Novelling starts tomorrow.

Are you excited? I am. You guys have no idea what you're in for.

Whatcha doin' for Halloween?

Well, despite my best intentions last year, we have no plans for Halloween this year. We aren't expecting any trick or treaters this year, though if any show up they will be rewarded.

I expect we'll watch some scary movies, and I'll probably be all antsy about getting started on my novel.

And that's about it.

Just a link

Go read Gary's latest post, right now.

Yes, I am that cool.

Today I'd like to tell you about 30 seconds of supreme dorkness on my part.

Near my house is an intersection with ridiculously long red lights, paired with absurdly short turn lane signals. On a given stoplight cycle, 4 cars out of about 16 can make their left turn before the light changes. This is annoying.

As such, I try to get into that intersection as quickly as I can, ensuring my passage and sometimes that of the guy behind me.

On my way home tonight, I waited impatiently for the lights to go through their routine so I could make my freakin' left turn. I finally got my arrow, and promptly killed the motor.

Because I left the bike in second gear.

In my rush to get moving, I vigorously pressed the starter button and heard the Triumph's adorable little horn. Ugh. Right idea, wrong hand. Thoroughly flustered (and still in second gear), I hit the starter button for real, and try to take off.

Of course, the Triumph was not happy about this. I gave the throttle a healthy twist and rocketed through the interesection, feet off the pegs, wondering if today would be the day I stupidly crashed my pretty new bike.

Fortunately, I got things under control, got my feet back on the pegs, and was very relieved to find I had not soiled myself. The rest of the ride home was uneventful, although I was rather embarassed.

And those, my good friends, were the stupidest 30 seconds of my day.

Things on my mind today.

• Five days to novel time! I'm going to be blogging it on a separate blog. I'll post that address when it's all ready to go.
  
• I'm really, really sick of beggars near my place of employment. At first I tried to help them out, but it's getting to the point that I just want to be left the heck alone. Which makes me feel kind of guilty, because I want to be compassionate.
  
• I can't believe all the bikes that have come out of the woodwork now that the weather is nice. I know that I'm kind of crazy, and I don't want to stop anyone from enjoying their bike, so I'll just say that I'm curious as to where all those bikes are hiding the other six months of the year.
• Lady Luck is rapidly learning the ways of the knee-dragging moto-fanatic. I think the week away from her bike drove her almost as nuts as the week away from my bike drove me.

Luigi's At The Beach - Official Review!!

Ok, so this review is a bit belated.

It would have been a waste of a trip if we'd gone to San Diego and not found a pizza place. We found Luigi's At The Beach, which was conveniently half a block from the house we rented.

The Place:
Luigi's At The Beach
3210 Mission Blvd
San Diego, CA 92109
(858) 488-2818

The Pie: A gigantic slice of Pepperoni and Jalapeno. For those not in the know, Luigi's is famous for their 30 inch pizzas. I was game for getting a giant pie just for me, but Lady Luck wouldn't allow it. I keep telling her that a pizza is not that much food....

The Posse: Lady Luck, Baldy-Beard, Bo, Baby-Bo and me.

The Ride: Riding in San Diego is fun. There are hills, curves, pretty people to look at, and plenty of batshit insane drivers to keep things from getting boring. 4 Crying Luckies

The toppings: Crazy hot jalepenos. Baldy-Beard and I both had to remove some of them, I'm ashamed to admit. Good pepperoni, good cheese. 3 Crying Luckies

The Crust: Not only huge, also pretty tasty. 4 Crying Luckies

The Sauce: There wasn't much on there, but it was pretty tasty. 3 Crying Luckies

The Ambience: Too many tvs. Nice big windows that are kept open, though. You can heckle pedestrians, if so inclined. The staff is pretty friendly, and you can tell the pizza chefs that they rock on the way out (or on the way in, if you want to make sure your order is extra-tasty.). 3.5 Crying Luckies.

Overall: The two things that will get me to go back over and over (when in San Diego) are the novelty of giant slices of pizza, and the proximity to the beach. The pizza itself is thoroughly tasty. The ride is entertaining (especially dodging traffic), and there are plenty of opportunities for people watching. 4 Crying Luckies

Far too long between rides

I got out for a very brief (4 blocks total) ride last night. Today, of course, I rode to work and to pick up dinner.

I got used to the power and handling of the Triumph since I ride so much, so having a week away made it fresh and thrilling again. After a week in a cage, my right wrist got a little twitchy (not to mention my raging claustrophobia).

I'd better start planning a good long ride for this weekend, especially since National Novel Writing Month starts next week.

I like to be here when I can

Yep, home again.

Travelling was interesting, as always. The flight home was delayed, and then they decided to play musical luggage carousels with us. I was worried that it was going to be all smooth and uninteresting.

So, here's what we did, and a brief summary of things that were planned, and things that actually happened:

• Incredibly quantities of crab were consumed.
• Enough Grain Belt Premium, a beer of exceptional quality, was consumed to result in my waking up dizzy the next day. Also, I understand a new friend of mine was giving me no end of shit during the course of my Grain Belt consumption. I, of course, missed all of her witty quips. This is because I lose my hearing when drinking, and I am entirely unable to focus on more than one thing at a time.
• The other thing I was focused on was, of course, making 9 pounds of hot wings for my adoring fans.
  
• No "new" pizza was consumed. GOOD pizza, yes, but a pizza I've already mentioned on this blog (way back here).
• Many, many games of pool were played. Of those, I lost by scratching on the 8 ball (or while breaking) 8 times. Dammit.
• The main reason for going up, my grandma's 90th birthday party, was pretty cool, and resulted in a great new name for a band: Nine Decades of Grandma.
• I got to shoot a potato slingshot. Perhaps you'll get to see some video. Maybe not.
  
• Lady Luck got a totally awesome new pair of motorcyclin' boots. I looked for a place to make me some custom boots, one of which says "Kicking" and the other "Stomping." No luck there.
• We had lunch in Bloomington Rock City (former home of Minne-Texa-Welshy Chris Cope.)

Apologies for the delay

Well, I know I said those reviews would be up soon, and they aren't. They probably won't be up for another week or so, as I'm heading up to Minnesota for a week and will be just a bit too busy to sit down to write pizza reviews. Sorry!

That said, I'm going to be in Minnesota for a week. With luck, fabulous new pizzas will be sampled, Grain Belt Premium will be drunk (in oceanic quantities), and one of my many nefarious contacts in the Midwest will loan me a bike to ride for a day or two (this will be entirely separate from the consumption of mass quantities of Grain Belt Premium).

The bike part is, of course, entirely wishful thinking.

So, if I don't post tonight, see all y'all next Tuesday.

Just an update

The new pizza reviews are in draft form right now. Yes, that means half-written. They'll be up soon.

Now, on to this whole novel thing. It's going to be sort of a supernatural satire/comedy. I'm busy figuring out characters, and odd situations to stick them in. If there were a book jacket, it might say something like: "2 unsavory but loveable characters decide, for various reasons, they must embark on an epic quest across the U.S. by motorcycle looking for God(s), beauty, mischeif and really wild times. Hilarity ensues when they discover America is just as weird as they are."

So, uh, there that is. I'll see if I can work in a crazed, Vespa-riding photographer, but that character's only probable purpose will be to get killed. He'll most likely be wearing a red shirt.

I can't promise that it'll be good. In fact, if it's actually good, I'm going to be as surprised as you are.

...And once that shock wears off, I'm going to sell that sucker and get rich and enjoy touring the country signing the boobs of my adoring fans. Because that's what writing is all about. Just ask Mark Twain or Shakespeare.

And now, we start counting down to Nov. 1.

What's happenin'

Some random news about things motorcycle, pizza, blog and otherwise.

• I had today off. Columbus day is an awesome holiday.
• I have 2 pizza reviews to write. Yes, I've been slacking. They'll be up soon.
• Tomorrow, I'm going to have a new boss. I'm extremely nervous about this because past experience has taught me that "new boss = even worse than the current boss."
• Lady Luck rode 80 miles with me on her Vespa the other day. Pretty soon she's going to have an iron butt like me.
• NaNoWriMo is coming up again. Last year I didn't do it because I was going to start a business. We can all see how well that plan worked out. I haven't decided if I'm going to try this year or not. I've got an awesome novel involving motorcycles and unsavory characters all worked out in my head.
  
• Would any of y'all be interested in episodically reading a (crappy, crappy) novel that only has motorcycles and a biting sense of humor as redeeming qualities?
• Fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches somehow turned out to be significantly more delicious than I thought they would be. You should try them.
• I am deeply ashamed to confess that I broke down and got a cell phone. I am planning to find some obscene stickers to defile it with post-haste.
  

Attention!

One of the big keys to staying alive and unspoiled on a motorcycle is staying focused and attentive while riding. A pleasant side-effect of that focus and attention, for me at least, is noticing things I never payed attention to when driving my cage. As a cautious driver, I usually noticed dummies likely to spoil my commute, but I rarely noticed things outside of traffic.

Although Lady Luck is the master of spotting interesting places, I tend to notice shops and restaurants (particularily pizza joints) much more while riding than when in a car.

Since I ride to work every day at pretty much the same time, and usually along the same route, I've started to notice other commuters who share my route and timing. I recognize most of the people at each bus stop every morning, to the point that I wonder where some of them are when they aren't there.

Anyway, it continues to amaze me how much more interesting the world is from the saddle of a motorcycle. And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get back to daydreaming about where I'm going to ride to this weekend.

Good morning, sucker!

This morning I somehow managed to step on the pointy corner of the frame of my bed. More amazing than that is how I managed to then step on our laundry basket with the other foot, fall and miss the bed by inches, thus shaking the whole house when I hit the floor.

Truly, there is no better way to start a day than laying on the floor clutching your wrist and noticing that your foot is bleeding. It sure made me glad that I got out of bed.

Anyways, I'm mostly ok. My foot hurts and I'm limping, but I didn't mess my wrist up, at least.

And I'm still able to ride!

Three Minute Hero

Yesterday I was out riding and saw two douchebags in a green Dodge Neon tailgating a girl on a scooter. When I say "tailgating" I mean "five feet behind her." Since they were following her, and not taking opportunities to pass, I felt that as a Scary Biker Guy, it was my duty to step in and help a sistah out.

I got up next to them and made my patented "sadistic and batshit crazy" face and shook a fist at them, then passed them and got into the lane she was in. They took the hint and got the hell off the road post-haste.

In hindsight, I'm really glad they were just chickenshit bullies.

Anyway, the girl on the scooter was grateful for my intervention. Apparently they had been following her for a long time, and she'd been trying to lose them. I saw her out riding again today, so I guess they didn't bother her after that.

I'd just like to say that guys who pick on girls on scooters need to be hog-tied and dragged behind a bright pink scooter to the nearest "Pee Wee's Big Adventure-style" biker bar, where they are then stomped, tattooed, hung and killed.