Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Thursday
Miles: 9,768
Mood:
Confession #77- I can use my blinker.

Give me a cookie. Give me a freaking nobel prize. I'm in the happy 1% of the population that knows what a blinker is for. A blinker signals my intention to turn. WOW! Is that so hard you morons? It means I'm either turning onto another street, or I'm turning into another lane. It means I have seen a safe clearing, or am waiting for a safe clearing, to make my move and I am signalling my intention to do so.

For the love of blind kittens, I am not asking your permission. I am not warning you that I'm about to move in front of you so that you can slam on the gas and close the gap. I'm not taking out so much time out of your day that you have to get your pants in a knot and swerve around me like a maniac so that, heaven forbid, you won't have to use that big fat rectangular pedal. It's called a brake, and your car isn't going to explode if you push on it.

You know what? Most of these commuting problems would be solved with just a little common courtesy. Many years ago my city initiated a program (perhaps just before November 7, I can't be sure) to encourage courtesy.

Basically if a cop ever saw you doing something courteous on the road, he would tail behind you, flip his lights, pull you over, and give you a ticket. A baseball game ticket.

That...was...awesome.

People everywhere were trying to be nice to each other. Talk about a sweet reward system. Don't like baseball? I think they offered restaurant coupons as well. Big fat coupons. For your big fat tummy, which is why you have to drive a big fat SUV, because without big fat tires you'd be scraping along on your frame rails. Quit eating fast food everyday you stupid people. Over 50% of the population is now obese. Think that just happens? Think that's the fault of the evil food production corporations? No, its your fault, fatty Mr McFat. You don't even have to exercise, just stop stuffing your face with grease.

So go ahead, keep being rude on the road. Ignore my blinker, or intentionally mess with me when you see it. I'll give you a ticket. A ticket for a punch in the nose.

This is great! I love your blog. I'm going to have to incorporate "for the love of blind kittens" into my daily vocabulary somehow, and "fatty Mr.McFat" got a rare audible laugh out of me.

Maybe it's all the Pixie Stix...Karry on, sir!

Friday
Miles: 9,787
Mood:
Confession #78- Look at me, I'm a stupid moron!

I'm riding to work this morning and I know that winter is finally here. My hands are freezing, by the way, due to wearing my only-pair summer riding gloves. It's difficult to write. Anyway, I'm riding to work and I stop at this stoplight along my route near a bus stop. There's a guy standing there holding a steaming cup of coffee. Its 50 degrees out, the sun is shining, there's no wind, and I just finished riding 65 on the freeway for 20 minutes, so I'm a bit nippy. But now that I'm in the warm city, I feel great.

This guy on the other hand is dressed in tall winter boots, puffy padded pants, a heavy ski jacket with scarf, fat cotton gloves, and a beanie pulled down over his ears. He's bouncing on the balls of his feet and rubbing his side with one hand, drinking coffee from the other. And I'm sitting there thinking, are you freaking kidding me? Be a man, you pansy! See the 20 year old girl behind you? She's in flipflops and a tank top and drinking a cherry icee thinking to herself "I would never sleep with this guy, but that biker is hot." And then she flashed me. But you missed it because your turtle neck was over your face.

I saw this bumper sticker on the freeway. Slapped on the back of some new car that didn't even have a plate yet. It's one thing to ruin your car with a stupid bumper sticker, but if you really have to have a slogan glued to your car, try not to choose one that makes you look like a stupid moron.

It said, "I have the right to smoke" no doubt prompted by our city's recent decision to ban smoking from public restaurants and bars.

I've heard all the arguments about their right to smoke. It boils down to one thing, "I have the right to kill myself." I have two responses to this argument.

Number one. Your right to kill yourself costs taxpayers money in hospital bills and other expenses.

Number two. You're full of it.

Show me one smoker laying in a hospital bed an hour from death surrounded by his family who says, "I sure am glad I had the right to kill myself early. I didn't really want to have to watch you dumb kids grow up any longer than I had to."

Puh-lease.

Its not about freedom. Its about the government protecting its citizens from corrupt money-grubbing corporations. You think anyone wants to smoke? Give a 10 year old kid a cigarette and ask him to smoke the disgusting thing for 50 years, alienating nonsmoking friends, waking up at midnight in coughing fits, and dying a horrible painful death at 45. Yeah, right. The kid chooses it because the corporations advertise how cool it is, adult it is, and stick in ingredients that make you addicted.

If anyone was smart enough to do research on what cigarettes really are and think for themselves, no one would choose early death. Take the trans fat fiasco. Trans fat is an artificial fat that your body can't metabolize, so it sits in your body and clogs up your arteries. Corporations use it because its cheap, and figured you stupid people wouldn't know any better. Well now the truth comes out and New York wants to ban it. So what do the genius citizens do? Protest their freedom! I have the right to kill myself.

Then you know what happens? These idiots turn 50, are an inch from death, and clog the court system with lawsuits against the corporations for killing them. Or their kids do it for them after they're dead. No one whined about the government forbidding the use of aesbestos, or certain cancer-causing brain-tumor-growing death-making pesticide chemicals on crops. But as soon as the government threatens to change the taste of your french fries you're all up in arms. Maybe we should just let all the corporations make whatever poisons they want, and advertise that they are harmless all they want. It would be great population control, if only we could get rid of any and all free health care (oh, and voluntarily consuming poison will also void your health insurance, my rates are high enough thank you...you want to kill yourself, you can pay cash if you suddenly want to extend your life). So as soon as you vote to ban free health care and close off hospitals to paying customers only, I'll vote for your right to consume poison. Deal?

Anyway, the government wouldn't have to step in on this if you stupid people wouldn't keep eating fast food 3 meals a day. Eat a carrot or something for pete's sake. You're all fat, stinky slobs that need a nanny government to take care of you because you're too stupid to do it yourself. And your mother told me you were a mistake. And you're ugly.

So, you could say that I disagree with that bumper sticker.

Bumper stickers I saw, one-above-another, on the back of a clapped out Subaru:

Execution Stops A Beating Heart
Keep Abortion Safe and Legal

Make of that what you will....

Hmm....It seems as though your last couple entries are a little violent....

I like it!

Great blog man.

Monday
Miles: 9,799
Mood:
Confession #79- Don't drive behind me, I'm a tree hugging hippie.

For those of you with children, I pity you. If you're smart, you shipped the kid off to school on a bus at the first available opportunity. If not, I fear you are a crazy because no one would voluntarily drive their kid to school otherwise. I had a rare opportunity (obligation) to visit an elementary school this morning. I should have been smart and drove into the staff lot, but no! My pea-sized brain decided it would be a good idea to follow the rest of the traffic into the unloading track headed for the visitors lot.

Yes, I said track. This loop in the front of the school that serves to load and unload busses and maximas full of little kids. It's designed like a race track for a reason. There are signs and painted lanes that mark clearly where you can go and what you can do in each lane and where to stop to let the kids out of the car, where you can exit the lane to pass, etc. It's like a carefully laid out Nascar track, expertly designed to maximize efficiency and get cars safely through without a hitch as quickly as possible. Just like a Nascar race.

Now imagine if Nascar decided to throw out all of those rules.

Lanes, shmanes. Signs, shmines. Kids, splat! Imagine a Nascar race where the only goal was to get be the first one to the finish line and back to your pit. It doesn't matter what direction you go or where you start from. Then imagine Nascar decides to let all the spectators run around on the track, half of them with cellphones but too short for you to see over your hood, add in some giant busses, the most aggravated drivers in the world (moms late for work) and a bunch of overworked underpaid refs standing around yelling at you trying not to spill their Starbucks.

Welcome to the school unloading zone. There were cars going everywhere, doors opening randomly and little kids flying out of them (sometimes more than could fit in the car, like those little clown cars where 50 people come out). Kids were running across the lanes, SUVs had their tires mounted on curbs trying to veer around the rest of us. Staff was trying to maintain control and the busses were pushing everyone around because they were bigger and had the right of way!

If I ever add the school unloading zone to my regular commute it will be too soon.

Speaking of which, don't ever drive behind me on my commute. Why? Because I'm a jerk, a tree-hugging hippie. I merged into my middle lane this morning, happy as a clam. The guy behind me disagreed. See, I try to maintain 1-2 car lengths distance in a traffic jam (more of course at high speed). If someone hits their blinker, I reduce my rate of speed and wave them in. I smile. They smile and wave thanks. I make a point to do it. It makes the commute easier knowing I helped people destress by something as simple as letting them in a lane without a death struggle.

The guy behind me in the green Chevy 1500 does not agree with my philosophy.

Everytime I let someone in he would throw a fit, throwing his hands up in the air and mouthing some expletive that I'm surely glad I couldn't hear. It would be safe to say that this guy hated my guts. I couldn't stop giggling. I was having a blast. Before you judge me, I'm not happy that this guy is upset, its just that I was counting the minutes (20 in the end) that this guy would ride behind me, furious, slamming on his wheel everytime I did something he disagreed with, before the obvious solution came to his angry little mind.

Go around me!

It didn't hit him for quite a while. The real knee-slapping irony was that when he did finally hit his blinker and try to merge into the other lane to surpass me, the guy in that lane apparently tried to block him from entering because they both came to a screaching halt and horns were blazing. That just about killed me.

Who knew a regular day to work could be so freaking entertaining?

Tuesday
Miles: 9,821
Mood:
Confession #80- I'm not really a motorcyclist.

Every once and a while, someone will comment on my motorcycle. What usually comes up is, "Oh, you ride a motorcycle. That's dangerous."

Yes, it is.

Then they look at me oddly, possibly trying to find some kind of motorcyclist in me. In the end they just stand there with a baffled expression on their face. I reassure them with a small tidbit of information that I always give out in hopes that someone will soon instantly understand.

Yes, I get seventy miles to the gallon.

But, it's still dangerous. You see, I'm not really a motorcyclist. I like my bike, but I don't really like motorcycles. Most of them are loud and obnoxious, and the riders are never wearing the proper gear. Most of the sportbike owners ride too fast and unsafely. And most of all, most bikers don't ride except on the weekends. The rest of the week they commute in their SUVs, or in a Prius, and then burn off the gas they saved by riding around pointlessly on Saturday.

I don't have tattoos. I don't like loud pipes. I don't belong to any clubs, and I don't go to bike get togethers. I wear only my proper gear, and the extent to my involvement in the biking community around me is a simple wave when I see one. This of course all begs the question, why do I ride?

I ride because I have no other alternative. I cannot buy an electric car. I cannot pay $30,000 for a hybrid. I cannot walk or take public transportation, or ride 20 miles on a pedal bike. I ride because I do what most people do when they want to make a difference in the environment. They sacrifice. Most dig into their wallets, and call it a day. Buy a Prius. Switch to wind power electrical companies. Me? I can't afford that. So I sacrifice the only thing I can, my safety.

Why? Because every day I see everyone driving to work in their big trucks, fat SUVs, or mid-sized sedans with 5-10 empty seats in them. 1 person to each car. On the road, tearing it up, polluting the air, wasting gas. These are not things that can be replaced. These are the problems we are creating and leaving for our children to clean up. I cannot affect change and force GM to continue producing the EV1, nor can I stop my neighbors from keeping all the lights on in their house all day and night and driving a car that gets 15mpg. I have no control over it. So I do the best I can, in my little corner, to be as environmentally friendly as possible.

It's not much, but it's a start. So yes, I do ride a motorcycle, but I can hardly call myself a motorcyclist, can I?

I strongly agree with your last post.
But, I must admit that I actually enjoy my commute on my motorcyle.
The commute in the mini-van was mind-numbing.
I'm not sure if I am qualified to make the distinction, but I would say that you are a motorcyclist, despite your desire to be otherwise.

Wednesday
Miles: 9,837
Mood:
Confession #81- If I could package and sell this day, I'd be a millionaire.

Every once and a while I take on a cause and go on a rampage against something or another. Irresponsible sport bikers, advertisements for children, fast food, inconsiderate drivers, trans fats, self-inflicted obesity. The list goes on and on.

But today was gorgeous. The sun beautifully shines the landscape, the birds are out chirping, the crazy guy in the corner by the bus stop is shouting nonsensically, and its a perfect 65 degrees.

For all the prepackaged and processed goods that the food industry tries to force on us (quite successfully I might add, if you've ever seen a grocery store its often as bad as the deep frier at Grease King), you just can't package a day.

Yet.

I'm working on developing a process of packaging beautiful days so that we can open them with easy-open spouts and pour them out whenever we want. Rainy? Open your can of sunshine and release it into the world. In 2008 I will also add an aerosol version (without CFCs of course).

Patent pending.

Id buy it...does the spray on sun come with warming features for -40?