Best Wishes for the New Year!

Have a great New Years eve. Party hard and tip your cabbie well.

I'll be back on Tuesday!

Cures What Ails Ya!

Last night I had to work disgustingly late, due to incompetency on my part and on the part of others. I didn't leave the office until 8:00 pm. By then I was in a rather foul mood, and just wanted to get home.

According to the various items I have read on motorcycle safety, one shouldn't ride when angry. When you commute by motorcycle, however, your mood can't dictate when you ride.

It's a good thing, too, because if I'd left work irritable and driven home in a cage, chances are I'd be even more pissed off by the time I got home. Then, I'd probably go sulk and wonder why the world is such a terrible, terrible place.

When I have to ride home, I ususally only make it a couple of miles before I'm merrily singing into my helmet (better than the shower, it's surround sound) and generally happy with life, the universe and everything.

So what do you poor souls who live in frozen places do to keep your mood up during the winter?

Great Minds

Proving that sometimes it's just "time" for a great advance, Alton Brown apparently set out on his OWN road trip across America. By motorcycle. Eating stuff.

Luckily for me (I mean HIM. HIM!!), it appears he was not reviewing pizza places exclusively.

If you're interested in the adventure our man had, you can read about it a bit here.

Long weekends are better with presents!

I had a fantastic weekend. Lots of sleeping, eating and riding. I think I rode about 150 miles over the last three days. Riding to work is fun, but riding just to ride is better.

Incidentally, from now on when I need to do Christmas shopping, I'm only going to ride. Parking is such a breeze with a bike that I can't believe I didn't see more bikes at the stores.

As for the gifts, I got some awesome Craftsman tools, a sweet leather leather riding jacket, insulated gauntlets and a leather vest with the Indian logo across the back. I made out like a BANDIT!

Now I just need to survive four days at work and I'm off to Flagstaff for another weekend of rest and relaxation.

Merry Christmas!

May you all find a new Triumph Speed Triple under the tree, curvy roads and umbrella girls at every stop.

I'll be back on Tuesday.

Hot Hot Hot!

Since this is blog is supposed to be about food as well as motorcycles, I figured I'd tell you about a little bit about something special I've cooked up for Christmas.

Those near and dear to me know that, superlatives aside, I make the greatest hot wing sauce in the entire world. It's good on EVERYTHING. Wings, popcorn, bread, rice, potatoes, carrots, pancakes, breakfast cereal, ice cream... really, there isn't anything that can't be improved my adding my sauce.

Last night I whipped up a gigantic batch of Lucky's Liquid Love to give away to the good girls and boys on my gift list. Since my sauce is kind of perishable, it's sadly only available to those I can hand it to personally (Sorry Wolfie!). That means it's going to neighbors, co-workers and other friendlies within walking distance.

You should be jealous.

And I ought to be getting a promotion very shortly....

As a brief side note, riding into work this morning was awesome. There was hardly anyone else on the road. Zoom Zoom.

Giving the gift of bad directions.

Yesterday I had just gotten off of the freeway on my way to work, and some well-dressed dude in an executive-type automobile asked me the best way to get to a certain freeway. I briefly contemplated messing with him, but then I figured since he was actually polite and seemed like a decent fellow, I'd tell him how to get there.

If only I could get the stupid words out of my mouth. For one thing, my tongue was frozen to the roof of my mouth from the exhiliration of riding on the freeway in cold weather. And the other thing was, I couldn't think of how to get to the stupid road. Meanwhile, the stoplight had turned green again. I finally stammered through giving him the directions and we took off before the traffic behind us got too angry.

Of course, once we started rolling, I realized there was a better way to go. So, I waved to him to stop, and told him the GOOD way to go.

After all that, I rode off, feeling rather abashed by my early morning incoherence. You see, I hadn't managed to be much more lucid the second time I talked to him. That poor bastard is probably still driving around the Chandler, AZ area looking for the freeway.

Note to self: before first coffee of the day, reply to any question with "Sorry, I don't know."

Cold Remedies: Not My Friend

I've been slowly coming down with a cold since Saturday. This morning I took some cough medicine, and on my ride into work I started getting all itchy.

Hives. My cough syrup gave me hives.

I hate cough syrup.

I'd love to post something insightful and funny today, but I'm too busy trying not to go mad.

I'm not the only one.

I see I'm not the only one who thinks dressing up as Santa and causing a ruckus is a sure-fire good time. Check it out!

http://www.santarchy.com/

Moto X-mas

I was at Target last night and spent a good couple of minutes contemplating the purchase of a Santa Suit to wear while riding. I could have a bunch of candy canes stuffed in my tank bag to throw at random people. That would rock!

But then I remembered that Santa costumes aren't free. That idea is just going to have to wait.

Impetus

Sometimes, a fella needs a good smack upside the head to change the retarded inertia he's built up.

About a week ago I was informed exactly where I stand at my present job. Needless to say, it wasn't great news. I'd been in a black mood since.

Luckily, last night was so staggeringly pure and good that it got my mind back where it should be. First off, Lady Luck made me the greatest dinner in the world (dare I say, better than pizza.). And then, I went to see Clutch in concert. And they played for 3 hours.

Clutch has a fairly large catalog of recorded albums, and all of them are powerful. None of them, however, can match the pure, furious joy of Clutch in concert. They're one of the few (only) bands that truly leave me wanting more every time I see them.

At the show, I realized that being all bent out shape about my stupid job is foolish (as my ever-patient wife has told me about one million times), and that endless agonizing about what I'm going to do with my future isn't getting me any closer to my desired future. I decided that I'm just going to pick a direction, put my head down and start running until I get where I want to be.

After that revelation, I got back to enjoying the show. And it would be damn hard not to enjoy a Clutch concert. In fact, I defy anyone to see Clutch live and not walk away from the show a rabid fan.

By the way, the opening act was freaking awesome. This guy, William Elliot Whitmore, rocks the banjo harder than I thought possible, and I've heard more banjo-playing than I care to admit. You must go out and purchase his cds. Do it. DO IT NOW.

Deep Friday Thoughts

A while back, I made up two rules motorcyclists have to remember. They were as follows:

1. Never trust a blind idiot driving a cage.
2. Everyone driving a cage is a blind idiot.

I'm sure someone elsewhere has expressed a similar sentiment, but I'm the first person to post it on The Great Motorcycle Pizza Tour. Anyways, it was an off-hand joke I made after some guy decided that the laws of physics didn't apply to him and that he could occupy the same space as another object at the same time (that object being me).

I've been thinking about it some more lately, and I think my rules go a little deeper than the surface meaning. Cagers tend to be blind idiots, in more than one sense. These are the people who don't see motorcyclists because they aren't expecting to see anything out of the ordinary. These are the people who don't want to see motorcyclists. And these people are in the majority.

Obviously, I don't think that driving the cage is what makes people blind idiots. In fact, I happen to be friends with several cagers. My parents are cagers. Hell, Coop is a cager (granted, it's an especially cool cage.).

Since the cage isn't what turns people into blind idiots, I can only assume that majority of people, even outside of their cars, are blind idiots. Given my daily interactions in the cube farm I work in (more cages), that seems to be an accurate assessment of the world. I mean, there are people out there (and in my office) who enjoy listening to elevator music.

Personally, I prefer to avoid idiots and I especially want to avoid working to make some other idiot rich. Of course, until I can get my own company up and running (I'm working on it, ok? Product development is more work than you'd think.) I'm going to have to earn an income somehow.

I've been thinking about going back to school, possibly for some kind of Electrical Engineering degree. It's a tough call, because on the one hand it sounds interesting and I can get my mad scientist, gigantic death robot kicks while getting college credit. On the other hand, I'm worried I'll just end up in another retarded office, doing stupid work for people I really don't like.

Of course, I'll have significant electrical engineering knowledge, which would might make getting my own company going( "Giant Death Robots R Us") slightly easier.

I could also get a little blacksmith shop going in my garage and keep plugging away at it until I'm good enough at it that I can sell my work ("Giant Doomy Gates R Us"). I'll definitely avoid spending the majority of my day in a soulless office that way, plus I'll be one of the happiest men you'll ever meet, on account of getting all my frustrations out on hot steel.

For the last week I've been feeling kind of paralyzed. As that one smart guy said "A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step." And as Bugs Bunny said "watch out, that first step is a doozy."

The question for this weekend is, what the hell do I do?

The Humor of It All.

Well, I didn't get around to writing my awesome post I promised. That's because the more I thought about it, the more it seemed forced and generally pointless. Don't worry, I'll have an awesome rant for you soon.

The ride in this morning was cold again, but I was smart enough today to take the surface streets instead of the freeway to work. My fingers don't hurt at all today!

...And that's all I've got.

Did You Miss Me?

I tried to write a decent post several times yesterday. All of them were complete garbage so rather than dump a rotten post on you, I just gave up and resolved to post something worthwhile today.

Only I still can't come up with anything really worth posting. I'm a little preoccupied with various non-motorcycling problems. You don't want to hear about them.

I've got a little idea brewing for tomorrow, so hang tight! There's lots of great content coming your way soon.

What, no pizza?

What the hell happened to my weekend? I swear it was Friday afternoon and suddenly now it's Monday.

Luckily, this weekend marked the last day of the class I was taking. As much as I enjoy blacksmithing (2nd to motorcycles), I do not enjoy giving up 8 hour chunks of my weekend every single weekend.

Looking back at the weekend, I noticed that I hadn't consumed a single slice of pizza.

I did manage to get some riding in. For example, I rode to the grocery store to pick up a few items on Friday night. Riding to a grocery store in a run-down part of town on a Friday night is an interesting experience. I swear it was raining drunks and crazies that wanted to talk about motorcycles and strippers. One guy asked me how far I was going, and I was a little concerned he was going to ask for a ride. Another one told me that he just lost a bunch of money in vegas, and wanted to get into the pants of the high school girls in the other checkout line. I did not need or want to know that. All I wanted was to buy my damn cookies and get out of there!

Here's to hoping that I've burned off my bad karma for the week and the next few days are going to be great!

That's good shift!

Naturally, I couldn't be bothered to eat dinner last night until I got my bike going again. The elapsed time between getting home, changing my clothes and getting out to the garage was approximately 37 seconds. Another 10 minutes and I ready to roll.

So I did. I zipped around my immediate neighborhood briefly to make sure everything was in order, and then off for a quick 12 miles of victorious motorcycling. Apparently my clutch had been in need of adjustment prior to the cable breaking, as shifting is now a dream.

I am most thoroughly stoked. It hasn't even been two weeks since the cable broke, but I feel like I haven't ridden in a month.

Riding in this morning was great. It was cloudy out today, so it was just a tiny bit warmer than usual.

Now I just have to figure out where I'm going to ride to this weekend...

Wrenching is FUN.

I got my new clutch cable installed last night. Putting it in place probably took me an hour, since getting it in there required me to pull nearly everything off the bike. So, after all that, I spent way, way too long trying to get my clutch adjusted. No joy. The shop manual's description of how to adjust the clutch is pretty useless in my opinion.

Lady Luck came out to get me around 10:00pm. She said she figured if she didn't get me, I'd have been out there all night. If I didn't like her so darn much, I probably would have been out there all night anyway. As I've said before, I hate it when my bike isn't working. I can't sleep, and I can't think about anything else for any length of time.

Tonight, it's back to the garage to spend a few more hours experimenting with the clutch.

The wait continues...

No part yet. With any luck it will get here today.

Perhaps I should just head over to Target and get a bicycle brake cable to use in the interim.

In other news, this guy Iner has a pretty cool blog detailing the , uh, unique musical instruments he's built out of weird crap he found. Rock on, Iner!

It's Part Day!

My clutch cable should come in today. With any luck, I'll be up and running again tonight. That is, of course, assuming that my part isn't backordered.

I'm getting pretty sick of driving the rat buick to work. It's hard to even stay awake when you're essentially riding on a very comfy, v-6 powered couch. And there's never anything good on the radio in the morning (to make it worse, the tape deck doesn't work).

Anyway, if I get up and running, there'll be a new pizza review before the end of the year.

All work and no riding make Lucky a dull boy.

The weather this weekend was mocking me.

I was in the garage and noticed something funny under the VX800. Sort of a dark spot on the floor. I went over to investigate and discovered it's dripping oil from the gearbox. I'm sure you can imagine how excited I was to see that.

In other news, Lady Luck still wants a Stella for Christmas. I'm trying to figure out how I can raise the money for it by then.

A Quiet Week

I haven't really had a whole lot to say this week (as I'm sure you noticed.) Here's why: