this shop and stock up on some ammo.  I picked up a nice varmint target, too.

Back at the house, folks were arriving and we set things in motion; targets were set up and weapons arrayed for their turns.  Oh yeah; Bryan and Mark had taken it upon themselves to remove the choke tube from my shotgun in an effort to improve accuracy (I prefer slugs to shot).  Coo, let’s see how it does.

The temps were very cold and the wind was pretty strong, but we toughed it out for a while.  The shotgun was definitely more accurate without the choke on it, which was very cool – even if I did miss the cool factor that the tube added to the look.  (Yeah, I know; looks don’t mean much when shit hits the fan.)

We didn’t get our fill, but we were pretty cold, so we cleaned up and headed back inside.  Now that shooting was done, the beers could start flowing again.

After a bit, we headed in to town to say hello to Tommy and grab some grub.  Mmmmmm, best steak sandwich in the land!

From there it was back to the Post (I think…this is where things get kinda fuzzy.   Did we close out the evening at the Post again?  (shrug)  Maybe, it all kinda runs together.  Oh wait – yes, we did go back to the Post because we wanted to say hello to Kathi.  I’m not sure what we did after that, but I think it was the Post for a long while, then back to the house for more cards…

Sunday, we were up and chatting in the kitchen.  Jerry and Barb came over to say hello and Jerry had something for Mark.  He’d found it when cleaning out (his mother’s?) car.  Those of you in the know will get the joke….

 

Mike remembered that he’d bought us some high-test beers so he handed them out.  I was still in vaca mode so it seemed like a good idea to have one…despite it being 10am or so.

 

Arrogant Bastard something or other.  Anyway, it started off a day I won’t soon remember…er…forget…

We caught up with King at (I think it was) his son (nephew?) in law’s place and what a layout.  Two car garage, three TV’s, fridges, and all kinds of food.  We felt badly that we hadn’t contributed anything and offered to order some pizzas but they assured us no, there wasn’t a need.  It was a great setting and everyone was super friendly – a great time!

Kevin, Zig and I managed to kill and entire 30-pack, just during the Pats game…

…and from there, we didn’t let the pace up.  We thanked our gracious hosts and met up with Mark and Mary for a Mexican dinner, where the margaritas were pretty tasty.

 

I was leaning toward ordering the Monster, but thankfully stuck with the more reasonable (manageable) medium size (and yes, I had more than one).

From there it was back to the homestead for more Cards against Humanity, and the Myszka’s joined us.

I don’t know what is going on in this pic…for example; why am I holding a tiny little trophy?  And what is Kate doing, photo-bombing us?

We played long, LONG into the evening.  I think Erin and Steve left around 2 or so.  Everyone else had gone to bed, leaving Mary and me playing beer checkers, and doing shots of my goddamned Kahlua (you’d think I’d learn not to bring it out with me by now!).

And yes, we got into some mischief; here’s what I REALLY think of the shirt Kate gave Mark…

Kevin is a trucker by trade so he’s always up super early, so at any minute I expected to see him coming down the stairs and want to get going.  So in my addled head, it made sense to just stay up and not bother going to sleep.  If I was still up when he came down, it’d make for a quicker departure than if he had to wait for me to get up and get moving.  Makes sense, right?

Well, 2 o’clock turned to 3, and still no Kevin.  Then 3 turned to 4, and still no appearance.  4 became 5…hell, he’s going to show up at any minute, I can’t give up now!  Well, when it was 6am, I was so drunk and tired that I was seeing things out of the corners of my eyes.  I kept thinking something was moving off to one side or the other.  I finally had to admit defeat and call it a night.  I crashed on the couch, all too happy to let my eyelids close….

...too bad they were only closed for about an hour or so.  Bam!  Time to get up and hit the road!  Ok, let’s do this!  I went to grab up my stuff and get it packed, when I found a nice surprise someone left for me in one of my boots.  My friends!  J

We were out on the highway not more than half an hour before my exhaustion caught up with me (and still quite inebriated).  I reclined the seat…and that’s about all I remember for the next 8 hours.  We arrived at Kevin’s, I then made it home to my house and collapsed on the couch, a major hangover in full swing.  The ill effects lasted into the following day, and I didn’t feel fully back to normal until about Thursday.

Yeah…Olean will do that to ya.

So there you go.  I don’t think I could handle another New Year’s out there, which is why I hope we do it all over again next year!

Ride Hard, Take Chances