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Last summer I bought a motorcycle. It was a Kawasaki Vulcan 800. I absolutely love that bike. At the time I bought it I had my truck which was out of commission. I bought the motorcycle and said “oh i’ll just fix the truck later, it will be easy, and I can ride the motorcycle until then.” Fast forward 6 months, we’re in the dead of winter, I still have my motorcycle (running like a champ!) but no truck anymore.

A buddy of mine came over and looked at the truck. Fuel injector problems. Exhaust problems. Clutch problems. Won’t even start properly problems. It would have been a minimum of $3500 to fix all the things wrong with the truck and I could buy a newer truck than mine for that kind of money. It came time to sell the truck. It got sold to pick n pull for around $400. I was extremely sad to see it go. What made it worse was having to follow it out of the drive way on my bike on my way to work. I thought they would be later in the day picking up the truck. I was wrong and very surprised at how emotional I got seeing the truck go.

She was a good truck. Took me across the state of Texas more times than I can count, and then got me out here to Nevada, and kept running for over a year after that. She probably had somewhere near 200,000 miles on her. I’m not too sure because the odometer quit working somewhere about 3 years before she died. The odo read 156,xxx when I got rid of her.

Life moves on though, and it is for the living. Sadly my truck is no longer living. So we get where I am today. Or more specifically where I was this afternoon when I left work. I walked outside and it was raining. Not a heavy rain, but enough to make the streets wet, and enough to make my butt a little wet on the seat of the motorcycle when I sat down despite having dried the seat off as best I could. I think this is the second time I’ve driven the bike in the rain. Once you get moving and the wind dries all the water from your face shield its not so bad.

The bad part is the mornings when I have to go to work. It’s typically between 30 degrees and 40 degrees. I’ve learned to appreciate the lower 40 degree weather. It’s nice compared to sub 30. A few mornings ago it was 9 degrees outside when I left. If the temp is above about 35 I can still feel my legs when I get to work. IF it is below, then my legs are usually numb by the time I arrive. I should get some better gear for my legs, but I’m poor, and it would take a long time to change clothes once I got to work. Maybe next winter…

It has been awhile since I blogged on a regular basis, and I’m going to try it again. I don’t really play WOW anymore, so maybe I have some more time for it. I’ll start this with an interesting little story that happened back on Christmas Eve.

I worked Chirstmas Eve day, and my brother Chris was down for a visit during this time. One of my favorite bands Hellbound Glory was playing a Christmas Eve show that night down in Tahoe. The show started about 10pm, so I figured it would be a long night. Chris had been trying to get a shot of the welcome to California sign since he had arrived but we had always been going by too fast for him to get it. This particular show was happening in a town that sits right on the Nevada California border.

So we started driving down there around 8pm loaded down with monster energy drinks for everyone because it was gonna be a long night. We got to the town and were looking for the club where the show was going to take place. While we were looking for the club we noticed that there was a welcome to California sign right next to a drive way that could easily be pulled into. We stopped and let little brother get his picture, and while we were there we happened to notice the club right across the street. Had we not stopped to get his picture, we would have driven right by it.

We parked and went inside to the bar area where the show was going to be held. Right after we came in a guy came over and asked Chris for his ID. The guy spent a long time looking at it (Texas ID in Nevada) and then finally stopped and said “oh wait, you aren’t even 21, you need to get out of here” (Chris is 18, I figured it would be ok for a club if he didn’t drink or anything). I tried to reason with the man, but he was having none of it. I saw a sign later on (nowhere near the entrance) that said you absolutely had to be at least 21 to enter the establishment since it was considered a straight up casino.

So anyway, yea Christmas Eve night I got my little brother thrown out of a casino. Then I said to Ashley, “Well, lets get my record signed, and then we can get out of here.” So I found Leroy and he signed the record, and called the other 2 boys in the band over and they signed too.

Then I told Leroy that we were going to have to leave because my little brother got thrown out of the casino, and we were sorry, but we would catch them next time. Leroy said “Well, can you stay for a few songs? We can see if we can start the show a little early if you can.” I called Chris and told him we’d be out in a few mins (he was waiting out in the car) because the band was starting early. They got on stage and asked us what songs we wanted to hear.

They played about 5 or 6 of our requests before we ended up having to get out of there. I really didn’t want to go, but I felt bad leaving Chris out in the cold car for as long as we had. It was down somewhere in the teens because we were so high in elevation. Ashley has always made a joke (at least I hope its a joke…) about if we ever get divorced we’re going to have a divorce party and Hellbound Glory is going to play it for us. The boys actually agreed to do it that night while we were there, and they even played one of our favorite songs “Get Your Shit And Go”.

So that is the story about how I got a personal Christmas Eve show from one of my favorite bands. Oh there was no one else in the bar except the people who came with the band, so it really was played for just Ashley and I. Here’s a short little video I took while we were there.

After the little personal show we drove home. By the time we had actually arrived back in Reno it was technically Christmas morning and we stopped in at Denny’s for a late night meal.

The official poster is out for the Hank 3 show! I’ll be staying for the Hank3 part, and the Hellbilly part. I’ll have to see about ADD. I’m not sure how much I’m going to like the “Doom” music.

I know I haven’t used this blog much lately. Life starts to happen, I get busy, don’t find time to write. But I’m going to try to do a teensy bit better about that. Last week I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation rider’s course. I’ve ridden before, actual motorcycles. Not a lot, but I have. I also own a Tau Tau 50 cc scooter that I’ve been putting around town with the last few months.

It was so much fun! The biggest problem is that it has no power. I can only achieve about 35 mph on the road, which can get me in some trouble with the traffic around here. It is also not as responsive as I would like. If I was ever in a tough spot and needed to get out of it quick, I wouldn’t be able to, because that scooter just doesn’t do fast. Since I’ve gotten so good with the scooter I decided to look into actual motorcycles.

I signed up for the MSF course, and couldn’t wait to get out there and ride. It was a 2 day course. I was pleasantly surprised that the first day consisted of about an hour and a half in the classroom and then about 6 hours on the bikes. Our training location was a high school parking lot.

In that picture my bike is actually the one furthest left in the back there. The course was a lot of fun, but more difficult than I had anticipated. We learned basics of riding. We learned swerving, making figure 8′s, going into and coming out of sharp turns and S curves. It was over all a lot of fun. The final test you could score up to 21 points on (the more points the worse you did). I scored an 8, which was not lowest in the class, but it wasn’t highest either. I got points added for going outside the box on the figure 8 maneuver and for not going fast enough in the S curve.

As soon as the class was over I went down to the DMV and got my motorcycle endorsement on my license, so I could legally drive a motorcycle within an hour of completing the course. Awesomeness.

After the DMV I went down to the Kawasaki dealership because they had an advertisement for a 250 honda rebel that I was interested in. It was the same bike as what I had taken my MSF course on. I got there and they didn’t have it. The salesman tried to upsale me to a Kawasaki Vulcan 800 classic. I thought that 800 might be a little too much bike for me being a beginner. I tried the bike out anyway, and fell in love.

I went back the next day and bought it, and then the following day had it delivered.

Since getting the bike I’ve driven it back and forth to work daily. I had it out on the freeway yesterday and today. I also learned today what it feels like when the bike runs out of gas. Luckily the bike has a reserve tank, so I was able to flip over to that and make it to a gas station. I’m loving the bike, and I am SO glad I went with an 800cc bike instead of a 250cc. I intend to hold onto this bike for a long while, and I think I would have outgrown a 250cc pretty quickly.

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Celebrating the first man into space.

Honor is now purchasable from the Justice Commodities Vendor at 250 Honor per 375 Justice.
Justice is now purchasable from the Honor Commodities Vendor at 250 Justice per 375 Honor.
Conquest is now purchasable from the Valor vendor at 250 Conquest per 250 Valor.

source

Means I can grind some honor to get gear for dungeons, right? (I honestly don’t know what you can buy with justice points.) On top of that with honor being doubled next patch.. wow, that’s going to be a lot of justice points. I might actually try some pve content now that I can gear for heroics (I think) without ever setting foot in a regular dungeon. (Not that I’d do that, I still need to learn the dungeons…)

This was originally posted by me over at filetmignome.com about our guilds rated bg run last night. read more »