Confessions of a Commuter

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CNF2002
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#201 Unread post by CNF2002 »

Wednesday
Miles: 9,793
Mood: :confused:
Confession #71- I fear werewolves.

I saw 4 different accident scenes this morning. Was it a full moon last night? Must have brought the crazies out. I made many observations.

Police vehicles now all have LED emergency lights. Bright ones. The red looks okay, but the blue is ugh. There's something about it. I look at it and it's like the photons are drilling into my skull, melting my brain. I can't look at them! I drives me insane.

Cars aren't built like they used to be. Accidents can be fickle. The damage just doesn't distribute equally. Aren't these vehicles sensitive to political correctedness? I noticed one vehicle only had a tiny dent on its rear bumper, while the whole front of another was smashed in, headlight dangling. They were both late model sedans, no doubt with crumple zones front and back. What's with the damage discrimination?

I have yet to see a construction worker doing any actual work. They just stand around. I'm convinced that the concrete barriers are not for the road or construction, but to provide a seating area for 4 people and their McDonald's bags.

Many freeways now have led road signs that give you information like accidents that are ahead, and route times to a certain intersection. Mine says "TEST". It's said "TEST" for almost a year, ever since I started my commute on this freeway. Someone call city hall, their test "Failed".

Its completely unfair that cars on the rural sideroads are travelling faster than I am on the freeway.

Driving over a 50 yard grass median because it looks like a good way to make a u-turn is not smart.

Don't drink anything and drive. Its bad enough the lady had an accident on the way to work, but worse that everyone could see she had a huge wet stain on the front of her. Huge.
2002 Buell Blast 500 /¦\
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[url=http://www.totalmotorcycle.com/BBS/viewtopic.php?t=11790]Confessions of a Commuter[/url]

roscowgo
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#202 Unread post by roscowgo »

The VA stoplights have moved to LED's too. way way way way too bright. At night you just can't see past em. Even with those super bright blind a UFO around uranus halogens.

/agree on the road construction, for the 4 years i've done a commute, every summer the same section of 3 miles of road has been blocked off. 20-30 guys standing around at any time of the day, and at least 2 cops sitting in their cruisers with the lights going. All day. All night. Yeah. I'll donate when you call for your policemans fund this year. We'll just ignore that riced out honda who swerved over into the median to pass a little of the traffic. Slackers.

I think they just set the cones, barrels, and concrete barriers out in the summer so that they have somewhere to park their snowplows.


Who makes all those orange road gadjets anyway? Signs, cones, barriers, barrels, blinking signs....

great blog CNF

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CNF2002
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#203 Unread post by CNF2002 »

Thursday
Miles: 9,814
Mood: :baby:
Confession #72- I fully endorse any method of birth control.

It was a dreadful morning. Miserable skies, hot and muggy (especially after a few days of beautiful cold weather), and lots of traffic. There was an accident, I hear, but I never saw it.

You know what I did see? A car on the road, a piece of junk, with a woman driving. This car looked like it was on its last legs. Smoking out the tailpipe. Dents, duct tape here and there, splotches of shoddy patchwork. Broken taillight.

In the passenger seat was a kid. In the rear seat was 3 more kids. This woman had 4 kids, assuming none were not already at school. Obviously she was not well off, and I would not be surprised if she was on welfare. Husband or boyfriend? Who knows. Were the children from the same father? Who knows? Does she? Maybe not.

I began to think of how we reward the poor for overpopulation. The amount you get from welfare increases with the more children you have. Pop out those babies and you'll be getting a fatter check every month. The government doesn't seem to notice there is a problem until they file for that 10th child. All the while they dig themselves in deeper by having more hungry mouths to feed.

Then they blame the economy for all their troubles.

We really should have a mandatory population limit. Oh freedom this, freedom that...no one will care about freedom when they are on the street eating from garbage cans. Children of these impossible families will grow up with little education, no skills, and few job prospects.

What we need is to stop rewarding overpopulation. Give a credit for anyone who gets a hysterectomy or a vasectomy. Once you are on welfare, you can no longer add more children to your claim. None, zilch, nada. Once you hit the floor, you'd better stop popping out babies until you get on your feet.

People don't seem to realize that short term gains, like a bigger check, hurt them in the longrun. They hurt our economy, they hurt our country, they hurt all of our taxpayers. Who's going to feed all these people when they grow up and can't find work? Look at some third-world countries. They overpopulate like bunnies and everyone is starving. Will our children be featured on television commercials in other countries, begging for donations to feed their little mouths?

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It doesn't help when you keep reproducing, yet can't afford to feed your own mouth.

If the question had already entered your mind: "She has a car, does she have insurance?" I don't think you would like the answer.
2002 Buell Blast 500 /¦\
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#204 Unread post by noodlenoggin »

:eek: DUCK AND COVER!!! :peep:

Although...my wife is a registered dietician for W.I.C., and wonders if some of these mothers couldn't be sterilized.
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CNF2002
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#205 Unread post by CNF2002 »

Friday
Miles: 9,832
Mood: :icecream:
Confession #73- I'm such a spaz.

Well, my day has certainly been productive. On the bright side, I drew up a logo for a commuting group. CommuteSolo. Catchy, yes? I'm certain this is a million dollar idea. The logo alone should make me a few thousand bucks. Now all I need is something for the group to do and, perhaps, a few members other than myself. Here is the logo as beautifully rendered and then completely distorted and ruined by putfile.com. The logo will remain on the page until putfile.com folds under, which by their treatment of my logo will certainly be sometime soon.

Image

Unfortunately transforming the L into a motorcyclist has resulted in the group mascot being Bozo wearing giant clown boots. For those of you who do not know, Bozo the Clown was an early morning television program for kids. I think there was even a knock-off version on another channel. No doubt inspired by, or the inspiration for, Krusty the Clown of the Simpsons. Yes, there actually were clown shows on TV before they turned into bizarre rainbow-colored aliens and a group of guys whose only super-power is wearing different solid colored shirts. Bozo needs the work, and we are happy to help.

Fortunately you can click on it and it will show up in the size that I actually saved it in. It also gives you a chance to be exposed to online advertisements. I really feel like I'm making a difference in the world, here.

So despite all my rantings about how I love to work on my bike, I need a new rear tire. Rather than spend $100 for the tire and a $20 for tools to change it, plus an hour of my time, I'm just going to take it to a dealer. Why? Because I'm a spaz. I just don't have the motivation to mess with the rear tire at the moment, and my time is up. It needs to be done.

I rarely have the motivation to do any automotive work, and I generally only do so when necessary. Generally my work is fixing broken parts and replacing whatever-fluid. Not too exciting. If my assignment was to mount a jet engine onto the pillion seat, I might be more inclined to pull out the toolset.

Of course in 6 months I'm going to be faced with the same situation. Need a new tire. Change self? Sure, I'll do it then. Just not now. I'll get to it eventually.

Right.
2002 Buell Blast 500 /¦\
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#206 Unread post by CNF2002 »

Monday
Miles: 9,851
Mood: :king:
Confession #74- This is the cliffnotes edition.

So I get my tire replaced and when I bring the bike home I notice that there is something written on the side of it. In big white letters in chalk is written "Tire Goes This Way" with a big arrow.

I suppose I have two conclusions. One is that the tire-guys have a new policy that the drive direction of the tire is always written in big white letters on the tire, even though its already written in embossed print on the tire itself. Or, the supervisor of the person who changed my particular tire that day was so confident in his ability that he felt he needed to write TIRE THIS WAY on my tire so he wouldn't put it on backwards. Isn't that a pleasant thought?

Surely, if I had a microphone and recorder in my helmet this journal would be much better (despite MySpace's attempt to lure boys to its site by renaming 'journal' and 'diary' to 'blog', I refuse to do so. When you write daily entries about your cat and what your girlfriend said to you last night, its a diary. Sorry, guys). You see, I write in my head while I ride. It gives me something to do. The only voices in my head are thus my own, and I feel less prone to throw rocks at other cars. Of course the result of this is that by the time I ever get to writing any of it down, I've forgotten 80% of it. Really, this should be called "Confessions of a Commuter: Cliffnotes Edition".

But it really doesn't matter. Most of the filler that is in my head on the road could never be properly communicated into electronic form. There's a certain flair that doesn't transfer to the written word. There are cues that we simply do not pick up when we are reading. Great writers have been trying to overcome it since the dawn of writing, but it just doesn't work.

Which brings me to my point. Despite popular opinion, driving is really hard. We're stuck in a box with blind spots, tunnel vision, and countless distractions. We're operating a ton of metal at 60 mph, coordinating our activities with those of hundreds or thousands of other vehicles right outside our door every day. How do we do it?

The simple answer is; we don't. We can't process all that information at once. Add a evil corporate Starbucks cup and its all over. Instead we manage along by way of rules. We have rules on the road that we assume everyone will follow. I know on the freeway I'm not going to encounter a car driving perpendicular to me. Or backwards. Or someone who is not going to stop when I hit the brakes. But as soon as someone violates those rules, only by a small amount, the whole world comes crashing down. We jump out of our seat and slam on the brakes or swerve or slam into another car.

I don't pay full attention to every single car around me and 1/2 a mile behind me. I focus my attention on the car in front, maybe the car to the right. Only when I notice something abnormal does my attention change (such as seeing someone barreling at me at a stoplight), or when I am about to violate the rules myself, such as in making a lane change (in theory, I also theorize that most people don't bother to adjust their attention when changing lanes - its just too much trouble).

Of course imagine if this were to happen anywhere else. As humans we simply cannot interpret mechanical cues as well as human cues. Consider it an evolutionary hiccup. We're not there yet. So while we manage to avoid just about all collisions while walking amongst hundreds of other people, we manage to smash into everyone else once we get in the car.

We motorcyclists have it a little easier, since we can give other drivers visual 'human' cues. But we still have to guess when it comes to everyone else. In fact you may not even get a human cue until you really "pee" someone off, resulting in a wild hand gesture and the mouthing of words that leave little to the imagination. Of course who knows what they are really saying. So comes to mind the girl in 4th grade who mouthed 'elephant shoes' to me and then had a hysterical laughing fit with her friends when I asked her out after class. Kids can be so cruel.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Visual cues. Isn't it interesting that we put words in other's mouths as we drive? Someone cuts me off, we imagine them saying, "Haha! I'm more important, get out of my way!". We never imagine them saying, "Oh gosh, I can't believe I did that, I'm so sorry!" It's always negative.

So here we are, at the end. You may have thought I would have had a profound point to all of this babbling. You were wrong.
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#207 Unread post by CNF2002 »

Tuesday
Miles: 9,725
Mood: :devil2:
Confession #75- I'm scared!

Boo! Happy Halloween! Anyone up for pumpkin pie? Last night I baked fresh pumpkin pie out of real pumpkin squash. I could certainly taste the pumpkin flavor better, but I think the commercial pumpkin pies use extra sugar or something, because mine wasn't quite as sweet. Of course less sugar is probably a good thing.

This morning I wanted to chuck my pumpkin pie at a few cars.

Halloween must bring out the crazies! I was nearly side-swiped 3 times today by 3 different vehicles. One was a red explorer who apparently likes horses (but not motorcycles I bet), the other a little cavalier, and the other a mustang. The car, not the horse.

By the time I ride home today there will be trick-or-treaters out and about. Little kids will be everywhere. Little witches, devils, pumpkins, fairies, and spidermen.

So unlike my fellow commuters were this morning, please be safe and attentive while you are riding or driving home tonight. Put your lights on if you do not already. Turn your radio off while driving through a neighborhood. And when you get home, I hope you've got a lot of candy ready.

Have a safe Halloween night!
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#208 Unread post by -Holiday »

good idea.


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#209 Unread post by CNF2002 »

Wednesday
Miles: 9,742
Mood: :angel:
Confession #76- I believe in angels.

Isn't the morning after halloween the best? What other time can you in all seriousness justify eating candy for breakfast, accompany it with lunch, and round it off for dessert after dinner?

Never! But here I am with blow pops, sugar cookies, tootsie rolls, and various square chunks of prepackaged chocolate goods. Why don't they have this on the menu at Denny's?

Have you ever had one of those moments where you were sure there was an angel looking over your shoulder? I bet you have. And I have a story for you.

For the past two weeks the my regular freeway entrance has been closed so I have been taking an alternate. Interestingly not too many people took an alternate. The ramp was closed, and all traffic was being diverted miles down a country road through a stoplight to another entrance, but every morning there they were, backed up in line as always as I passed them on the freeway at a cool 60. I guess they woke up every morning and said to themselves, "Today it will be open!" then 15 minutes later, "Oh rats!" and so on and so forth.

So this morning I decided to check my usual entrance to see if it had been opened yet. To my delight, it had! It took just a little waiting to get onto the freeway (the cones and restrictions were still up, tunneled into a single lane, but the ramp was open), but once I was there the traffic was surprisingly light.

Too light. In fact, there didn't seem to be ANY traffic coming from anywhere behind my ramp. I thought it was odd, but shrugged it off. The weather was beautiful. Not too cold, but with a crisp nip. Sun shining. Cars all cleaned. Everyone happy because they're high on pixie stix.

It was not until I reached work that I discovered there had been an accident, right on my alternate entrance. The accident occured just about the time I was heading onto the freeway myself. Nearly a dozen cars were involved.

If I had not decided, spur of the moment, to check my regular entrance for its openness I would have been on my alternate route right about the time a dozen cars slammed into each other.

If that doesn't send a chill up your spine, I don't know what will.
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#210 Unread post by TooBama »

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Best blog EVER !! I just can't get enough of this stuff.
ROLL TIDE !!

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