First, a disclaimer: Everything you are about to read is true and happened as I describe it. If you want to call Bull Shit! I will gladly throw the other people involved in this story under the bus and have them contact you. Granted they may choose to do it from a throw away, prepaid cell or prison pay phone but they will verify that the following story is accurate and did indeed happen as described. One more thing; I do not now, nor ever have I advocated drinking and driving, even if it was off-road. Also firearms and drinking are a very, very bad idea. I have left my drunken friends on several occasions when the guns came out. I have been a range officer and taught gun safety, I know better. If you are going to drink, call a cab, and don't bring guns! That said, in the past I did not always follow my own advice. With that out of the way, I'll begin.
It started as many E.C.H.O. Hummer events had done so in the past, however this time we we were staying in a different hotel. Our normal hotel knew us quite well, we came, we drank, we fucked up shit but we paid for it all. So on the whole they were okay with us. They did not however allow pets and we had several people along for this trip with dogs, so a change of venue was in order. A few miles down the road was a hotel that allowed dogs, so that's where we ended up. I'm sure that to this day the hotel regrets regrets the day we darkened their doorstep.
After a day of wheeling, we got back to the hotel, showered, grabbed a bite to eat and threw an impromptu party in one of the rooms. For the life of me I cannot remember whose room it was but that really doesn't matter. After an hour or so we started to run low on beer. It was time for a beer run. The idiot twins and I volunteered to go. Myer's (Myer is one of the idiot twins) Hummer was parked closest to the hotel's exit, so he was chosen to drive. John (the other half of the idiot twins, who by the way are not related) was riding shotgun and I was in the passenger side rear seat. Myer decides that rather than take the road he would hang a hard right from the parking lot into the woods behind the hotel. This came as no surprise, we pretty much expected it. Soon we found a fire trail and were are able to pick up some speed. Not that we had any idea where we were going, but at least we were making good time.
Myer was running some serious HiD lights on the truck (which happened to be one of my old trucks) these things made a sunny day seem overcast. So here we are flying down a fire trail in the dead of night at 60 miles per hour, throwing enough light to give you a sunburn, half shot in the ass when Myer decides to turn off the trail into an area that "looks like fun". It was a large open field strewn with boulders the size of trashcans and compact cars. The ride got much rougher and a lot slower. That's when we saw the skunk, about 25 yards in front of us and 20 feet to our right. As we drew nearer, Myer bet me that I could not shoot it. It was then that the skunk heard our banging and crashing and decided it was time to haul ass and get the Hell out of Dodge. As for me, I am uncharacteristically not well armed. I have a Seacamp .32 semi-auto in my pocket. Myer again taunts me to shoot it, bragging on my behalf about my shooting skills (truth be known, pistol is my weakest shooting discipline). So I draw, while bouncing and jarring up and down 24" at a time as we careened over the boulders (try this: squat as if you are sitting in an invisible chair, now have a friend pull your feet forward, so you fall on your ass. It hurts, doesn't it? Now do it every 15 seconds, that is what the ride was like) while the skunk is making a bee line away from us. Short segue; I'm no longer a hunter, I have no desire to shoot any living thing. Eat them, yes, shoot them, no. But what the fuck, the best Olympic pistol shooter could not hope to make this shot. So I "aim" and touch off one round. Just as Pepe Le Pew was scampering off a Volkswagon sized rock, the round struck him in the head and he flipped over dead. The idiots now think I am the best shot since Audy Murphy. In reality it was the single luckiest shot of my life. Sorry Pepe.
It was right after the one in a million shot that Myer decided to exit the boulder strewn field and go into the woods. A hundred yards or so later, as we were knocking down 3"diameter trees, we began to see lights in the distance. As we got closer to the source of the light we realized that it was some sort of commercial building, however their rear parking lot was cut into the hillside. So in order for us to get back on pavement we had to drop down a six foot sheer rock-face to the parking lot below. We decided that is was best for us to attempt this maneuver in reverse. So we pulled our belts tight and began the "drop". Evidently we made a little miscalculation. We dropped the truck down on its rear bumper. Back wheels in the air, front wheels in the air like a beetle on its back, wheels spinning in mid air, we were sitting in our seat looking like astronauts ready for lift off, only a small section of the frame was leaning against the rock wall. This is not stuck, this is fucked. After we pretty much fell out of the truck we noticed that a small group of people from the building had gathered outside to see what all the commotion was. As no one approached us, we continued trying to figure out our best bet for extraction. We wrapped the winch cable around a nearby tree and pressed the "IN" button on the winch control. The tree snapped in half...shit! This meant that we had to pull out the straps, shackles and other extraction gear in order to reach the next nearest tree. Eventually we managed to winch the truck up just enough for the front wheels to gain some purchase and we managed to extricate ourselves. It was not until the next day that we learned that we were in the back parking lot of the local state police barracks. How or why they didn't arrest us on the spot is nothing short of a miracle. They just stood there, watching in amazement as these three morons dropped a ten thousand pound truck on its rear bumper in their parking lot. From my keyboard to God's ears, this is how it happened.
We ended up getting more beer and making it back to the hotel as the party rolled on. At some point Myer produced a two foot long candle in the shape of a dick. Don't ask, I have not idea. After awhile you learn that there are some questions in life that are better left unasked. He proceeded to stick it in his pants and go skipping into the lobby past the poor front desk clerk who was a girl all of about 22, all the while stroking his "dick" feverishly. She showed no reaction at all, zip, nada, zilch. This just caused Myer to further his antics, he is now jumping up and down, sounding like a mule deer in heat, snorting and grunting. Little did we know that the hotel had been the recent target of a flasher. Someone in the back office saw Myer on the surveillance cameras and had already called the police. Lucy, you got some esplanin' to do! We were able to keep Myer form getting arrested but they threw him out of the hotel. The rest of us went back to the party. A few cases of beer later we decided that we should wake one of our friends who had the good sense to turn in early. Our plan was to discharge 5, CO2 fire extinguishers simultaneously under his hotel-room door. It worked like a charm! He sprung up like has was shot from a cannon, one minor problem... the cloud of CO2 "smoke" set off the smoke detectors. The cops and the fire department came this time. For the second time in as many hours, several more of us were thrown out of the hotel. Luckily I escaped the incident unscathed. What remained of our merry band of imbeciles figured that we had pushed the boundaries about as far as we could and called it a night. Sometime later, I don't know how long because I was sound asleep, I awoke to knocking on my hotel room window. It was Myer with a big shit eating grin on his face and a beer in his hand. I opened the window, which was one of those tilt in jobs, it opens just enough to allow some fresh air into the room, somehow Myer was able to climb in through it. He crawled into the other side of the my bed, which at this point really didn't bother me, as I just wanted to get some sleep. That and with him in my room I would be able to limit the amount of mayhem he could cause. Around six in the morning we were abruptly awakened by the hotel manager, who looked like a cross between Emelda Marcos and Cruela DeVille, standing at the foot of our bed (I'm buck naked, I think Myer had a pair of boxers on, in any event it had to be quite the sight!). It seems Myer, in his drunken stupor had left all his luggage outside of my hotel-room window. Once the sun came up they saw the luggage, looked in the window and realized that Myer was still in the hotel, that's how we came to have this screaming bitch standing at the foot of the bed. As she is screaming at the top of her lungs, telling us to "get the FUCK out of my hotel" and never, ever, come back, we had been blacklisted from the entire hotel chain, blah, blah, blah. Myer decides that it is the perfect time to go into the bathroom, leaving the door wide open he proceeds to take a dump. Now an even more enraged Emelda, which I did not think was possible given the way the veins were popping out of her neck and forehead, stormed out of the room. Moments later, once again... the state police arrived. While they were pretty much physically dragging and shoving us out of the hotel's side entrance, I looked out to see Myer's Hummer parked on a 60 degree incline, in a flower bed between the hotel and the business next door... and several state police cruisers. "Technically" I had not done anything wrong, so the staties had no beef with me, they did put Myer in the car and had a "come to Jesus" meeting with him for what seemed to be an eternity. In the end they did not arrest him. God truly looks out for fools, idiots and children! They asked for one of us to move his truck from the property as Myer was still visibly drunk. We were then escorted to the proverbial "city limits" and admonished not to return, ever.
We went back to our usual hotel, in the same town, two weeks later...
Friday, October 9, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Still no time to write...
Mosquitoes suck! I know we all pretty much agree on this subject but it is October and I have reached my saturation point with these little blood sucking bitches! I do not mean to sound sexist but it is a fact that it is only the females that bite. The males are those big ass, scary looking mother fuckers. Turns out, they are harmless.
My sister in law moved out to Arizona several years ago. Not only do they have to deal with mosquitoes but they have scorpions as well! These little fuckers are nasty! They hide in your shoes, lurk in your bathrooms and crawl into your bed.
The last time we visited them (my sister in-law not the scorpions) I had to see what all the fuss was about. I caught a small scorpion (my first mistake, the young ones don't regulate their venom, they pump it all in on the first strike unlike the older scorpions who meter it out. Even so, it felt like a bee sting, except that my finger went numb for two or three days.
Scorpions are not so bad...
My sister in law moved out to Arizona several years ago. Not only do they have to deal with mosquitoes but they have scorpions as well! These little fuckers are nasty! They hide in your shoes, lurk in your bathrooms and crawl into your bed.
The last time we visited them (my sister in-law not the scorpions) I had to see what all the fuss was about. I caught a small scorpion (my first mistake, the young ones don't regulate their venom, they pump it all in on the first strike unlike the older scorpions who meter it out. Even so, it felt like a bee sting, except that my finger went numb for two or three days.
Scorpions are not so bad...
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
I have been busy with work...
I'm sorry, work has been hectic. I am working on the next story as time permits. Please bear with me, it is forthcoming.
Please check back soon!
Please check back soon!
Saturday, October 3, 2009
I really need to clean my desk!
My desk is so cluttered that I barely have room for a keyboard and mouse. I clean it and without fail it is covered with shit by the end of the week. Of course I have all the normal stuff that you would expect to find on a desk. Things like, well the computer and monitor, a second computer and touch screen monitor a keyboard and mouse, wireless router, stapler and mug full of pens and pencils, stacks of CD's and DVD's, an external hard drive and two card readers. Standard stuff. The following is a list of the not so usual assortment of crap that winds up on my desk:
A six and a half inch black acrylic casket as well as a wooden version (don't ask).
A .50 caliber round of ammunition and two 7.62 X 39 rounds.
One pair safety glasses.
Two RCR 123a 3.0V batteries.
One bottel of Tabasco.
One Sure Fire B92 battery.
One SOG pocket knife.
Lots of pieces of paper with notes scribbled on them.(Okay that is not too unusual).
Several magazines and catalogs.(See above)
One ipod nano.
A lemon verbena candle.
One electronic device whose purpose I can't divulge here.
A pelican flashlight (which I hate and should trow out).
Three coffee mugs that Lisa put on my desk with instructions to either put them someplace of chuck them.
Four different brands of natural insect repellent, all of which seem to attract bugs and repel people, this stuff smells like fresh baked shit!. Give me Deet any day!
Speaking of bugs there is a dead stink bug on my desk.
Five memory cards of various formats.
One NRA sticker.
My Kiersten pipe, and no, I only smoke tobacco in it.
One desk lamp,75 watt incandescent.
One desk lamp, 20 watt halogen 12 volt.
One desk lamp, 11watt fluorescent ring with magnifying lens (my eyes are getting old, I'm not, just my eyes).
A digital vernier caliper.
One Kimber Ultra Elite .45 caliber semi auto pistol.
One five-in-one screwdriver.
One 52" X 82.5" Mylar emergency blanket, folded into a 3" X 5" X 3/4" pouch.
One telephone line tester (Butt Set).
One fan clutch from an Audi A-4.
A combination square.
A two foot roll of Velcro.
The carburetor from a 1972 Harley Davidson.
One Canon D60 camera.
iPhone and charging cord.
Box from iPhone.
Philips Pronto touch screen home theater controller, with color screen.
On small statue of Buddha.
One tweeter for Paradigm Reference series speaker.
One hypodermic needle and bottle of Lidocaine.
Bubba teeth.
Staedtler drafting tools.
A small sink adapter for a power drain cleaner (never used).
One pair of needle nose pliers.
One hemostat.
A leaf from some tree that I have not been able to identify, it's been here almost a year now. His name is Walter.
Two scissors, one with Teflon coated blades.
A utility knife.
Depending on the time of day, one of my cats, George.
And the strangest thing, technically is not on my desk but sitting right next to it is a shopping cart. That one has even me scratching my head.
I really need to clean my desk...tomorrow....
A six and a half inch black acrylic casket as well as a wooden version (don't ask).
A .50 caliber round of ammunition and two 7.62 X 39 rounds.
One pair safety glasses.
Two RCR 123a 3.0V batteries.
One bottel of Tabasco.
One Sure Fire B92 battery.
One SOG pocket knife.
Lots of pieces of paper with notes scribbled on them.(Okay that is not too unusual).
Several magazines and catalogs.(See above)
One ipod nano.
A lemon verbena candle.
One electronic device whose purpose I can't divulge here.
A pelican flashlight (which I hate and should trow out).
Three coffee mugs that Lisa put on my desk with instructions to either put them someplace of chuck them.
Four different brands of natural insect repellent, all of which seem to attract bugs and repel people, this stuff smells like fresh baked shit!. Give me Deet any day!
Speaking of bugs there is a dead stink bug on my desk.
Five memory cards of various formats.
One NRA sticker.
My Kiersten pipe, and no, I only smoke tobacco in it.
One desk lamp,75 watt incandescent.
One desk lamp, 20 watt halogen 12 volt.
One desk lamp, 11watt fluorescent ring with magnifying lens (my eyes are getting old, I'm not, just my eyes).
A digital vernier caliper.
One Kimber Ultra Elite .45 caliber semi auto pistol.
One five-in-one screwdriver.
One 52" X 82.5" Mylar emergency blanket, folded into a 3" X 5" X 3/4" pouch.
One telephone line tester (Butt Set).
One fan clutch from an Audi A-4.
A combination square.
A two foot roll of Velcro.
The carburetor from a 1972 Harley Davidson.
One Canon D60 camera.
iPhone and charging cord.
Box from iPhone.
Philips Pronto touch screen home theater controller, with color screen.
On small statue of Buddha.
One tweeter for Paradigm Reference series speaker.
One hypodermic needle and bottle of Lidocaine.
Bubba teeth.
Staedtler drafting tools.
A small sink adapter for a power drain cleaner (never used).
One pair of needle nose pliers.
One hemostat.
A leaf from some tree that I have not been able to identify, it's been here almost a year now. His name is Walter.
Two scissors, one with Teflon coated blades.
A utility knife.
Depending on the time of day, one of my cats, George.
And the strangest thing, technically is not on my desk but sitting right next to it is a shopping cart. That one has even me scratching my head.
I really need to clean my desk...tomorrow....
Why eating at a Japanese restaurant in West Virginia can be a bad idea
Note: In this and any subsequent writings when I refer to a Hummer, I am speaking of the "real" Hummer not some GM bullshit H2 Tahoe with a body kit or H3 Mini-truck with a body kit, I'm talking about the civilian version of the Humvee.
From the mid 1990's to the mid 2000's I spent most of my time doing something Hummer oriented. We attended numerous "Hummer Events" which were factory sponsored and sanctioned, long weekends spent in some of the most beautiful places in this country. The AMG General factory would sent out a tractor trailer full of tools and spare parts as well as a full compliment of mechanics. These guys worked their asses off, day and night, fixing all the shit we broke and we broke a lot of shit! I also raced in a short lived racing series known as the Hummer Challenge. The Marines entered a race or two but never finished one, stating as they left and I quote "you guys are out of your fucking minds". To be fair we could and did modify our trucks while they had to make due with stockers.
Several regional Hummer clubs sprung up across the country, I became affiliated with E.C.H.O. the East Coast Hummer Owners club. We were the animal house fraternity of all the Hummer clubs. Picture full grown adolescent minded pranksters with the resources to buy $100,000.00+ trucks, modify them extensively and beat the ever loving shit out of them off road, before buying new ones and starting over again. I'm not proud or bragging about this, I'm just trying to paint a picture in your mind. We lived the script of a teen movie.
We learned early on that if we did every event as a benefit for a charity, coupled with how much money 100 Hummer owners would spend in three or four days in a relatively low income part of the country, well, we pretty much could get away with anything...and we did. It was our miscreant behavior that led to the founding of H.O.P.E. Hummer Owners Prepared for Emergency's. To date we are the only private organization that is covered (insurance) and endorsed by the Red Cross. That is a story for another day...
At one particular Hummer Event, in Beckley West Virginia, we were in our normal long weekend (Wednesday to Sunday) modus operandi; Load the trucks on the tractor trailers, drive ten hours or so to our destination, check in to the hotel and begin drinking. In the morning, after catching a few hours sleep we would head out and unload the trucks and the plethora of shit we brought. We would create a base camp complete with EZ-Up canopy's, folding chairs and tables,tool boxes, air compressors, air jacks and coolers...lots of coolers. Then we would divide up into groups of ten to fifteen trucks and hit the trails for the day. We all had radios for communication, each group had a "trail leader", "the pack" and a "tail gunner" The leader and the tail gunner were always very experienced off-roaders, the packs were separated into several experience levels and levels of insanity. The way we found the trails was by contacting the local government and finding out what land was available for our use (send them money), then several of use would "pre-run" the event by driving there spending a few days exploring the area and finding good trails. We would then mark them with GPS and this was long before every soccer mom had a GPS in their car. We had to run laptop computers with special software and attached GPS antennas but I digress...
On this particular event loggers had come in and clear cut the forest between the pre-run and the event. The trails were pretty much non existent. After a day of really boring offroading we headed back to the hotel. After a quick shower and a bite to eat we headed to the parking lot as was de rigor, for an evening of catching up with friends from around the country and drinking. After several hours of this we noticed that behind the hotel was a huge drainage culvert. A fucking HUGE culvert. We soon figured out the best way to get down into it was from the east side of the hotel, down a steep embankment, across a short field, hang a right and there we could enter a boulder strewn culvert. It was about 100 feet wide and a 1000 feet long and damn near a 100% grade (45 degrees) with portions almost vertical. Boulders the size of garden sheds. You could not walk up this thing without falling, tripping or spraining an ankle. In other words PERFECT! We send two trucks down into the ravine, where we quickly find out that there is no dirt, only liquid mud with some sort of vegetation growing quite happily on/in it. The trucks immediately sank into the mud. Not sank into the mud in the way you are thinking of it, I mean they sank into the mud! Not to the frame, past the frame. So sunk that the mud was oozing into the windows. I'm not exaggerating when I say that all that was visible was half of the windows and the roof. The drivers had to climb out the windows to get out of their trucks, hence the open windows into which the mud oozed. For hours we tried, in vein to extract the trucks. We brought in a "deuce and a half" with a 20,000 pound winch. That didn't work. Around three in the morning most of us decided to call it a night and go to bed. The two guys whose trucks were stuck decided to stay and keep working on the extraction. That and drinking. When we got up the next morning they were still at it. The rest of us did what we could to salvage the event and took the "packs" to some trails that we knew well and had run many times. After a decent day of wheeling we returned to the hotel to find our two buddies (their collective nickname was the idiot twins) finally extracting their trucks with two deuces, three other hummers and a shitload of tow straps and winch cables. The highway department had shown up as well as the local news to watch the idiot Hummer guys who did not know better than to drive down into an earthen culvert...after torrential rains. We all got cleaned up and decided to go get some dinner. I'm not sure how but somehow we decided to go to a Benihana type place. I don't know, so don't ask me how we decided to go to a Japanese restaurant, smack dab in the middle of west bum-fuck West Virginia but we did.
So here we are sitting around a large griddle table watching our chef flip and toss our meal into our mouths a freshly grilled bite at a time and truth be told the food was pretty good. It was midway into our meal when we noticed that one of the idiot twins was missing from the table. On a good day this was bad but this time he had been up for two days with zero sleep and tons of beer. We went to DEFCON one. You would have to know John (one of the idiot twins) to understand. Some people have brass balls, John's are made of unobtanium. Walk into a hotel and if there is no one behind the desk, John is over the counter in a flash answering the phones and greeting the public. He has also "valeted" cars arriving at the hotel. On one occasion I remember a guest returning from his daughters wedding reception only to inform the desk clerk that the valet appeared to be drunk. The desk clerk informed the guest that they did not have valets. John had taken the guys mini van, loaded with all the wedding gifts on a beer run. (we bumped the bridal couples honeymoon room up to the best suite in the hotel in order to smooth that one over). That's John.
John is on the loose and we are desperately looking for him. We check the parking lot...nothing. We check the restaurant...nothing. We looked everywhere and still no John. After searching everywhere we can think of we call off the search, after all John has been up for over two days, drank a few cases of beer, he must have passed out someplace. We head back to our table. On the way I mention to David that I need to hit the bathroom for a quick leak, he says that he has to as well and joins me. So there we are standing at adjacent urinals when I notice John's omnipresent Doc Martin, black boots sitting in the stall next to us. Dave and I start talking trash about John and his truck... no response. We really lay on the trash talk, still nothing from John. He is passed out cold on the shitter! This is too good to be true. Dave, normally one of the more reserved members of ECHO leaves the bathroom only to retrieve a large rock from the Zen garden in the restaurant and hurl it at the side of the stall. It hit the stall with the force of a wrecking ball against a tin shack. The sound was thunderous, the dent immense. Still not a word from John, boots still firmly planted on the floor. I walked over to the sink and proceeded to unroll a full roll of the brown "elementary school" paper towels into the sink and soak them in cold water. I gathered up this mass of dripping wet paper towels which had to weigh 20 pounds and heave it up and over the stall wall. It hit him with a huge splat, like a giant spitball hitting the blackboard. We ran, knowing that he was about to try to kick our asses. As we rounded the corner, back to our dining room we looked up to see John sitting at our table calmly eating his dinner. It wasn't John in the bathroom, it was some poor bastard who is probably still traumatized to this day. John was in a little alcove, on the phone with his wife. Ooops!
From the mid 1990's to the mid 2000's I spent most of my time doing something Hummer oriented. We attended numerous "Hummer Events" which were factory sponsored and sanctioned, long weekends spent in some of the most beautiful places in this country. The AMG General factory would sent out a tractor trailer full of tools and spare parts as well as a full compliment of mechanics. These guys worked their asses off, day and night, fixing all the shit we broke and we broke a lot of shit! I also raced in a short lived racing series known as the Hummer Challenge. The Marines entered a race or two but never finished one, stating as they left and I quote "you guys are out of your fucking minds". To be fair we could and did modify our trucks while they had to make due with stockers.
Several regional Hummer clubs sprung up across the country, I became affiliated with E.C.H.O. the East Coast Hummer Owners club. We were the animal house fraternity of all the Hummer clubs. Picture full grown adolescent minded pranksters with the resources to buy $100,000.00+ trucks, modify them extensively and beat the ever loving shit out of them off road, before buying new ones and starting over again. I'm not proud or bragging about this, I'm just trying to paint a picture in your mind. We lived the script of a teen movie.
We learned early on that if we did every event as a benefit for a charity, coupled with how much money 100 Hummer owners would spend in three or four days in a relatively low income part of the country, well, we pretty much could get away with anything...and we did. It was our miscreant behavior that led to the founding of H.O.P.E. Hummer Owners Prepared for Emergency's. To date we are the only private organization that is covered (insurance) and endorsed by the Red Cross. That is a story for another day...
At one particular Hummer Event, in Beckley West Virginia, we were in our normal long weekend (Wednesday to Sunday) modus operandi; Load the trucks on the tractor trailers, drive ten hours or so to our destination, check in to the hotel and begin drinking. In the morning, after catching a few hours sleep we would head out and unload the trucks and the plethora of shit we brought. We would create a base camp complete with EZ-Up canopy's, folding chairs and tables,tool boxes, air compressors, air jacks and coolers...lots of coolers. Then we would divide up into groups of ten to fifteen trucks and hit the trails for the day. We all had radios for communication, each group had a "trail leader", "the pack" and a "tail gunner" The leader and the tail gunner were always very experienced off-roaders, the packs were separated into several experience levels and levels of insanity. The way we found the trails was by contacting the local government and finding out what land was available for our use (send them money), then several of use would "pre-run" the event by driving there spending a few days exploring the area and finding good trails. We would then mark them with GPS and this was long before every soccer mom had a GPS in their car. We had to run laptop computers with special software and attached GPS antennas but I digress...
On this particular event loggers had come in and clear cut the forest between the pre-run and the event. The trails were pretty much non existent. After a day of really boring offroading we headed back to the hotel. After a quick shower and a bite to eat we headed to the parking lot as was de rigor, for an evening of catching up with friends from around the country and drinking. After several hours of this we noticed that behind the hotel was a huge drainage culvert. A fucking HUGE culvert. We soon figured out the best way to get down into it was from the east side of the hotel, down a steep embankment, across a short field, hang a right and there we could enter a boulder strewn culvert. It was about 100 feet wide and a 1000 feet long and damn near a 100% grade (45 degrees) with portions almost vertical. Boulders the size of garden sheds. You could not walk up this thing without falling, tripping or spraining an ankle. In other words PERFECT! We send two trucks down into the ravine, where we quickly find out that there is no dirt, only liquid mud with some sort of vegetation growing quite happily on/in it. The trucks immediately sank into the mud. Not sank into the mud in the way you are thinking of it, I mean they sank into the mud! Not to the frame, past the frame. So sunk that the mud was oozing into the windows. I'm not exaggerating when I say that all that was visible was half of the windows and the roof. The drivers had to climb out the windows to get out of their trucks, hence the open windows into which the mud oozed. For hours we tried, in vein to extract the trucks. We brought in a "deuce and a half" with a 20,000 pound winch. That didn't work. Around three in the morning most of us decided to call it a night and go to bed. The two guys whose trucks were stuck decided to stay and keep working on the extraction. That and drinking. When we got up the next morning they were still at it. The rest of us did what we could to salvage the event and took the "packs" to some trails that we knew well and had run many times. After a decent day of wheeling we returned to the hotel to find our two buddies (their collective nickname was the idiot twins) finally extracting their trucks with two deuces, three other hummers and a shitload of tow straps and winch cables. The highway department had shown up as well as the local news to watch the idiot Hummer guys who did not know better than to drive down into an earthen culvert...after torrential rains. We all got cleaned up and decided to go get some dinner. I'm not sure how but somehow we decided to go to a Benihana type place. I don't know, so don't ask me how we decided to go to a Japanese restaurant, smack dab in the middle of west bum-fuck West Virginia but we did.
So here we are sitting around a large griddle table watching our chef flip and toss our meal into our mouths a freshly grilled bite at a time and truth be told the food was pretty good. It was midway into our meal when we noticed that one of the idiot twins was missing from the table. On a good day this was bad but this time he had been up for two days with zero sleep and tons of beer. We went to DEFCON one. You would have to know John (one of the idiot twins) to understand. Some people have brass balls, John's are made of unobtanium. Walk into a hotel and if there is no one behind the desk, John is over the counter in a flash answering the phones and greeting the public. He has also "valeted" cars arriving at the hotel. On one occasion I remember a guest returning from his daughters wedding reception only to inform the desk clerk that the valet appeared to be drunk. The desk clerk informed the guest that they did not have valets. John had taken the guys mini van, loaded with all the wedding gifts on a beer run. (we bumped the bridal couples honeymoon room up to the best suite in the hotel in order to smooth that one over). That's John.
John is on the loose and we are desperately looking for him. We check the parking lot...nothing. We check the restaurant...nothing. We looked everywhere and still no John. After searching everywhere we can think of we call off the search, after all John has been up for over two days, drank a few cases of beer, he must have passed out someplace. We head back to our table. On the way I mention to David that I need to hit the bathroom for a quick leak, he says that he has to as well and joins me. So there we are standing at adjacent urinals when I notice John's omnipresent Doc Martin, black boots sitting in the stall next to us. Dave and I start talking trash about John and his truck... no response. We really lay on the trash talk, still nothing from John. He is passed out cold on the shitter! This is too good to be true. Dave, normally one of the more reserved members of ECHO leaves the bathroom only to retrieve a large rock from the Zen garden in the restaurant and hurl it at the side of the stall. It hit the stall with the force of a wrecking ball against a tin shack. The sound was thunderous, the dent immense. Still not a word from John, boots still firmly planted on the floor. I walked over to the sink and proceeded to unroll a full roll of the brown "elementary school" paper towels into the sink and soak them in cold water. I gathered up this mass of dripping wet paper towels which had to weigh 20 pounds and heave it up and over the stall wall. It hit him with a huge splat, like a giant spitball hitting the blackboard. We ran, knowing that he was about to try to kick our asses. As we rounded the corner, back to our dining room we looked up to see John sitting at our table calmly eating his dinner. It wasn't John in the bathroom, it was some poor bastard who is probably still traumatized to this day. John was in a little alcove, on the phone with his wife. Ooops!
Friday, October 2, 2009
Motorcycles and Beer, or how I came to love Russian blues
I love motorcycles, I have ever since I was a little kid. When I was a baby, I'm talking baby here, my dad literally zipped me up in his leather jacket and took me on a motorcycle ride...up to 100 mile per hour. I shit you not. Anyway... I awoke one Christmas morn to find a brand spanking new Honda QA-50 Mini-Bike sitting on the hearth. I was ten, holy shit! Thirty fuckin' four years ago! Once that bug bit me, I was infected for life. My childhood friend Giles and I would ride in the fields and woods after school. Problem was the land was owned by Swarthmore college and they were not too fond of two kids on mini-bikes trampling their flora and scaring their fauna, so they would come after us. Their silly little Cushman's were no match for us. We would intentionally lead the hapless bastard down some trail that we knew his glorified golf-cart could never handle. Few things in life are as funny to a ten year old or even a 44 year old for that matter than a security guard tipping over in a Cushman!
Years later, now in my 20's I was riding a Honda Hurricane 600 (later versions became known as the CBR 600) On my frequent back road blasts I met a few other aggressive sport riders, riding like idiots, getting chased by the cops and generally having the time of our lives. It wasn't long before I was taking my Superbike license test. The years I spent racing bikes were some of the best years of my life, and I've had some pretty damn good years! The group of us would meet up Friday evenings and load up all our stuff and drive to the track. The closest track was something like four hours away, so by the time we got there it was usually pretty late as before we could begin the trip we inevitably had to do some last minute work on somebody's bike. We would pitch our tents, literally, pitch a fucking tent. We did not have much money. Every dime we had was eagerly gobbled up by our bikes, if it was a good week we would send whatever guy had his girlfriend along that weekend, into a motel to get a room. Then six to ten of us would roll out the sleeping bags on the floor. This was much better than the tent thing. Heat/A/C, toilet, shower, we were living like kings We'd have a few beers and hit the sack. Saturday was practice and qualifying. Saturday night was full on party. I'm talkin' full on keggers then trips to the nearest titty or biker bar. Once the bikers learned that we raced bikes they embraced us as their own. If you have never partied till dawn in a biker bar, your missing out on one of life's strangest experiences, it is the antithesis of Norman Rockwell's America. I remember one night, there was a stripper so drunk that she made herself dizzy spinning round the poll that she puked all over the stripper podium. Bless her heart, she staggered up to her feet, wiped her mouth and finished the dance! Sunday mornings we would get up early and head to the track or if we were camping at the track, crawl from our tents, and crap behind a tree. How we managed to get up early and be all bright-eyed and bushy tailed is beyond me. But we did, week in, week out. Then we would race all day long, unless you happened to crash. Then you would spend the day trying to cobble the bike back together so you could make the last race of the day. After that last race we would pack up and head home. Back to the "real" world.
And so began the pairing of Motorcycles and drinking. It worked well, as we didn't actually ride drunk but the two seemed to flow effortlessly from one to the other.
Many years have passed. Now, racing Super Bikes at over 150 miles per hour is something I watch on TV. I still love motorcycles and I still love Beer but the two don't coexist very well. I do one at the total exclusion of the other. My yin has lost its yang. It's a bit of a pain in the ass, I'd love to ride more often but many, if not most of my excursions include a quick stop in to some bar, pub, brewery or restaurant. So more often than not, I take the car. Having a beer or two while still under the legal limit of .08 is a beer or two too many if you have 100+ horsepower weighing a scant 400 pounds between your legs (especially so if you have a propensity for doing stupid shit, as I do). Not to mention it is hard to buy and bring home anything larger than a pack of gum.
This got me to thinking. How about a bike with a side car? Big, slow and very hard to fall off. And they have storage! Now I'm on a quest to find a bike with a side car. Pretty quickly I find this Russian motorcycle company on the net, Ural (like the mountain range) which is basically a complete rip off of a 1940's BMW motorcycle save for a modern electrical system and Brembo brakes. The kicker is that this thing is two wheel drive! The potential for doing stupid shit is off the charts! One evening while I was online watching videos of these things on the beach, in the woods, in the snow etc... I stumbled on a video with a sound track that sounded to me like a Russian guy singing American style blues. I loved it! I had to figure out who or what this music was . Then it hit me, I have an App on my phone that "listens" to whatever music is playing and tells you who, what where and when about it. Would it "know" this Russian guy? Never, right? I tried it out and sure as shit it did! One small problem, everything was in Russian. Shit! Okay I can work around this. I copied the guys name and pasted it into the World Lingo online translator. Viola, I have his name with all the letters pointed in the right direction. I copied his name, now in English and pasted it into YouTube. Bingo! Russian blues. Lots of it, some of it is pretty good too. I've been hooked on it now for months. Give it a listen, there is a link below.
Though I have not bought the bike, it is on my "gotta get it, one day" list. You can get it from the factory in camo, all I'd need is a WW1 German helmet with the spike on top!
And that is how motorcycles and beer introduced me to Russian blues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewjRCFr20yw&feature=related
Years later, now in my 20's I was riding a Honda Hurricane 600 (later versions became known as the CBR 600) On my frequent back road blasts I met a few other aggressive sport riders, riding like idiots, getting chased by the cops and generally having the time of our lives. It wasn't long before I was taking my Superbike license test. The years I spent racing bikes were some of the best years of my life, and I've had some pretty damn good years! The group of us would meet up Friday evenings and load up all our stuff and drive to the track. The closest track was something like four hours away, so by the time we got there it was usually pretty late as before we could begin the trip we inevitably had to do some last minute work on somebody's bike. We would pitch our tents, literally, pitch a fucking tent. We did not have much money. Every dime we had was eagerly gobbled up by our bikes, if it was a good week we would send whatever guy had his girlfriend along that weekend, into a motel to get a room. Then six to ten of us would roll out the sleeping bags on the floor. This was much better than the tent thing. Heat/A/C, toilet, shower, we were living like kings We'd have a few beers and hit the sack. Saturday was practice and qualifying. Saturday night was full on party. I'm talkin' full on keggers then trips to the nearest titty or biker bar. Once the bikers learned that we raced bikes they embraced us as their own. If you have never partied till dawn in a biker bar, your missing out on one of life's strangest experiences, it is the antithesis of Norman Rockwell's America. I remember one night, there was a stripper so drunk that she made herself dizzy spinning round the poll that she puked all over the stripper podium. Bless her heart, she staggered up to her feet, wiped her mouth and finished the dance! Sunday mornings we would get up early and head to the track or if we were camping at the track, crawl from our tents, and crap behind a tree. How we managed to get up early and be all bright-eyed and bushy tailed is beyond me. But we did, week in, week out. Then we would race all day long, unless you happened to crash. Then you would spend the day trying to cobble the bike back together so you could make the last race of the day. After that last race we would pack up and head home. Back to the "real" world.
And so began the pairing of Motorcycles and drinking. It worked well, as we didn't actually ride drunk but the two seemed to flow effortlessly from one to the other.
Many years have passed. Now, racing Super Bikes at over 150 miles per hour is something I watch on TV. I still love motorcycles and I still love Beer but the two don't coexist very well. I do one at the total exclusion of the other. My yin has lost its yang. It's a bit of a pain in the ass, I'd love to ride more often but many, if not most of my excursions include a quick stop in to some bar, pub, brewery or restaurant. So more often than not, I take the car. Having a beer or two while still under the legal limit of .08 is a beer or two too many if you have 100+ horsepower weighing a scant 400 pounds between your legs (especially so if you have a propensity for doing stupid shit, as I do). Not to mention it is hard to buy and bring home anything larger than a pack of gum.
This got me to thinking. How about a bike with a side car? Big, slow and very hard to fall off. And they have storage! Now I'm on a quest to find a bike with a side car. Pretty quickly I find this Russian motorcycle company on the net, Ural (like the mountain range) which is basically a complete rip off of a 1940's BMW motorcycle save for a modern electrical system and Brembo brakes. The kicker is that this thing is two wheel drive! The potential for doing stupid shit is off the charts! One evening while I was online watching videos of these things on the beach, in the woods, in the snow etc... I stumbled on a video with a sound track that sounded to me like a Russian guy singing American style blues. I loved it! I had to figure out who or what this music was . Then it hit me, I have an App on my phone that "listens" to whatever music is playing and tells you who, what where and when about it. Would it "know" this Russian guy? Never, right? I tried it out and sure as shit it did! One small problem, everything was in Russian. Shit! Okay I can work around this. I copied the guys name and pasted it into the World Lingo online translator. Viola, I have his name with all the letters pointed in the right direction. I copied his name, now in English and pasted it into YouTube. Bingo! Russian blues. Lots of it, some of it is pretty good too. I've been hooked on it now for months. Give it a listen, there is a link below.
Though I have not bought the bike, it is on my "gotta get it, one day" list. You can get it from the factory in camo, all I'd need is a WW1 German helmet with the spike on top!
And that is how motorcycles and beer introduced me to Russian blues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewjRCFr20yw&feature=related
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Tool Rental at Home Depot
Yesterday we call our local Home Depot and ask if they have a trencher (ditch witch) available for the next day. They tell me that they do but it is broken, so we call a second Home Depot. This one has one, so far so good. Today we arrive to pick it up and as we pull up, I can see it sitting outside in the cage, things are still going well! Once inside, the girl behind the counter (read that again carefully, the comma is there!) tells us that this is not her department, she is just filling in for someone else. She cannot find the trencher anywhere in the system. Several phone calls are made. The head guy has left the store to do "some shopping" for some sort of upcoming promotion. The "number two" guy appears to be M.I.A. as well. After a good half hour she is able to locate the "Number three" guy. He manages finds it in the computer and proceeds to write up the rental agreement. I'm beginning to think we may actually be able to get some work done today!
We load the trencher into the van. This sucker is heavy and unwieldy. If you have ever tried to load up a rototiller, its like that only worse. Just then "number two" pulls up and says, to the "number three" guy "Hey, that does not work, it came back yesterday, the guy said it kept cutting out" Fuck me! We unload the trencher, hereafter to be know as the P.O.S. Guys "two" and "Three" have a pow-wow and decide that they can fix the P.O.S. in no time. Okay, are you sure? "Yep, no problem, give us half an hour. Hesitantly we agree and decide to go get something for lunch and come back in a half hour or so.
After a quick bite at Subway, we return to broad smiles all around, "its all fixed, we tested it out and it's running fine". They start it up and it does indeed start on the first pull! So we load it up a second time. You may wonder why we load it up, instead of letting them do it. I like my van and try very hard to keep it pristine, somehow I don't think that numbers "two" and "Three" could give a shit about my van, so... we end up loading it again.
Finally, off to the job! We back into the driveway only to find that our customers have parked their BMW X-5 right where we need to unload. No big deal, they are older and he is having some health issues, I have come to expect this (The parking where we need to work, not the older, sick part) Mrs. Homeowner opens a second story window and tosses me the keys and asks if I wouldn't mind moving the car. I certainly don't, its got to be faster than waiting for her to put socks and shoes on and coming downstairs. After a bit of vehicle jockeying we unload the P.O.S. Holy shit, I swear their back yard was not that steep when we did the estimate! Now picture this: The ditch witch weighs around 325 pounds and while it has two tires it also has what looks like a post hole auger mounted sideways and the digging bar, a 5" wide 24" long chainsaw looking thing protruding from the front. Pulling this P.O.S up a slope that would be at least a single black diamond ski slope was like try to drag two fully grown dead guys up the hill in a wheelbarrow with no wheel.
Once at the summit, after a short break, I pull the starter cord and to our delight it fires right up on the first pull! Finally, we can get some work done! I engage the trencher and begin. 2" into soil, it stops digging. Even though we know what the result will be, we make several more attempts to no avail... The P.O.S. is broken.
Going down the ski slope it is easier to keep the P.O.S. on its wheels. Bringing it to a halt on the other hand is a whole different story. I quickly decide I had better let it "come up" on its now motionless 5" wide, 24" long protrusion before getting to the driveway. The trencher dug a 4" deep trench for about 10". Perfect! It works twice as well when it is not running! It did come to a halt before damaging the driveway, which by the way the day was going, I fully expected.
We load it back up, drive back to Home Depot, Unload it, bring it in, explain the problem to "Number Two" This was his reply: "Yeah, that's the same problem the guy yesterday was having"
...and I wonder why I drink!
We load the trencher into the van. This sucker is heavy and unwieldy. If you have ever tried to load up a rototiller, its like that only worse. Just then "number two" pulls up and says, to the "number three" guy "Hey, that does not work, it came back yesterday, the guy said it kept cutting out" Fuck me! We unload the trencher, hereafter to be know as the P.O.S. Guys "two" and "Three" have a pow-wow and decide that they can fix the P.O.S. in no time. Okay, are you sure? "Yep, no problem, give us half an hour. Hesitantly we agree and decide to go get something for lunch and come back in a half hour or so.
After a quick bite at Subway, we return to broad smiles all around, "its all fixed, we tested it out and it's running fine". They start it up and it does indeed start on the first pull! So we load it up a second time. You may wonder why we load it up, instead of letting them do it. I like my van and try very hard to keep it pristine, somehow I don't think that numbers "two" and "Three" could give a shit about my van, so... we end up loading it again.
Finally, off to the job! We back into the driveway only to find that our customers have parked their BMW X-5 right where we need to unload. No big deal, they are older and he is having some health issues, I have come to expect this (The parking where we need to work, not the older, sick part) Mrs. Homeowner opens a second story window and tosses me the keys and asks if I wouldn't mind moving the car. I certainly don't, its got to be faster than waiting for her to put socks and shoes on and coming downstairs. After a bit of vehicle jockeying we unload the P.O.S. Holy shit, I swear their back yard was not that steep when we did the estimate! Now picture this: The ditch witch weighs around 325 pounds and while it has two tires it also has what looks like a post hole auger mounted sideways and the digging bar, a 5" wide 24" long chainsaw looking thing protruding from the front. Pulling this P.O.S up a slope that would be at least a single black diamond ski slope was like try to drag two fully grown dead guys up the hill in a wheelbarrow with no wheel.
Once at the summit, after a short break, I pull the starter cord and to our delight it fires right up on the first pull! Finally, we can get some work done! I engage the trencher and begin. 2" into soil, it stops digging. Even though we know what the result will be, we make several more attempts to no avail... The P.O.S. is broken.
Going down the ski slope it is easier to keep the P.O.S. on its wheels. Bringing it to a halt on the other hand is a whole different story. I quickly decide I had better let it "come up" on its now motionless 5" wide, 24" long protrusion before getting to the driveway. The trencher dug a 4" deep trench for about 10". Perfect! It works twice as well when it is not running! It did come to a halt before damaging the driveway, which by the way the day was going, I fully expected.
We load it back up, drive back to Home Depot, Unload it, bring it in, explain the problem to "Number Two" This was his reply: "Yeah, that's the same problem the guy yesterday was having"
...and I wonder why I drink!
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