Anticipation.....

I haven't been this excited about a road trip in a long time. I spent some time with Dan over the weekend going over routes and general plans. This is much more than a Sturgis trip, this is something both of us have been needing, time in the wind. Sturgis, while I am looking forward to my 1st time there, is a waypoint on a road trip that I get to share with someone I consider a brother. I've also found out that there's a 3rd joining us, Anthony, who just got his 1st Harley, a '06 XL1200C. I've known Anthony for a little while and he's a good guy, this'll be the 1st time I've ridden with him though. Dan's known him for many years, so this'll be a good run.

This coming Friday at 6:30am the fun begins, 3 idiots, 3 Sportsters, 3 days, 1300 miles, Sturgis S.D., and a hell of alot of fun!!!

Sturgis Quickie!

I've never been to Sturgis nor had I planned on going at any point in the near future. Not that I don't want to go, but more that I'm usually too broke to afford how spendy it is there, let alone taking time off work. I'm honestly not a big fan of big bike rallies, not that there's anything wrong with them, it's just not my cup of tea. I bought my bike to ride it, not to spend days walking around a rally, to me that's an incredible waste of good riding time.

Monday night, Dan, one of my best friends called, which in itself was a little strange. Dan and I rarely ever call each other, we usually just show up at each others house once in a while, sit around, shoot the shit, maybe get a few miles in. Dan has an '02 Sporty 1200 Custom, but with a young family, riding time is scarce. Dan says, "My wife is going to Vegas with her mom, I'm not going, so I have a chance for a road trip. I've got an idea and I can't think of anyone else I'd rather have on the trip." Without thinking, I say, "Sure! I'm in. Where are we going?" He says, "Sturgis." He caught me off guard with that. He must've known it too, he says, "Dude, I'm just as broke as you, but this'll be cheap. We ride up, get an "I rode mine" patch, turn around and head home. $80 in gas and we'll strap a tent to the bikes and sleep wherever, we got 3 days, no missed time at work and a hell of a road trip." I say, "This is about a 1300 mile trip." He says, "Yup, it'll be awesome." All right. I'm in! Next Friday can't get here fast enough!!

P.S.A.

Public Service Announcement. I rarely do anything like a PSA, but today I started a relatively long, extremely painful process. Dental reconstruction. Relativity to 2 wheels? That's where my dental down-swing begins. I think I was about 11 years old, I had been riding a little dirt bike(mid 70's Yamaha GT 80 Enduro)for about 2 years, thought I was pretty hot shit, lol! I went to spend a week with my cousins in Denver Co., they were just a couple years older than me and they rode dirt bikes too. One day my oldest cousin took me to their local motocross track. I was in heaven! Growing up on a farm in Iowa mx tracks were something I only dreamed of! Now this track was still under construction, so my cousin tells me to stay off the inside of the track because it dangerous. Me, being the know-it-all 11 year old I was took off for the inside 1st thing. I don't really remember what bike it was, but it was my cousins little Suzuki dirt bike. I got rolling on what was supposed to be "Off-limits", took a couple small jumps, getting comfortable. I see one that just has my name on it, I set it up, hit it just right, and as I'm landing, my back wheel hits terra firma and my front end goes off the edge of a 6 foot wall into a hole that was being worked on. Endo'd hard, and even though I had a typical old 70's 3/4 lid with a bubble shield, I still ate the cross bar for lunch. The collision between teeth and steel ended up with me snapping my top front 2 teeth and the one to either side, and 2 front bottom teeth. Not clean breaks mind you, I looked like a vampire that just got shit knocked out of it. After many root canals, and other extremely painful procedures, I had 6 permanent caps. No other injuries from the endo, just 6 broken teeth.

That was the beginning of the end. Over the years between horrible dental habits and some other habits that are very damaging to teeth it finally came to a head. It had gotten to a point that I couldn't enjoy eating because of the pain, was missing time at work due to dental infections, and was just generally miserable. Now I can make excuses all day long, some are valid, some are not, it really doesn't matter, it's my own damn fault. The bottom line is that if I had taken the proper care of my teeth I wouldn't be going through this. A couple weeks ago I went in for a thorough dental exam, it didn't end well. Three teeth on the bottom have to be pulled and we may be able to save what's left on the bottom. The top on the other hand, is done. Every tooth has to come out(13 left) and I'll be wearing a full upper denture. I'll say it, I'm a complete f'n idiot, I'm 44 years old and will have full upper dentures. I've made my bed, I'll sleep in it.

It started today, 2 hrs of the most intensive dental cleaning I've ever had. They numbed me pretty good and the hygienist did her thing. Then it was off to the man himself, the dentist. Even though I was numbed, the 20 minutes he spent pulling 4 teeth was agonizing. He took the 4 most infected and I must admit that now, almost 6 hours later, I'm still hurting, but with the infected crap gone I feel better, albeit in pain, lol!

I could go on for a while, I haven't been to a dentist in a very long time and the changes are nothing short of fantastic, but when it comes to pulling, it's still as bad as I remember it. The bottom line is, take care of what you have. I would wish what I'm going through upon no one.

Friday!

It's Friday!!!!! That is all...

Boredom. Beer. and..............................a seat.

It was great to have Jimmy home after he'd been gone the week so we got a reat ride in today. Instead of reposting something, here's a link to his blog from todays ride-

http://roadsideswagger.blogspot.com/2010/07/weekend-thus-far.html

Once we got home and ate, Jimmy was out the door for a nite with his friends. Now it's still early, so what to do? Well, I got beer and a seat. Time to make a seat, lol! I like my Mustang seat alot, it's great for long days in the saddle, but for shorter, solo, runs I'd like something a little thinner, a little lower. With the price of seats, it's gonna be a while before I spend the bucks, so I made my own solo seat.

Started out with the stock seat for my '06 XL1200C-

Stipped the cover and foam off it and went after it with Jimmy's dremmel tool-

Not alot left of the stock pan-

I didn't use anything fancy on this, it's just a short hop seat. I used what I had laying around, some crappy old memory foam, the egg carton looking stuff, it's pretty thin so I used 2 layers.

Now I needed a cover of some sort. I didn't have leather or vinyl to sacrifice and I'm too cheap to go buy some. Why not use the next best thing, one of my old Army fatigue tops! I just cut the back out of it, plenty of material, it's not waterproof, but oh well, ya can't have everything!

After some cutting, stapling, and beer, I got a new solo seat! Nice low profile, hopefully comfy enough for short trips. Not bad for my 1st seat and it was free, lol!

Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a few miles on it and see if it's back to the drawing board or not.

The Chase!

This 4th of July pretty much sucked as far as weather went and to make things worse it was a 4 day weekend. Friday wasn't too bad, hot (mid 90's)and windy, but my wife and I still manged to get in a couple hundred miles on in the afternoon. We had a great ride through some beautiful country just to the west and south of Concordia Ks. Unfortunately, someone had the camera(Jimmy!! lol, just givin' ya shit son!) and I couldn't take any pitures. Saturday the weather went right down the toilet, the clouds rolled in and with heavy rain imminent, we didn't ride. It started raining Saturday night, it rained pretty much solid till late Sunday night and was still overcast and raining when I got up this morning. Later in the day I decided that since I couldn't ride, I'd just go ahead and do the engine and primary oil change. After a quick call to the local indy shop to make sure they were open, I headed over to pick up the oil and filter. Just as I was pulling into town the clouds broke and the sun finally came out, sweet!!! I would get some miles in tonight after all! I hauled ass home, got the oil changed, ate supper and hit the road for a short trip about 7pm. My wife didn't feel like a ride so I went solo. As I was heading east to sun and open skies I looked in my mirror and didn't like what I saw, rain clouds in the west moving this way. To hell with it, I'm ridin', the chase is on!

This is what was coming from the west-

South looks pretty good-


East is gorgeous!

I stopped at the Fancy Creek Bridge at the north end of Tuttle Creek Lake. Yup, it's still coming. I'm amazed at how high the lake level is. In the pic below, in what would be the lower left of the pic, there's usually just a narrow channel, about 25' wide, running under the bridge and snaking back west. Most of what's in the pic is usually just a grassy wetland.

The south is starting to cloud up a bit-


I stopped at the "mile long bridge", the west is starting to clear! The rain is going south!! I probably stood on this bridge taking pics for a bout 5 minutes. No wind, not a single car, no noise what so ever other than Mother Nature, it was beautiful!

Uh-oh, still a little left to the north!


After looping back in a northeasterly direction, the skies were clearing behind me-

The skies to west, towards home, were clearing as well-


Just something I thought was a cool pic by a cemetary near Frankfort, Kansas.

Great finish to the weekend, got a good ride in and the rain didn't catch me.........this time.

In the shadows

Do you ever have those moments, moments of clarity. They're usually associated with hobbies, building, creating, or something one is completely passionate about. Those moments are very elusive and it can take anywhere from seconds to years to realize those moments. There have been 3 things in my life that have let me experience those moments, playing and writing music, building Jeeps, and now motorcycles. When I had my Meanstreak, the vision was clear, I knew exactly where I wanted to go with it. Then before I knew what happened, that was taken from me and I had to start over. I knew I didn't want to the same thing again, not because I didn't like it, far from it, I loved that bike. I wanted to do something different just because I had the chance to. I had the opportunity to try something different, a different experience. I knew I loved riding, putting on miles, just being in the wind. No destination, just a direction. So I figured this time around I wanted to try American made so I got a Sportster last December. I've spent the last 7 months racking up the miles(almost 8000 miles so far), enjoying every minute of it. At the same time I'm looking at everything, learning as much as possible, trying to figure out where I want to go(build-wise), there's so many cool builds out there, what do I want, what fits me? Now maybe I'm just a lunatic, but one of the things I think about while riding is what I want to do to my bike next. Ever since I got into Harley's it's been elusive, I'm new to them, trying learn about them, etc, I spend alot of hours just thinking, lol! Then tonight I was out for a solo ride, nothing very long, right around 70 miles of backroads this evening. I'm cruisin' down a deserted backroad just before sunset, I looked to my left and there it was, that moment of clarity. It was riding right next to me, the vision of what I wanted, right there.. in the shadows.

Sorry to leave everyone hangin', but I'm not revealing anything until it's actually underway, to let the proverbial "cat" out of the bag would jinx it from the get go.

My rant for the day.

I got up late this morning, not a little late but a lot late, lol! It was damn near noon by the time I pryed my head off the pillow, oh well, that's what Sundays are for! I headed downstairs for my morning ritual of coffee(lots of it) and internet. While I'm cruisin' the web, I decide to see what's up on Facebook. Now I'm not a huge FB fan, I don't play the silly ass games and I don't accept random friend invites, but it is a great way to keep up with family and real friends. There's a young man that I'm friends with on FB, he used to live up the street from us and is like part of our family, his status was funny and without quoting directly, he commented on something you'd only find in America and that America was a great place. A girl replied that obviously you've never lived anywhere else because America sucks. EXCUSE ME! This girl is a whopping 16 years old, What did she do, spend a week in Europe? WTF? This really irritates the shit out of me, you're 16 fuckin' years old, still wet behind the ears, haven't done shit to contribute to society in general, and somehow you have the right to say America sucks! Oh wait, you do have that right, because this is America, everyone has that right. People, family, friends, sons, daughters, mothers and fathers spilled their blood so you have that right. You pompous little bitch! Trying going to another country and speaking out against their government and see what happens. Oh and before I go to far I should say I have lived in another country. I didn't just visit on a vacation with my rich family, I served America and lived in South Korea for 3 years, not exactly a vacation. It was a life changing experience, not only did I gain a greater appreciation for America, I gained a greater respect for other nations and their beliefs. We could learn alot from other countries if it weren't for our politicians and I mean both sides, conservative and liberal, politicians are thieves and liars, only concerned about who's greasing thier pockets instead of doing what is in the best interest of America.

America is a great nation, but we are not without our problems, there are so many things that need improvement, things that would make America better. But to say America sucks is just wrong in so many ways. Although you do have that right, because America is a free nation.

Here's some random suggestions-
You want to come to America illegally and take advantage of what America has to offer? Here's an alternative, if we catch you we don't deport you. You serve in the Immigrant Militia. We send you to the hottest combat zones that America is involved in and if you survive and serve America honorably for 5 years you automatically gain citizenship, voting rights, and everything America has to offer, with one exception, you may never be president, you weren't born here. Oh, you're a woman, tough shit, we believe in equal rights here.

You want to own land in America and aren't a citizen? Too bad. Aint gonna happen. That is a privilege reserved for citizens.

You think America sucks and you're an American citizen? Well guess what, today is your lucky day! We will give you a one way ticket to the country of your choice, denounce you as an American citizen, and ban you from ever returning to America. Pack your shit and get the fuck out, you are not welcome here.

Am I being insensative? You damn right I am! America doesn't need sensitivity training, she needs some backbone! You say I'm not being politically correct? Damn right I'm not! Being PC is a fucking joke, it's just figuring out cute ways to insult someone or something. Be an adult, look at reality, and call a spade a spade.

Did I offend you? Yes? Good. Maybe you needed to be offended, just like I was when I read that 16 year old girls comment. I may not agree with it, but I will defend her right to say it because that's what freedom is.

Are you from another country reading this? If so, don't think that I'm anti everyone that's not American. The fact is, I'm not. I have a great deal of respect for other nations and cultures. America has had and still has great allies in other nations and we would not enjoy our freedom if it wasn't for them. I would expect any citizen of another nation be as patriotic towards theirs as I am mine.

One

While we on our ride today we stopped at a diner in Marysville, Kansas. They usually play surf music and other stuff from the 50's and some stuff from the 60's. Not really what I'm into, but in the middle of all that they played one of my favorite songs from my youth. "One" by Three Dog Night. I think I first heard this song in '73 or '74, but I'm not sure, it was a long time ago and I haven't heard this song in ages. I still like it.

Another great ride!

Finally after what seems like endless rain we had a dry weekend! My wife and I saddled up and hit the road. Instead of picking a destination, we pick a direction and go. Today's ride would be north by northeast, a direction we haven't explored much yet. Today was also one of the hottest days yet this summer, going through one town we saw 99* on a bank clock but it still felt great to be in the wind. Going our chosen direction today meant that we were going to be riding mainly in Nebraska. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the roads in Nebraska leave alot to be desired and Nebraska is also a helmet mandatory state. So I put on my half helmet, my wife in her fullface(which is normal for her, regardless where we ride)and we headed into the "Corn Husker" state.

Our first stop was for gas and water(got to stay hydrated in this heat!) at a truck stop just north of Beatrice, Nebraska.


Next stop was at Frontier Harley Davidson in Lincoln, Nebraska. I usually don't have alot good to say about dealerships, but Frontier is an exception. I bought my Sportster from them, and unlike any other dealer I've worked with, they treated me great and made sure I was going to be happy with my Harley, top notch customer service.

As soon as we walked in the front door, there was the bike I have been lusting after since I first saw it. The Harley 48. I absolutely love this bike, who knows, maybe sometime down the rode one will be in my garage, lol!

Now if you're ever in the area it's is definitely worth a stop at Frontier even if you're not buying anything. They have one of the coolest collection of vintage Harleys, here are just a few of my personal favorites.

A HD snowmobile!!

How about an HD dual-sport!

From Frontier we headed east on highway 2 to highway 75 south and a fuel stop in Auburn, Nebraska. There was some kind of rodeo going on. I'm not much of a fan of redneck games so we kept moving.

Another stop just for the hell of it in Table Rock, Nebraska. Not much here.

Ok, that's not fair, Table Rock is small, 350-some people, but this was a better picture, lol!

Back in Kansas!

The land of great roads(quality, not twistiness)and choice! The helmet came off, although my wife kept hers on.

We had a great ride, covered about 272 miles in about 6 hrs. The southeast corner of Nebraska has some very scenic roads, but I don't think they spend alot of money on highway maintenance. It was amazing how the road condition changed at the state line. If they'd spend more money on their roads they would probably get more vistors to an otherwise beautiful state.

Thunderstorms

No riding today. At 7 this morning it was sunny and looking to be a nice day. By 8am a severe thunderstorm rolled in complete with damaging winds, torrential rain, hail, and of course thunder and lightning. Luckily our house was not damaged, but we have a hell of a mess in the yard to clean up. Things could have been much worse, the worst part for us was no power for about 3 hours. Here's some pics of the aftermath.

A few miles..

I haven't gotten many miles on this weekend yet, but there's still a day left! My wife and I did get out yesterday for a bit. I tried my hand at taking some shots while in motion, they didn't turn out too bad for a first effort.

While we were out we stopped by a local indy shop, Henry's Chop Shop in Frankfort, Kansas. The guys got a lot of talent and is building some very cool stuff!

kick ass bobber!

Another cool chop!

Sporty powered golf cart!