The Long Trip Home (For Andrea)

Well we finally got married. It was a beautiful ceremony and from what I've heard everyone that attended liked it too. Lisa and I stayed in Ohio for three weeks which was great but a little too short for me. I'll start from the ending and work my way backwards. Our trip from Ohio back to Arkansas was a comedy of errors. I had to be at work on Tuesday Aug 15th. We left Sunday morning because we wanted to hit Abraham Lincoln's birthplace in Kentucky and spend a nice relaxing trip. Normally it's a 12 hour drive. We stopped in Elizabethtown Kentucky (which Lisa was interested in seeing) to get gas when a woman pointed out that my coolant was literally pouring out on to the ground. As luck would have it a hotel shared the parking lot with the gas station so we ordered a tow truck and got a room. We had my truck and Lisa's with us so we weren't stuck in the room anyway. We found out that Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace National Historic Site was just ten miles down the road so we drove there for the reminder of the afternoon and had dinner at a nice mexican restaurant. We tried to look at it as an adventure.

We got the truck fixed Monday morning (our original travel day) and headed toward Memphis. We were going to get to Conway later than we wanted but nothing too bad. By the end of the day with about three hours to go, the right tire on my trailer popped. We rushed seven miles back to the last town, got a new tire and took off. Hot and sweaty (my air conditioning isn't working) we got fifty miles down the road and the left tire popped. This time it was too late to get the tire fixed. We were sitting along the side of I-40 in east Memphis in the dark. After another tow truck charge to deliver the trailer to the nearest hotel it was time for bed. The next morning we got the tire fixed, shifted some weight from the trailer to Lisa's truck and headed to Conway.

It was a stressful trip but it was made bearable by Lisa's good nature and just her presence.

Bush Caught Cursing!!!

I'm enjoying the current wave of self-righteous indignation sweeping the country's news outlets. Bush got caught in a candid conversation with Tony Blair, apparently unaware of an open mike. By the reaction of most news organizations you would think this is the first time anyone has ever uttered the word shit before. It seems like most have also conveniently forgotten that it was a private conversation, inadvertently overheard. The morning DJs in Little Rock were outraged that the man responsible for their persecution at the hands of the FCC is cussing on t.v. The nerve of the hypocrite! And I could understand if it were just two small time syndicated DJs but I saw the same accusation from a reporter on CNN. He sounded snide and a little whiny. The funny thing to me is that when I first saw this story I was frozen with terror, my heart beating and thinking to myself, "Please don't say anything to embarrass us." I guess the big hoopla over the salty language is due to the lack of anything he actually said being controversial. If anything, it made him seem like something his speeches don't, a rational leader. There's a part of me that thinks it was set up by Blair and Bush for a little image boost.

What irritates me is that in the same day it was reported that a bill on stem cell research may be Bush's first use of the veto! My God! He's in his second term. He's NEVER vetoed a bill? Reagan vetoed 39 bills in his first term which is from what I understand below average (or was). Even Bill Clinton nixed a bill once, I think. So here we are again, focusing on what doesn't amount to shit while we have a president running around under the false pretense of being a Republican. I guess we all know he's actually for big government so that's not news.

A Moment Of Peace

This week has certainly sucked. I'm watching ABC Sunday Evening News as they are reporting on the Hezbollah rocket attack on Haifa and thinking back to Friday and a happy thought. Lisa's last day of work was Thursday. She's leaving tomorrow for Ohio. She'll be there a week before me, starting to get things ready for the wedding. On Friday she went with a friend to Mix 100's live morning show broadcast. I didn't have work, so thru the wonder of the internet I listened to the show. Lisa was doing a little contest and the DJ's were talking to her. Jane, the female half of the duo, commented that Lisa had been there early and was very polite. That made me smile. It was exciting in some geek/nerd way to hear her on the radio all the way in Denver while I'm in Conway, Arkansas. I guess in the grand technological scheme of things it's not even that cutting edge, with Vonage and video conferencing and a thousand gadgets I don't even know about. I still got a thrill out of hearing Lisa being cute over my computer. She's the peaceful center of my world and as I sit here and watch the world blow the crap out of itself I feel like giving her a call.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll...Well Rock and...Nevermind

I just got back from home leave in Denver tonight. I was there for a week and a half but it felt like a year (in a good way). The first night in town I went to get Lisa from work and was thinking it would be nice to do something to get out. I had a movie or dinner in mind. Lisa gets to the truck and wants to know if I want to see a concert. "Why not" I answered. Big mistake, as the first thing I should have said was "Who is it?" She said Rob Thomas, for some reason I heard Rob Zombie. Same thing I guess. Rob wasn't so bad but he had two women opening for him, one of which was Jewel. I pride myself on being a progressive male but that was just too much chick rock in one night. Really there hasn't been a woman that can rock since Lita Ford, sorry that includes you KT Tungstall. The show was alright, it was at Red Rocks which is the best place to see a concert ever. We saw Lyle Lovett there a few years ago. Towards the end of the show he had a local gospel choir doing the song Church and a thunderstorm came out over the mountains. It was pretty impressive with the lightning flashing and the thunder booming right over head.

Now I've never done drugs and didn't drink until I was 21 but I was sorely disappointed in the youth of America at this concert. Is it a sign of the boring restrictive nature of the country we live in when over half the people at a concert leave two thirds into it? Is it too much to ask for a little danger in life? I guess maybe it would be a different story if it had been Rob Zombie. At my first concert (Van Halen with David Lee Roth no less) a girl, drunk off her ass sat down on my cousin's lap, put her arm around him and promptly realized she didn't know him. We saw another girl fall from one level to smack on the concrete floor below and get hauled off on a stretcher. I suppose these things still go on, I know they do at the Avalanche hockey games. And I know for a fact that I'm romanticizing it. Let's face it I haven't enjoyed a late night out since I was 30. I guess you're not really going to get chicks lifting their tops for Jewel, still wouldn't that be cool? As far as I can tell from Dateline exposés is the youth of America are even wilder than when I was a teen, it's just now they have to travel to Cancun to do it. I don't want to encourage reckless behavior (especially to any teenaged nieces who might read this). Looking back now, it probably wasn't even that fun when I was a teenager. After all, like I said, I didn't take drugs or get drunk. For me it was more like being on a safari, I never knew when some drunk gorilla would come out of the fog of all those joints and kick my Eric-Foreman-ass. I was living vicariously through my stoner friends misadventures, and it sure was fun watching the look in Jim's eyes when that girl sat down and ran her fingers through his hair.

Home Leave Holiday

I had a busy vacation last week. I flew in to Denver on Wednesday, June 28th to see Lisa. We started out by seeing a concert that night at Red Rocks. It really is the best place I've ever seen a concert. That weekend we decided to go to Moab for some camping. Moab is special to us because that's where we went for our third date. This time was just as fun as the first. We went to the Canyonlands National Park. Lisa, being the daredevil she is, wanted to drive down Shafer Trail Road. It's an easy four wheel drive trail that cuts through the canyon floor and comes out 31 miles away at Moab. The first time we went to Canyonlands we also went to Dead Horse Point State Park. There's an overlook and you could see this road at the bottom. I remember wondering at the time how you could get down there and where it went. It was great to see the overlook from the opposite side this time. We camped in a beautiful place along the Colorado River. After a full day of four wheeling and touring Arches National Park we headed into Moab for dinner at Pasta Jay's, a nice restaurant with a deck. Since we had been doing two days of primitive camping (ie, no showers) we thought it was a good idea to stay away from people as much as possible and to be outside. On the way home to Denver we stopped at Colorado National Monument. We've passed by before without stopping. I'm glad we took the time on this trip to check it out, it's a beautiful place. It got Lisa and I talking about how lucky we are to have these opportunities to travel and never want to take it for granted.

With just one day to shower and sleep in a bed, we were off to Leadville to camp over the 4th of July. We met Lisa's family at the Half Moon Bay campgrounds. It's a beautiful spot that most people don't know about. Lisa's brother Chris cooked up a great meal of salmon, chicken, corn and potatoes. That night it was freezing but Lisa is always prepared with the camping gear so we were nice and toasty. It was a pleasant change from the ninety plus degrees in Moab. There's a lot to be said for camping at 10,000 feet. Later that day we took a train ride from Leadville along the old mining tracks towards Climax mines. Lisa had just been reading a book about the history of the molybdenum mines there so we had an interesting perspective during the trip. Lisa loves trains and was so excited she was bouncing in her seat. The trip was 2 and a half hours and pretty nice for the most part. There were some stretches of riding through the forest with not much in the way of scenery.

Later that night we enjoyed the fireworks in Frisco. They weren't as good as the ones we've seen in Avon in years past but we weren't as close this time. It was still a good time though.

Finally, on Friday night, Lisa's sister Jennifer had a pre-wedding dinner for us. She went completely overboard and threw a great party. She's very sweet like that. At the party it really started to hit me that by the end of this month we'll be married. I can't wait.

So home leave was a smashing success and I really have the batteries recharged even more so than usual.

But Is It Art, Part 2

After reading my post on the "experts" on Flikr, my brother sent me a link to this bit of genuis.

What Is Head On?

Head On, apply directly to the forehead!
Head On, apply directly to the forehead!
Head On, apply directly to the forehead!

Has anyone else seen this stupid commercial. You can usually catch it on Robin & Friends on CNN Headline News in the morning. The above line is all the ad says. There's no explanation of what it is and the website doesn't offer any enlightenment. It's almost a perfect marketing strategy. I am so curious I know I'll be finding it at Walmart just to see what it does. And of course they get a little free publicity on here. I'll check into it at Walmart but I won't buy it just because they've really annoyed the crap out of me.

But Is It Art

I'm trying to learn how to use my Nikon D70. I've had it for a year and I'm still using it in point and shoot mode. I love photography. I love looking at pictures, taking pictures and reading about taking pictures. I just wish I was better at taking photos. I thought I was doing okay until my brother turned me on to Flikr.com. It's a great photo site and community for sharing interests. I enjoy sharing motorcycle photos with people that have the same passion for bikes and travel as I have. There for awhile though, I started getting absorbed in the push to get my picture views up. I joined a couple of the "rate my photo" groups. My brother said it best when he noted that nothing sucks the fun out of something like having a know-it-all point out that your picture titled Sunset doesn't show the sun setting. Nevermind that it was taken at sunset. It took me about five minutes to quit all those groups and erase the comments. Life's been happier for the most part. There is however a recent thread in one of the discussion groups that got my ire up. In the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Photography group one fellow thought that there was a lot of potential but far too much garbage there. He was one of those people that has become so prevelant since the advent of the world wide web. You know the type. He just wants to have a rational discussion, it's just his humble opinion. This guy was a little more civil than most but still had that smug attitude that drives me crazy. I try to stay out of these "debates" but made the mistake of getting sucked into this one. I found myself defending some of the pictures this guy was criticizing. He of course took this to mean that my feelings were personally hurt. The bad part is the guy came in, stirred up grief and left, and it was all for naught. I don't even think he was a regular member of the group.

I don't want it to sound like I can't take constructive criticism, I've learned quite a bit and it's usually from the people that are polite. I've actually been reading the owner's manual for my camera today and experimented a little with settings other than the auto features. The instructions are a little similar to the shuttle owner's manual. I want to get some experience under my belt in preparation for our honeymoon to England next year. Even if I don't improve I'm sure my pictures from England will make Lisa and me happy. The problem right now is that I think I actually took better pictures with my cheap 5 year old Kodak DC290. I'm not sure why, maybe I'm depending on the camera to do it all now. The picture above is an example from the old Kodak. I really like this one. Hope I can get that good with my expensive new D-SLR.