Sunday, December 23, 2007

Motorcycle Madness!

I suppose you were expecting a Christmas enty, right? Well, tough shit.

This entry is about motorcycles. But, not about my current one. I read a few message boards, and contribute as well. If you search google for WoodMotorsports you'll find a few message board entries here and there. (I just did it, just to make sure nothing to bad shows up... in the first few pages anyway). Well, tonight someone on Supermotojunkie.com posted a link that brought back a lot of memories....

Honda Trail 70 is a site dedicated to the bike that started it all for me. I really hadn't thought about it much, even though it was the first bike that put me in the hospital and I revisited a similar scene this year. I remember riding in circles around a pasture on that bike. Hell, I remember riding it before I knew how to stop without help. I remember dad riding wheelies on it. I don't remember that damn thing ever being broke, but at that age I wasn't doing much of my own wrenching. It's kind of funny how the motorcycling thing has come, gone, and come back again over the years. I just about always had wheels in grade school, started on two, then went to three for a while as well (ATC110 Honda). I remember dad getting ready for a big bike trip, but don't remember when or what bike he was taking. I remember Uncle Don having those freakishly fast two stroke, three cylinder street bikes that we had to pull with a car to get started once.

The first bike I bought for myself was a Honda Hurricane 600 when the sport bike craze was just getting going. I didn't have it long because lower enlisted Army guys with families have been known to sell stuff to pay bills.

Dad didn't have a bike for years either. I think what drug me back into it was him buying a Goldwing a couple years ago. I should have never got on the damn thing. Now I've got a Suzuki DRZ400SM that has more aftermarket parts than factory ones.....and wouldn't it be cool to track down a trail 70 to fix up?

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Just some crap.

We had our Christmas breakfast at work today. I guess that's nice of them to spend my profit share money on cold eggs, but since my entire team is based 1.5 hours away from the office, and we loose an hour going into central time zone getting there, it sure screws up the routes for the techs right off the bat. In other words, by the time my crew actually started the first job of their route, it was after 11:00. Somehow I don't get how nobody higher up can't understand the math involved. I also think that if one of them sat down and figured out how much wages plus gas for 20 vans is costing the company for a single trip to Montgomery, they would see how fast a Columbus office would pay off.

Speaking of wasting company money, here was my side trip of the day. I want to get a few better pictures of that railraod bridge that I posted a couple weeks ago. A quick check of the GPS got me much closer to it. I didn't have the camera with me, but I was passing through the area so I did a recon. As you can see in Google Earth I can cut through Omaha and there is a dirt road that follows the tracks to the river....

Here is a closer shot.....

The dirt road basically runs straight into the Chattahoochee River, and it a great angle to get some closer/better pictures of the big bridge. That damn thing really intrigues me for some reason. Anyway, I could probably get right up to it walking the tracks, but believe it or not, out in the middle of NOWHERE, there was a crew of convicts cleaning up the vary spot where the dirt road meets the river. SOOOO...that hike will have to wait until another day. I'm thinking I may take the bike and ride it right down the tracks, but I've got to see how rough it is first. I couldn't believe the convicts were down there though...I'm here to tell you that even downtown Omaha is small enough that you don't usually see another car on the road....even smaller than Wellington...by a long shot. Well, you get the idea. I'm thinking I may do my first geocache stash somewhere down there though. There are not any others anywhere close, and the bridge is a cool sight for folks willing go off the beaten path.

Well, so goes it for another day down the tubes. Christyn has both Lyndsay and Morgan while Deb and Celeste are grocery shopping, so I'll spend some time surfing the net in quiet while I've got it.

 

 

Monday, December 17, 2007

What a wasted weekend!

Well, I didn't get much accomplished this weekend, other than breathing in a bunch of oxygen that someone with more go-power could have used. The plan was for Lyndsay and I to go "treasure hunting" Saturday, but other events screwed that up. Between techs stopping by to get equipment from me and friends dropping by it was noon before we had a chance to escape...then the rain started. And it rained pretty much all day and night. Then the roof leak started! It turns out that the rubber seals that surround our vent pipes had pretty much dried up and fell out. It had been that way for some time, but we didn't know because for the most part it didn't rain this past year. I used Bishops tape and rigged them for now.

Oh, also it is sort of like winter here now. As I type this Weatherbug is showing 26 degrees outside. It's supposed to make it to 52 today, so it isn't quite like winter at mom and dads, but at least it's making an attempt to get cold.

Here is a couple pictures from last Thursday. I was off due to working last Sunday and went for a ride and found a couple geocaches.

I've gained a couple readers lately, so I thought I'd better warn them of my "on and off" blogging. This isn't exactly a blog that will be running your email full of alerts. Sometimes I do a few a week, other times a couple per month.

Monday, December 3, 2007

A few pictures from today.

Mom asked who sets these caches out. Pretty much anyone that's into it. What's in it for them? It's sort of like a blog...you watch the page to see who visits it, see what they left, and see what they took. I'll be setting some out eventually. It's not just about the hunt, though that is what I really like about it. It's also about finding things that you normally would pass right by every day......

That's the Bacon Motel. At one time it was the only motel close to Plains, GA. It's actually out in the country a couple miles, and it's not very big. It sure doesn't look like any motel I've ever seen. A cache brought me here. I found another Travel Bug with a small tank attached. It was set in motion by a WWII vets granddaughter after he died. The idea is for this one to make it to the WWII memorial in Washington, D.C.

I also stopped to snap this picture while on the road today.....

Dad mentioned a cool bridge they had spotted on a motorcycle ride, and this one came to mind. It's a RailRoad Trestle across the Chattahoochee River close to Omaha, GA. I'm on the car bridge for this picture basically stranding on the state line of AL and GA. The trestle hasn't been used in some time, and the car bridge is actually quite a bit lower....larger boats no longer come up the river to Columbus like they did at one time.

If anything this hobby makes you notice things that have always been there. I found two great places for a picnic today that we'll be visiting very soon. My leg is getting more rehab than it has since I left the hospital. All in all, this is a pretty cool thing to me.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

A fun, unproductive, weekend.

Well, me and Monk hit the treasure trail Saturday. We were in Flat Rock park, the same one Mom, Dad, and I road through on our short motorcycle ride. It was a wonderful day, and we did some major off road hiking. Probably the best therapy I've had for my leg yet.  I'd say we did 3 miles or more, but some of the terrain was rough! We found more than we didn't, but there were a couple that we didn't track down.  We also found a couple "travel bugs"....trackable tags that you attach to an item, then it gets tracked online as it moves from cache to cache. Each travelbug has it's own page, with instructions in some cases. That's what the one of Monk with the Disney stuff is about...that one is trying to make it to Disney. I'll be helping it get about 50 miles farther south. Oh, and I seen that I got a comment from a fellow geocacher...I may be hitting her up for some tips, because the micro-caches are hard to find!

We went to Macon for a day trip to visit friends. On the way back I even had Deb scouring the brush looking for some I couldn't find last week. She is pretty good luck because we found all but one that I couldn't turn up before. I really didn't think she'd give a rats ass about my latest time killer, but she jumped right in. I guess we are both friggin' crazy.