Dumb, Dumb, DUMB!

I returned from NH yesterday to find that there had been a ton of rain over the weekend, and just about all of the snow was gone. Nice! Even better; the roads were washed clean of salt!! Double-Nice!! And since I have this week off from work…and since the weather forecast was for sleet, snow and ice to move in later today, the only sensible thing to do was to take the bike out for some more 2009 miles! Yeeeaahhh!!

I rolled the bike out and she came quickly to life. Bundled up to ward off the high-30 degree temps, I rolled out to lay claim to some more mileage. But where to go? I headed down some side roads and meandered my way through some neighboring towns. My unscripted path brought me to a major interstate highway so I thought what the hell, I’ll jump on and see where I wind up.

And this was the beginning of today’s stupidity. Why? Because there was a major weather pattern approaching, and I knew it. I knew what the weather pattern entailed, and I knew what direction it was coming from. And yet, I didn’t bother to think about that as I proceeded on my merry way…away from the approaching pattern.

Discarding each exit ramp as it was offered up to me, I opted instead to continue along the highway, further and further away from home, and further and further away from the approaching weather pattern.

After a while, I found that I was only about 30 miles away from the Cape so I figured what the hell, I’ll hit that, cross over the bridge, ride a bit south, pick up the other bridge to cross back into Mass and head home.

My low-gas indicator lamp came on so I signaled my intent to peel off at the last exit before the bridge to refuel. Exiting the highway, I looped back towards the direction I’d been coming from…and was greeted by a nasty, gray sky. WTF! Idiot! That weather pattern has been chasing you the whole way, and now you have to ride back through it to get home!

I gassed up as fast as I could and, even though I was only 2 miles away from the Cape, I decided to forgo my plan of heading further east. Instead, I hopped back onto the highway I’d just deserted, aimed my bike homewards and hammered the throttle.

Success was not to be mine on this day. I hadn’t made it more than 10 miles before the skies opened up and doused me with near-ice water. Visibility was excellent…ok, I’m lying; it wasn’t good at all. Thankfully, traffic was fairly light so I was able to maintain a solid, hard pace. It would have been humorous to look around and witness what I’m sure must have been some interesting looks from the cages as this motorcycle passed them by, but I figured I’d filled my stupidity quota for the day, and therefore; I was better off keeping my eyes focused on the pavement in front of me.

Eventually, I managed to make it home – soaked and frozen to the bone. The precipitation was actually turning to snow just as I rolled the bike into the garage, so perhaps a bit of luck was on my side after all.

I still can’t believe I was that dumb, though. A cardinal rule; if you don’t have a specific destination to head for, and are just f’ing around, then you always head towards the storm. That way, as soon as the weather starts to turn against you, you do a U-turn and enjoy dry riding for your trip home.

But hey, I got about 150 miles on – not bad for the end of December!! Woo-Hoo!! (And judging from the forecasts for the upcoming week - arctic air coming in, black ice on roads - they’ll probably be the last miles for this year.)

Here’s hoping everyone had a great Christmas, and that you all have a fun and safe New Year’s!

Ho Ho Ho

It’s Christmas season! Time for brightly lit houses and colorfully wrapped presents! Time for decorated trees! Fluffy white snowflakes! Frosty breath…and chilled fingertips... Icy footing and windshield scraping. Last minute runs to the stores for forgotten presents…hard elbows and throat-punches to the old ladies who try and cut you in line… Big fat men shoving their asses down your chimney, only to leave a big pile of black coal in your stocking! (Ok; my stocking.)

So with all of this going on, it’s a nice surprise when you open a Christmas card and two beers fall out. That’s right; I said two beers fell out!! What’s that? How do you mail two beers in a Christmas card? Simple; you disguise them as VFW beer tokens! Thanks Coose & Mary!!

Wheee! Beer Tokens!! And since they originated from the Olean VFW, the only proper thing to do is return them from whence they came. Wheee, beer trip to Olean!

(Although, since we just got almost a foot and a half of snow dumped on us, the trip will have to wait for a bit.)

Here’s hoping everyone has a great Christmas!

Wheee, beer tokens!! :-D

The Return of Eddie!

Had a picture text from Mary out in NY earlier today and had to get the pic posted up here while I had a break at work.

You may remember Eddie from way back when Zig and I did our Sturgis trip. On our return leg, we were hanging in Olean for a few days and got introduced to Eddie, the Wonder Dog. Eddie has this great trick where he drags his nuggets across the carpet on command - how hilarious is that?!?! As much fun as that is, he also has a G-rated trick, where he plays dead on command. Point your finger, say "Eddie! Bang!" and he drops. Too cool! Eddie's last appearance on this blog was a couple of months ago, nearing Halloween, and he was dressed as Batman's trusty sidekick; BatDog.

Well here he is once again, this time he's dressed for the upcoming holiday.

Mary titled it; "Bark the Herald, Angels sing". That's a frikkin' riot! (Eddie doesn't seem to share the same level of appreciation for wit and humor, though...)

Santa is coming, so hopefully everyone out there is being nice. (Although, a little 'naughty' every now and then isn't so bad, either!)

Ok, back to work...

Fingers Crossed

We've dodged the bullet for quite a while now. It's already December and the only snow we've had so far this season, is a one-day heavy dusting back in October (which thankfully disappeared later that same day).

All that may change though...the weather reports are calling for snow later today. Originally they were saying just a dusting, but as time dragged along, those reports have been upgraded; first to a couple of inches, and now to maybe even 4 or 5 inches. The end of the world? Certainly not, but it may be the end of 2009's riding season. Time will tell...

But instead of pining the time away, I figured it was better to hit the road and roll up some more smiles before the white flakes had a chance to visit. A few errands after work, a bit of time spent at the gym (to work off some of the ice cream diet I've been on lately), and it was the open roadways for me. I was hoping the late hour (look at the time-stamp on this post to get an idea) would equate to paths of pavement free and clear of most traffic, and while this proved to be the case in many instances, I did encounter something I hadn't prepared for; traffic control. See, most of the lights around here seem to set to switch back and forth between red & green at the most inopportune moment, leading to many rabbit starts, followed quickly by rapid decelerations. Damn these infernal colored contraptions!

The temps were floating around 40 degrees and the clean crisp air did much to alleviate the stress of the aforementioned stoplight interruptions. Pacing myself, and with no real direction or destination in mind, I purposely got lost several times. I'd take educated guesses and just keep going until I came across something familiar, be it an interstate highway marker or a town line signpost.

Eventually the temps began to wear on my fingers (I forgot to bring my heavy gloves, dammit) so I headed for home and just pulled in about a half hour ago. Final tally; a few hours and maybe a hundred miles or so. Not a lot, granted, but most of the paths I traveled were inter-town roadways, complete with posted speed restrictions, so all in all; not too shabby.

Time to get some sleepy-sleep and have dreams of bright sunshine, bored-out motors and wind-whipped faces. I would say "with any luck, we won't get much snow", but we've had tremendous luck so far and it would be arrogant to expect more.

But there may be more riding to be done yet this year, so I'll still be keeping my fingers crossed...

Ride Hard, Take Chances.

Flaming Pumpkin!!

I was boppin’ around on the internet a little bit ago, looking for some cool pumpkin carving ideas. But what I found went far beyond carving a simple pattern into orange skin; I found something that involves FIRE!

And searching further, it seemed I was behind the times with this activity, as there are several sites that have done this before. Oh well, better late than never.

Items needed; a pumpkin, some kerosene, a roll of toilet paper and a container to soak the TP in.

Well I had a pumpkin already. Let’s see about the other stuff. Toilet paper? Check. A container? Check. Kerosene? Oh yeah baby! Check!

There was a bunch of fine print on the kerosene label, but I figured it wasn’t anything important so I didn’t bother to read it.
Now the instructions said to soak the TP overnight. Ok, that’s easy enough. I poured the kerosene into the can, put the TP in and even weighted it down with a rock to keep it submerged.
I figured a good place to do all this would be outside. Away from my lungs (and away from my furnace’s pilot light!). But some pine needles fell into the mix when I put the rock in, which made me realize that a good protective cover was needed to keep other dirt, leaves and other crap out of my experiment.
All set and ready to go, right? Ahhh, so I thought. The following day arrived and I was too caught up in some other kind of mischief to get my pumpkin carved. The day after that; it rained and a rainy night is no good for filming a flaming gourd, so things were postponed yet again. The night after that…well, I forget what came up, but the pumpkin didn’t get done that night, either. Can you guess where this is headed? Yeah, I didn’t get a chance to carve the pumpkin in time for Halloween. Dammit! Oh well, the pyromania would still be done!

Hmmm…would the TP have held up, or would I be faced with a disintegrated pile of liquid slop? (You’ll be happy to know that things held up wonderfully.)

So there I was; Halloween had passed and I still had the ingredients for something truly cool. So I cleared my schedule for an evening, assembled some tools and hunkered down to see just how well this activity would come together.

A nice skull stencil seemed to be appropriate for the event…
I opted to carve the pumpkin by opening the bottom, rather than the top. This was important, as it would allow me to get the TP situated on the base, and then I could place the carved pumpkin over everything, nice and easy. More importantly, if I needed to get at the flames once things were lit, I could just lift the pumpkin off, rather than having to screw with trying to lift a flaming roll of poop-paper out of a mini-furnace.

Also; I left the sides nice and thick to help keep the pumpkin from drying out too soon, once the flames got going. (It may look like I cut the top off, but I assure you this is the bottom.)
The tools which were used in this creation…
Ta~Da! A skull! (It doesn’t look like much in this pic, but trust me, it looked great in the dark, with the flames going.) Some chimney holes were needed around the top to allow the flames to shoot out of, otherwise everything would shoot out the face/carving and that probably wouldn’t look as cool.
I figured the fire pit would provide a safe area for the lighting ceremony…and then figured a nice mini-stack of cinder blocks would provide a bit more safety.
The TP has been placed and the pumpkin is ready to be placed onto the base.
Here, everything is set and ready to go…
JEEZUS, ENOUGH WITH THE PICS!!! JUST LIGHT THE DAMN THING ALREADY!!!!

Wow, pushy crowd, ain’t ya? Ok, ok, no need to shove. Here ya go…

The flames came up nicely. There was no “WHOOMP” like gas would give you, just a rapid-but-controlled spreading of the burn. Once things were fully going, the flames coming out the top were pretty sweet. Not too high, not out of control, but just really cool, man.

I’ll DEFINITELY be doing this again next year!! Hell, I might carve a SANTA pumpkin and leave that out on my front doorstep for when the Fat Bastard comes by with this year's gift of coal!!

Wheeeee!!!!

Halloween @ Sue and Ed's

Last year’s “All Hallow’s Eve” ride found me on the doorstep of Ed & Sue’s cemetery, where we whiled the night way with laughter and libations. All this, while warding off the curses and incantations of creatures, both tall and small, with promises of sweets and treats. Yes, it was a grand evening, and we all survived to live another year.

And here we were; that year had passed all too quickly it seemed! A quick call to Ed & Sue to inquire if this year would find them repeating the events of 365 days earlier, and sure enough; it was on!

I loaded up some of our my talismans (beer, wine and candy!) and made the trek over to the aforementioned cemetery where I settled in and made my preparations for the coming darkness.

Let’s see if we have things covered…
We’ll need plenty of candy to bribe any demons or witches that want to cast spells on us…
We’ll need a stellar cemetery layout, to fool any of the undead that come along looking for live folks, in hopes of eating their brains…
“Ghosts” in the windows to keep out any wandering spirits who might be looking for an un-haunted location to take up residence in…
Here and there, some eerie blinking eyes had also been set up, which just added to the overall atmosphere. Ed had the chimenea fired up and it was billowing flames to ward off the chill. One final look around to make sure everything is covered…Ok, I think we’re good to go! And it was not a moment too soon, as the creatures of the night began to appear out of the darkness. The trickle started slowly and then picked up to a steady flow of both mini-critters and their accompanying guardian ghosts (parents).

The night saw no shortage of costumed creations; there were ghouls that were fools, and monsters who were songsters. I saw vampires and umpires and even one noble squire. There was a witch that was a bitch, and a squid from Madrid (walking with the Karate Kid). Barbie and Ken were hanging with the X-men, while a Frankenstein was drinking wine with a swine from Rhine. Hell, there was even a zombie from Bombie looking hip in Abercrombie.

I’d seen enough; it was time for another beer…

On my trek to find said beer, I found myself in the old abandoned barn where Ed stores his prized Harley. He had a blue light on it, just like last year, and since I just love how this thing looks, I had to snap a pic again;
The rest of the evening was much of the same. We checked out the monstrosities as they presented themselves to our altar of candy, and each time, our offerings were adequate to send them merrily along their way, without any thoughts of casting curses in our direction. Overall, the night was a compete success.

This year was fantastic as always, and we hope that Ed and Sue will be gracious enough to host again next year. For if they do, I’ve got something else planned for the night’s display. Something that involves pumpkins and pyrotechnics. How can we go wrong?

Happy Halloween!!

Costume Pics!

Yes, Halloween has come and gone, but I’m not done posting about it, so you’ll just have to bear with me.

Each year, I like to bring my latest costume creation over to show Sam and Zak, and to also check out their costumes. They usually get quite a kick out of Uncle Dave and his silly costumes. Here are some examples of years past;

This is the earliest one I could find. I was decked out in 70's gear, Sam was a giraffe, and Zak was a frog.
The following year, I was a 7' tall Frankenstein Monster. Sam was a cat and Zak was the Hulk.

Zak wasn't too keen on the costume (which you can see from his body language in the pic) - for some odd reason he thought my face was scarier with the green makeup than it is on a regular basis. (In this pic, they're sitting on my costume's boots. They were huge clunky things that sounded awesome when I walked.)
The next year, I was a 7' tall Grim Reaper. Sam was a cowgirl and Zak was a ninja.
Zak and I squared off against each other (he's swinging his foam nunchucks at me).

I can't remember if this was the following year or not (Alzheimer's is a bitch), but suffice to say that this costume came along at some point. I thought they'd get a huge kick out of this costume, but unfortunately; The Muppets were a bit after their time and they really weren't too familiar with the character - and therefore; they thought I was kinda retarded (in this pic, they're both making fun of me) LOL.
The year after that, I was the Headless Horseman, and while pics from that year are in that year's Halloween post, I'll pull a couple up for posterity. Sam was a pirate and Zak was an alien.

I didn't like how my costume looked in that last pic so here's one I shot at the house - I loved this costume!

Last year's pics of myself (as an outhouse) with Sam and Zak can be found in last year's post, but here's a reminder; Sam was a clown and Zak was a mini Grim Reaper.
Here’s a pic of Sam and Zak from this year; Sam was a cavewoman and Zak was a Frankenstein, with a giant head and googly eyes. (If you compare these pics to the above pics of prior Halloweens, you can see how tall they’re getting!).

We didn't get a good group shot of the three of us, and I think it's because they were a bit unsure of the reliability/stability of my shower costume. And they had good reason, as evidenced by the clip in one of the below-posts, in which I can be heard to exclaim "I'm getting wet!".

Next year should be a return to the fun, group thing. I've got a good idea of what I'm going to dress up as and it shouldn't involve any moving parts (which is a relief to everyone).

And there you have it; a wrap on the Halloween Costumes.

Ok, I believe I only have two more Halloween posts coming (one of Halloween night @ Ed & Sue's, and the other involves fire!); with any luck I can get them up here tomorrow.

Whew – almost caught up!