Dam, Another One

I like dams so get off my back. This is the Bellamy Dam in Madbury taming the might Bellamy River and creating the Bellamy Reservoir.

Veinticuatro

I'm not going to give much away, but as a courtesy for those people who are not up to date on their episodes of 24, you need to click the link below to see the post.

Ok. Um. Ok.

• Why was there not a guard at the door of the room Chloe was in?
  
• Why did they not immediately make 8 back up copies of that recording as soon as Jack arrived?
  
• How come there wasn't a guard in the room with Chloe?
  
• How come Chloe didn't jump up and scream bloody murder when the Evil Miles walked into the room?
  
• If no guard, how come Bill or someone trustworthy wasn't in the room with her?
• Also, how come Jack never played the recording for them over the phone during the past 3 episodes? If for nothing else, just to prove to someone that it existed? I mean, Wayne's probably dead and so is the banker dude. Oh wait, thats right. Secretary of Defense Heller heard it and he's alive now! Maybe HE made a back up copy!
  
• You mean to tell me that they can upload schematics of a Russian nuclear power plant heating and ventilation system to his PDA in seconds but he can't get them a copy of the recording?
  
• Did he lose his USB cable? Or maybe the recorder isn't Bluetooth? Maybe Chloe should teach him how to open a socket or go in through a subnet.
  
• What gives? I am very perturbed.
  
• I hope Martha blows her husband away in a drunken drugged stupor.
  

Prison Break

My wife and I are almost caught up with Prison Break. At one point we were three episodes behind because it comes on at 8 pm and we ALWAYS have to tape it. Now we only have about 10 minutes left of last weeks episode to watch.

But anyway, this show is entertaining, but I swear that there has never been any TV show that has forced me to swallow my tongue to keep from screaming more than this show. The only plot twist that they haven't employed yet is aliens, but I bet they will in the season finale. Thats how Scofield and his crew are finally going to get out. Aliens will pick them up on the roof of the infirmary. Oh yeah, and Bellick will turn out to be a vampire who gets killed by a slayer. A vampire slayer, if you will.

At one point in last weeks episode (which we watched last night) when Linc's long lost father rescued him from a crash, my wife started to go off on the unbelievability of this show and I stopped her dead in her tracks by saying, "Steph! Its PRISON BREAK!" and she replied, thoroughly humbled, "Oh yeah, I forgot. Suspend reality."

What Being a Dad Means to Me

Being a Dad means wiping the snot off your baby son's nose with your thumb because you have no wipes or kleenex and then putting your hand in your pocket to wipe your thumb off.

Kip Journal 2/5/1999

Kip once had a boil on his arm. it got so huge that one day it just went 'phfsffhfdfdfs'.

Kip & 9.5 are going to 'jam' and drink lots of suds tomorrow.

"As long as there is no traffic on the George Washington Bridge..it is way faster than the Tappan Zee."

On his honeymoon, Kip stayed at a cabin that was at 4200 feet.."If you sleepwalked..dude you would fall into a crevasse that was 3600 feet straight down."

When Kip used to work in the radio station, they would throw records against the wall. The records would shatter and the pieces would stick in the ceiling.

Miscellany

I taught my wife how to drive my truck last night, it's a stick shift and she's never driven one before. She did very well. Only stalled it a couple of times and didn't make the rookie mistake of revving the engine up to 5000 rpms and letting the clutch out slooow. My sister does that. Even now.

Once when I was kid, probably around 8 or 9, my mother packed 4 kids in a Chevy Citation with a stick shift so that she could buy cigarettes. She didn't know how to drive it and we lurched and stalled and bucked and squealed all the way to the store. I was very embarassed and also absolutely convinced that I could drive it better.

This softball season is not going to be as fun as the last three.

Lurleen knocked on our door at 10pm last night. We didn't answer it. What a looser (misspelled on purpose. I imagine that's how she spells it).

My grass is finally starting to grow. I can't wait to use my new mower. I thought about how appropriate the brand name "Weedeater" is when used on my lawn.

Virginia never looked as good as it does right now.

The other day I overheard Lurleen (her voice has no volume control) tell her boyfriend that their daughter opened the curtains when Lurleen was walking around the house "butt naked." I threw up in my mouth. That got me to thinking though, who would I prefer to see naked, Lurleen or Butch. I decided on Butch because at least she bathes and her skin wouldn't glisten. Its the lesser of two evils really. Where Lurleen might induce blindness in both eyes, the worst Butch could do is effect one eye.

I am glad Johnny Demon got booed.

I have a new supervisor at work. Someone told me once that you never know who you might end up working for someday. So true.

I need to fix my motorcyle and ride my 4 wheeler more often.

As sacrilegious as this may sound, I am still not into the baseball season yet. I barely check my fantasy baseball teams and really when I do its just to make sure nobody is on the disabled list.

Back in the day swimming in the quarry in Wells was fun.

Life is tough.

Doppelganger

John Lackey meet Haywire










Haywire meet John Lackey

Original Artwork

VeeDub by Rebecca Martin (AKA Evil One)

This made my hands tremble

Game Six of the 1986 World Series with Nintendo RBI Baseball

Hmmm

I kinda broke this blog in Internet Explorer. Bear with me. It looks good in Firefox though.

Update: Well, I fixed it a little bit. Its the bodycount table that is messing it up and the raking post. I will revisit the problem later. I should look at it on my iBook too, but I don't want to. All day at work I have to do that, this is supposed to be fun.

Also on Saturday

My oldest son got stuck under the van trying to retrieve a ball, requiring me to jack it up to free him. I shoulda taken a picture. Ah well, life is full of shouldas.

He didn't even say thank you afterwards. Such ingratitude after all the times I`ve saved your life.

Maniacs

While researching white pines for yesterdays post about raking, I discovered that the state flower of Maine is the WHITE PINE CONE! It's not even a flower!

I also discovered that the state flower of West Virginia is the Rhododendron. Which didn't surprise me because on our recent trip to West Virginia, I noticed a lot of wild rhododendrons. In my mind, rhododendrons only grow in front yards and I couldn't grasp the concept of them in the woods. I thought maybe a hundred years ago some moonshiner wanted to spruce up his shack by planting a few and then they spread over the whole mountainside.

On Saturday

I













and










and










some more.

I am not lucky enough to just have











or











the bulk of it is








Two truck loads of it. If my next house has any white pine trees in the yard, they are as good as firewood.

VeeDub Quote

If you had a spiritual experience like me you would know why I would never harm any animal.

Oh Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy!

Combining my two greatest cinematical loves, Westerns and Brad Pitt. No I am not gay.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Also, a link to the Yahoo page.

We Don't Like It

http://revolution.nintendo.com/

We are speechless and we think that this is the worst name ever. We were embarassed when the Gamecube first came out and it was purple, but truly, we did not see this coming.

Holy Moly! Congratulations!

To Rob and his wife for the birth of their first child, Charlie.























Legal Disclaimer: Actual baby depicted may or may not be the real baby

Body Count 2006

I am going to keep track of the number of animals my cat, Papi, kills this year. Last summer he killed probably 2 dozen moles. I just want to have a record of that for this year for scientific purposes.

Including the 2 Blue Jays he killed in February, the body count is now:

6

Breakdown
Birds	2
Moles	3
Mice	1

Chubby What?

I went to lunch early yesterday to avoid VeeDub, and there was only 3 other people in there.

Two women were seated at a table across the room. One of them was talking to the other about the chicken she was eating and I quote, "They were difficult to cook, because they are fairly chubby breasts."

I had to punch myself to keep from laughing. Being the only guy in there I didn't want any sexual harassment suit.

Vegan at Work Quotes

I've decided to keep track of some of her quotes. They are priceless. She also needs a nickname. VeeDub.

"I don't think its right to force nicknames upon children"

"Red heads are more resistant to pain killer"
[This quote was contributed by Evil One and VeeDub is in fact a red head. Ed.]

She wants to name her next child Frost, after the Deacon Frost character from Blade. She likes the name Deacon too, but won't use it because it is associated with churches.

Another Fabulous Movie Review

Fun with Dick and Jane

Did you know that this was a remake of a 1977 movie starring George Segal (Jack Gallo from Just Shoot Me) and Jane Fonda? I knew it was a remake but didn't know any details about it until I searched in IMDB. Do I have any desire to see the original? Nah. Not really.

This movie is pretty good, not great, but pretty good. I wish it had been more of a dark comedy than a slapstick one. It made me laugh out loud a few times. Their son, who has a Mexican nanny, speaks a lot of Spanish and talks with an accent which was good for a few laughs.

Jim Carrey is his usual self with a lot of rubberfacing and camera hogging that he always does.

There's one scene that made me bust out laughing where he goes to a job interview and I won't give out any too many details, but he is made fun of by a bunch of executives. Easily the funniest part of the movie.

The thing I will remember most about this movie is my wife beating me at Scrabble by a hundred points.

I give this movie 2 1/2 stars out of 5.

Twunny Fo

Is it just me or was the technical jargon in last night's 24 just a little over the top? And there was more than usual. I wish I could remember more of it. Can you get transcripts online? Hmmm. At one point I looked at my wife and said, "What he just said means absolutely nothing."

Chloe: "I'll just go in through a subnet"

Miles: "I'll track her through the binaries"

Someone should make a 24 technical jargon generator. You could fill a database with every acronym and technology you can think of and the generator would spit out random sentences.

Fabulous Movie Review

A History of Violence

It stinks. Thats just my opinion (and my wife's), I welcome yours.

New Crabgrass and Dandelion Mower

I pride myself on having been married for almost 10 years and never buying a new lawnmower (we've never lived in an apartment either).

My first mower was electric and it was given to me by my grandfather. It was a real pain to use, dragging multiple extension cords around the yard, but it was very quiet and our yard wasn't that big so I survived.

When we moved from that house into our current house, I figured I was going to have to bite the bullet and plunk down some Hamiltons and get a mower. The yard is bigger and I didn't want to upgrade to 100 foot extension cords.

Luckily one day I spied a mower on the side of the road with a "free" sign on it. Excited, I went to the house of which the mower was in front, knocked on the door and politely asked about the mower. Not sure why I did, as the "free" sign was pretty self-explanatory. The gentleman who answered the door looked at me as if I was some teenager all messed up on goofballs. "What mower?" he asked. "That one," I said pointing. "Ain't mine," he replied. I shrugged and left and threw the mower into my truck as happy as could be. I figured somebody else started to take this treasure home and changed their mind and just left it there. Maybe they got tired of pushing it. Who knows, it was mine now.

When I got it home I inspected it further. Besides being older than my dad, it had multiple large cracks in the deck, the wheel adusters had no spring left in them to stay in position, and the screws holding the handle on were stripped so it would pop out of position because they weren't tight. Oh yeah, and it had no blade. Rats.

Getting a blade shouldn't have been a problem, you would think, but it was. This mower was an 18 incher. Pretty rare apparently. I went to 3 or 4 hardware stores before I found the right size.

Finally, later that week with the blade installed I put some gas in it and it started right up! Happy? Yes. Nothing beats free. Come to think of it, I never checked if it had oil in it. And you know what? I never checked the oil (or changed it for that matter) in the 7 years I had it.

The thing was LOUD and it vibrated so badly I was always afraid the motor was going to fly off and decapitate me, but it ran and cut my crabgrass and it was FREE, so I didn't care.

As I mentioned before, I used that thing for 7 years. Never did a bit of maintenance to it. Oh wait, I take that back, I changed the spark plug last year because I stored the mower outside and the plug had gotten so rusty a reliable electric connection with the spark plug wire could no longer be made. Anyway, this year, as much as I hated to do it, I decided I would finally let it go to the great landfill in the sky and get a new one.

There was only one issue, besides my obsession with pieces of crap, I don't like to spend my money on items that bring me no joy. There would be no electric start, no riding mower, no self-propulsion, no grass catchers, no nothing that would drive the price up. So I bought this little baby at Walmart for $138 minus my wife's 10 percent discount. Not too bad. And it's a 22 incher! Thats four more inches of cutting width. I should be able to get my lawn done in half the time. At least.

Kip Journal 2/4/1999

Kip direct quote: "I had actually found that awhile before Jared did. ha ha hee hee."

Kip does steroids everyday. He enjoys having a large liver and no dick.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Editor's note: what the hell is that supposed to mean?

[That editor's note is an actual editor's note from the time when the entry was originally made. Ed.]

Kip's dog fell through the ceiling of the apartment below his.

Word of the Day

creep·y old guy (krp ld g) n. Informal creep·i·er old guy, creep·i·est old guy Of or producing a sensation of uneasiness or fear generally in women but also children and to a lesser degree husbands, boyfriends and fathers, as of things crawling on one's skin at the mere sight or a recollection of past experience. Annoyingly unpleasant; repulsive: the creepy old guy next door.

New Children's Book

See Dick Swett...










See Dick Trickle...












See Dick Burns

What to do. What to do.

I registered gagknee.com yesterday. I've been using gagknee as a username, email address, url, etc. for ever and I've been putting off snagging the domain for a few years now. Not sure what I am going to do with it yet, but I know that if somebody else took it I would kick myself.

KIp Journal 1/29/1999, 2/1/1999, 2/2/1999

My apologies. It's been a while since I posted an entry from the Kip Journal. I will make up for it by posting three days worth of entries into one post.

1/29/1999

Kip was doing Help Desk tickets from home.

Kip said his head is as big as a basketball.

2/1/1999

Kip's motto: "If you dont fall you aren't trying hard enough."

The first time Kip went snowboarding he was going down the hill and he was getting pretty good at it. He saw some guys jumping and he figured he could do it to. He ended up flipping over sideways and going down the hill backwards.

2/2/1999

Kip was general manager of a radio station in Farmington Maine.

Kip and Rosco appear to be 'good buddies'. It just might end up with Rosco having his first sexual experience since he lost his poster of Daisy Duke.

[Rosco, another employee there, was called that because he looked and laughed (mostly laughed, you know, the coo coo coo laugh) like Rosco P. Coltrane from the TV show Dukes of Hazzard. Ed.]

You Wouldn't Mind...

Lurleen knocked on our door last night, my wife waved her to come in, but Lurleen waved my wife to come out. We were in the middle of dinner, which Lurleen could clearly see as my entire family was seated at the table, but she didn't care. Lurleen cares only for Lurleen.

When my wife opened the door Lurleen asked her to come out, which my wife graciously did. Why the secrecy? I figured there was a death in the family or her trailer caught on fire or maybe she was out of cigarettes and wanted to know if we smoked Basic Menthol Ultra Light 100s.

Nah, none of the above. Apparently, she is no longer going to be babysitting for these two kids that she, um, babysits. I wouldn't describe it as babysitting however, for I've seen Lurleen in action. It mostly involves sitting on her fat ace and yelling. So Lurleen needs a job to pay for baby beauty pageants and Lurleen came over to ask my wife if she would babysit Lurleen's daughter at 5:30 in the morning until whenever the boyfriend wakes up and pick Lurleen up at work at the McDonald's in Lee at 1 in the afternoon five days a week.

Ahh, Lurleen. You're such a peach.

First my wife told her that since she quit Walmart she is also looking for a job. To which Lurleen replied excitedly, "Do YOU need a sitter?". Sorry, Lurleen, the only person who is allowed to verbally abuse my children is me (I kid, I don't verbally abuse my children). My wife then told her she was going to discuss it with Andy (that's me) and let her know later.

My first response when my wife came back in? They have three cars, why don't they fix the one that is broken or register the brand new one sitting in the garage?

Why are the upstanding members of society expected to pick up the slack of the lazy members? Or why do the lazy ones automatically assume everyone around them is there to serve them?

Whatever. There's a difference between helping someone out when they are truly in need and when they are just being a drain on the resources (mental, emotional, physical and financial) of others. I'm not even sure if that last sentence makes sense. I'm on a rant.

My answer is simply, no. I repeatedly offered to my wife to tell this to Lurleen myself. She declined each time. Probably afraid that I wouldn't be tactful.

Later that evening, my wife did ask what I would say and I answered (paraphrased I can't remember my exact words), "No, I can't. I have three kids of my own to take care of, one of whom needs to picked up at school at 3 which is a half hour drive away. I also have to watch my nephew a couple of days a week after school. Not to mention our house is for sale and we have to keep it pretty clean at all times in case of a showing. It would cause a lot of stress to be gone driving around my entire afternoon and taking care of an extra baby all morning. The extra stress would put a strain on my own kids and my marriage and I don't want to be put in that kind of position. And why don't you guys fix or register the cars that you have you lazy smelly person."

Ok, the last sentence was a joke. Anyway, that's what I would say.

I'm probably being a little overdramatic. Basically, it just boils down to we have enough to do taking care of our own family and our own lives. Its one thing to give someone a ride to Hannaford to buy some salisbury steaks, but its entirely different to get locked in to giving somebody a ride to McDonald's 20 minutes away five days a week.

I Almost Forgot....

In case you needed more evidence that my trip to West Virginia was cursed, I forgot to mention that I also locked my keys in my truck one night. The next morning a kind gentleman took my $35 and unlocked my door with a wedge, an air bladder and a long rod. I forgot I had AAA until after I called him, too.

Amend the Constitution

If found guilty of treating a Corvette like this, you should be subject to cruel and unusual punishment.

More Dam Photos

It's All About Perspective

Some people drive with their truck's tailgate down to save the environment by increasing their gas mileage. I drive with my tailgate up to save the environment by preventing the trash from flying out.

More on On-Cor

A few years ago I was working for a company in Manch Vegas but I spent most of one summer working onsite at one of our customer's location. Anyway, one of the people I worked with at the customer's location offered me a whole stack of coupons for On-Cor foods. How did they get these coupons? They found bones in one of their On-Cor meals, so they complained and received tons of coupons from the company.

Understandably, they couldn't bring themselves to ever eat On-Cor again, but why they thought that I would want the coupons after hearing that story is a mystery. Perhaps it was the truck with 200K miles on it, a duct taped back window, 4 bald tires, and a really loud exhaust that I was driving at the time. I was really embarassed to drive that truck to their office. A company where the lowest employee on the totem pole, a real retard too, drove a 2 year old Saab, and everybody else had a BMW.

Tired

Of spending 7 hours of an 8 hour workday fixing other people's crap.

Linda Tripp Report

April 4-5, 2006

I really wanted to leave early on this trip, around 8 pm. First, I was very excited about going, second, every year I am the one who is always late holding up the group. It would have been a supreme personal accomplishment to not only not be late for the proposed departure but to actually be the first one to arrive in West Virginia, and third, I wanted to be able to ride for another half day.

But alas, nothing ever goes as planned. Even though I took the whole day off from work, I still had a lot to do, plus I took advantage of the additional free time to spend more time with my wife and kids.

The Lakota needed finishing and my 400EX needed a tune up. Both should have been simple jobs, but then nothing is simple for me. Approximately 2 hours were wasted looking for the proper tools, not to mention it was cold and rainy out. Someday I will have a garage which will be brightly lit and all tools will be stored in their proper place. Haha.

Eight O'clock rolls around and it becomes quite obvious to me that I am not going to be leaving early, so I did the only sensible thing and humbly called my friends to tell them I would be travelling with them and we made plans to meet. It wasn't any personal reason or hidden grudge that made me want to leave without them, I just wanted to get there early. There is safety in numbers though, in case something goes wrong. I said to my brother who was riding shotgun with me, "If anything happens to my truck Rich has room on his trailer for one more machine and we can throw the other in his bed, and I'll just leave my truck on the side of road and deal with it later."

By 11 pm we were finally on the road. By 11:20 pm we discovered that the piece of crap portable DVD player that I bought at Walmart and used twice could no longer play sound, which is an essential element to movie watching. My brother was able to make it work though, by inserting the cable halfway into the AV port. There were occasional glitches when it popped out or went in to far, but it was better than nothing.

It's a long ride to West Virginia. The entire trip was pretty uneventful except for the freak blizzard we hit in the mountains in Pennsylvania where at times I literally couldn't see the road.

We arrived in Gilbert, WV around 5 pm at our rental units where we discovered they did a little switcharoo on the units we were staying in because of a broken washing machine. Ah well. No big deal. The place was nice and clean and being in town is convenient, although having to walk to a pay phone to call my lovely wife was a bit of a drag, even more so at midnight when all the townies were out doing burnouts and hootin' and hollerin' and such.

Problem #2 surfaced soon after we had unpacked our gear, the box of contacts I had ordered were the wrong prescription! And I had no other contacts because the pair I was wearing the previous night were in a gas station garbage can somewhere in Pennsylvania. The only choice I had was to wear my glasses. I felt like a fool, an April fool as it were.

Problem #3 was some severe back pain that I incurred over the previous weekend moving our portable basketball hoop from the backyard to the front yard. On Monday, I seriously thought I would have to quit the trip because it was so bad and couldn't figure how I was going to sit in the saddle of my ATV for 3 days straight.

Problem #4 was that my stupid Canon Camcorder refused to run off any of its batteries. It appeared to charge them but as soon as the AC plug was detached it wouldn't turn on. I hate Canon. Takes great video but thats useless if the flippin thing doesn't work. So, unfortunately there will be no HM 2006 DVD Box set. My apologies to all those who were looking forward to its release.

For dinner that night we had Hardee's. Mmm. Mushroom Swiss burger and a vanilla milkshake. Goooood eatin'. A girl who worked there had a very filthy shirt on. I tried to get my brother or Grubby to ask her why.

April 6, 2006

Off we travelled to the Pinnacle Creek trail system in Pineville, WV. I was loaded up on Tylenol (four when we left and four more at noon), a back brace, and some Ben-Gay-like stuff, except it was stronger, smellier and burned like a bad sunburn. The combination of all three made the pain bearable. Once we actually started riding however, the adrenaline kicked in and I really didn't feel much discomfort.

Last year we rode this system for about an hour and a half before the Lakota fell apart, so this year it was almost like we had never ridden the system before. We ended up covering most of the system including the green, blue and most of the black trails before the Lakota ran out of gas. It was fun, the black trails were challenging but by no means scary. I'd like to go back but maybe in 2 years.

Oh I forgot to mention, as I was unloading my 4 wheeler from the back of my truck I tripped on a rock and fell. Luckily the machine didn't fall on me...Rob mentioned that we know whose trip is cursed this year. Yes, I definitely felt cursed.

Dinner at Hardee's again and the girl's shirt was still filthy.

April 7, 2006

The previous nights sleep was awful, as in I didn't get any. The olde back was killing me and I was afraid to take more Tylenol because I didn't want to OD.

Today's destination, Buffalo Mountain in between Matewan, Delbarton and Williamson, WV. I love Buffalo Mountain. It is a fun place to ride. If it had a couple of alternate routes to and from Matewan it might be my favorite of all the Hatfield McCoy systems. This year there was a new connector into the town of Delbarton that I was itching to ride.

We started off as we usually do, heading straight for Matewan and the good food at the Matewan Depot restaurant. We paused for a moment of silence at Nate's hill along the way. I can't imagine what was going on in my brother's head when we descended that hill.

After Matewan we headed straight for Delbarton. That new connector is a FUN trail. I loved it. Great hills and tight technical trails on the edge of cliffs. Once in town however its a half mile ride down pavement to the gas station. We decided to head off to Williamson instead to get gas. Unfortunately when we reached the junction of trail 11 a sign said "Temporary Closure". I astutely pointed out that the white board at the ranger station said that all trails were open, so we continued on. However, we came upon another trail closure sign so we decided to turn around, which was disappointing. That reminds me, I want to email those in charge of the trails and find out if the white board supersedes any temporary closure signs. I suspect that they do, since they might not have had the manpower to send somebody out to take down the closure signs, but it will be good to know in the future.

We stopped back at the trailhead before heading on to Williamson and we noticed a big storm brewing. Hail, severe winds and rain drops the size of gobstoppers soon followed. Packing up and heading back to Gilbert was the group's decision as much as I hated to do it.

The storm picked up on the drive back to Gilbert. A lot. It might have been one of the worst storms I have ever driven through. There was torrential downpour, crazy wind, and debris (trees, limbs, power lines, mobile home parts) everywhere. We were forced to drive over a lot of it.

Arriving safely back in Gilbert we discovered that a mini tornado had actually blown through the area. Nice. It wasn't too long before we discovered a flat tire on my (Rob's) trailer, then shortly after a flat on Rich's trailer. A little while later a flat on my truck, and just to rub it in a little bit more when we woke up the next day, I had ANOTHER flat on my truck. The weird thing about the flats was all the tires had three holes in them and they were tiny holes too. We must have all run over the same piece of trailer tin roofing. I think I know exactly which piece did it too.

Dinner at Billie Anne's. Thats all I really have to say.

April 8, 2006

Gilbert had a lot of rain the previous day and it was still raining now, and cold. It was amazing how much the river and creek running adjacent to our property had risen.

We decided to stay local today and ride the Rockhouse Trail system which connects directly to Gilbert. The weather was a little tough, but I've ridden through some adverse conditions before and wasn't too worried. I should have been. Our plan was just to ride to Man and back. Within 10 minutes of riding I was soaked through all 3 layers of my clothing and I was COLD. COOOOOOLD. Why didn't I bring my rain gear? Who knows. Its just part of the Andy being Andy experience.

Not to be discouraged we kept on riding, stopping every mile or so to wipe our goggles. It proved difficult though because the clay mud would just smear and our goggles never really were "clean". Those of us on sport ATVs had a more difficult time than the utility riders because of our lack of fender protection. I wanted to just rip my goggles off and forget them. They were smeared with clay inside and out. They kept fogging up and water had actually gotten in between the two panes of plastic. I didn't want to take them off for fear my glasses would become severely scratched and useless.

This went on for miles and miles and miles. I can't speak for everyone else, but I personally was miserable.

Finally, I couldn't take being unable to see anymore. I took off my goggles AND my glasses for the last couple of miles or so. My vision isn't awful, but I can't see anything well that is farther than ten feet away. I rode very cautiously the rest of the way, no trips over a cliff for me...

Man, WV provided warmth in the form of a spicy chicken fillet and two cups of coffee from Wendy's, a 15 dollar rain suit from the hardware store and two sweatshirts from the dollar store. Ahhh. I was warm again. Sweet, sweet warmth.

Five minutes down the trail however and I ripped off the dirty, smeared, scratched and foggy goggles and just rode with my glasses. Ahh wonderful, beautiful vision. So underrated. A while passed before it was necessary to clean my glasses. What to do? Wiping them off wasn't really an option because of possible scratchage and despite the rain there was no clean water around to rinse them. So, I licked them clean, hence the brown tongue. It worked well. I spit most of the mud out but some got stuck in my teeth and chewing gum. As Rob said, it's like eating a bad clam. Crunchy.

We eventually made it back safe and sound where we spent the evening eating pizza and watching the handsome and talented Vince Vaughn in Old School.

April 9, 2006

Besides the tire in Rich's trailer going flat again, necessitating its complete removal, it was an uneventful, albeit long, ride home. Despite the fact that I love going to West Virginia every year, its always good to be home again.

File Under Bizarre

The vegan at work has an Iron Maiden sticker on her truck.

For Taste and More There's On-Cor

While I was away Lurleen asked my wife (God bless her) to take her to the store to buy some food, because while they technically have three cars only one is usable and her boyfriend had it. He was away at reserve training or something and he requested from her a home cooked meal when he got back.

You know what Lurleen made? On-Cor Salisbury Steaks. Mmmm. That's good eatin'.

Don't get me wrong, I like Salisbury Steaks (occasionally) because we have three kids and sometimes we just like to make something quick. But if I've been gone for a week shootin' guns and running mile after mile and my girlfriend who doesn't work, shower, or clean slaps that stuff down on the table and tries to pass it off as a home cooked meal, well, I'm going to be a little peeved.

New Coworker

They hired a new coworker in my absence. She is a vegan. I have no problem with that at all. What I do have a problem with is someone with a booming voice who drones on and on and on about eating "the hormones of fear and depression" with a fanaticism that only a Jehovah's witness could love for two solid lunch breaks (today and yesterday). I left after 20 minutes yesterday, and after 10 today. She was still talking about it at the end of lunch today because I came back through the break room when I came back from going outside.

Maybe tomorrow I will eat a raw hamburg and onion sandwich for lunch. On second thought, nah. Thats just gross.

And because I try to relate all of life's little foibles to episodes of The Simpsons I leave you with a quote:

I’m a level 5 vegan. I won’t eat anything that casts a shadow.
   -Jesse Grass, “Lisa the Tree Hugger”

The Magnificent Seven

Speedy Gonbealez


Creepy Mountain Hippy


Dick Burns


Big A


Grubby


L Dub


Laughs at Death

Happy Birthday!

To a great American hero, David Letterman.

Best News Ever

The Red Sox did the right thing concerning a player's contract which is rare.

One happy Papi: Ortiz gets 4-year extension

I'm Back

From WILD Wonderful West Virginia. I will post more about it later.