CUAgain
Musings from “Life Is a Road” author–Daniel Meyer
Heat’s supposed to break tonight…
Aug 24th
The summer heat is supposed to break tonight. Phew! Good thing! I’ve got stuff to do!
This picture was on the way back from the Old Vic Sunday (notice the temp):
No wonder I took a siesta that day!
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Conservation. Yeah. That’s it. Sure.
Aug 17th
So…we have “choice” in our electric plans here in Texas…what that means is they’ve introduced a whole bunch of useless people (called middlemen) to mark up and sell me power, even though they don’t generate it or operate the equipment/lines needed to get it to my house. They produce nothing. They DO nothing. But they get a cut. Legal parasites.
The pressure is on to conserve too. Make your home more efficient. Install CFL bulbs. Toss out the inlaws. Shoot out your neighbor’s lights…that kind of thing.
Anyway, my year-long contract with my carrier is up for renewal. No biggie, right?
Turns out I can’t renew my contract at the rate that my carrier is advertising for all other customers. They want to charge me over 10% more per kilowatt/hour than the advertised rate.
Why?
Because I don’t use enough power.
Congratulations! You’re saving energy! Here’s a 10% penalty for your efforts!
Conservation? My fuzzy butt. It’s about money. Always.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer (who’s off to find yet another new middleman to sell me the same power on the same equipment for some random rate structure).
Beware…Yet another scam…
Aug 4th
We used PetCareRx.com to order flea stuff, and as a result were signed up for “Complete Savings”…an outfit that charges you $12/mo to send you an email with coupon codes.
We never gave that outfit our credit card number, they got it from PetCareRx. Apparently they do this with several companies…pizza hut and others.
They say we “knowingly” signed up…we did not. “Well, someone in your household did.”
No. We did not.
Just so I’m clear…No…we did not knowingly sign up for anything and did not authorize this company to charge us anything.
We used a coupon on the PetCareRx site and that apparently signed us up. Others have been signed up by taking a survey. Some are reporting being signed up just for making a purchase on some sites.
We didn’t notice the emails because they look like spam and were from a company we’d never heard of so they got deleted. We didn’t notice the charges because we both use the card and they aren’t very much…when we finally did and I called them they refunded 4 months but are making getting the rest difficult. They are unapologetic. This is apparently our fault.
Anyway…scam scam scam. Any company that “tricks” you into signing up for their service is a bad, bad deal. They are apparently happy doing business this way and since they state it is legal, apparently our AG thinks so too as despite complaints, the practice continues.
I’ve notified PetCareRx.com that we feel that aligning themselves with such a company and providing said company with our information makes their site untrustworthy/dangerous and we won’t be using them again.
Buyer beware.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
20. Better than 200.
Aug 3rd
Got back from my Goodyear dealer…
Turns out I didn’t shred the belt…a surprise to me given the size and bluntness of the pin I picked up on the Oklahoma turnpike. <-click for da blog entry
Y’all might recall I string-plugged it (somebody forgot his mushroom plugs) with what had to be 8 year old sticky string plugs left over under my seat. That kept me from having to hoof it down the Oklahoma turnpike and then carried me the rest of the way to Michigan and back.
My philosophy on tire repairs…vulcanizing mushroom plugs on the road (or whatever it takes), and if the tire tread is any good, once home from the trip I pull them and patch from the inside. Heh…should have done it over a week ago…but I’ve been busy. I’ve just been keeping an eye on the pressure…or was till I tore up a u-joint a few days ago (143,000-some miles) slamming the big machine through Dallas traffic. Of course there’s a blog entry for that too.
Anyway, since the belts were intact, they put a stinger patch in it for me. Good as new!
$20 vs somewhere near $200.
Yeah, 20 is better than 200 sometimes!
I could have done it myself but my Goodyear guy will mount/dismount tires for me and it’s a friggen 100 degrees out there today.
U-joint’s now replaced as well.
I do believe it’s time for me to fly!
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Delta 191. 25 years.
Aug 2nd
Twenty-five years ago today, Delta 191 encountered wind-shear from one of our famous thunderstorms and was shoved out of the sky on routine approach to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.
One-hundred-thirty-five people, including one on the ground, lost their lives. It was a horrific scene and is still indelibly burned into the memories of any who saw the images from that day.
Twenty five years. Wow. I was working that night (in the news production biz). It was a career changer for me.
I “had the con”. It was a hellish night. Frantic, busy, emotional, and the tasks set before us were impossible. It was important. We did it, and did it right. Up against the tragedy of the lost lives it’s not something we ever expected or sought recognition for. It was enough that we got the job done.
It was then that I decided I liked what I did…it mattered. It was then that my bosses decided they liked how I did it.
But…twenty-five years? Where did it all go? Have I accomplished anything? Will the next 25 vanish just as quickly and with as little consequence?
Will they matter?
A solemn day for solemn thoughts.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Can you tell me, friends…that it’s not about the pain?
Jul 28th
Blasting south. Pushing hard…burning miles…making time.
Hot. Sore. Dehydrated…beyond the point of rehydration for the day actually…heading for the danger zone.
Basically, in the tremendous heat and long day I’m losing more fluids than the body can process in the short term…particularly since I only stop for fluids when I stop for gas. Heat exhaustion is inevitable now if I push on much longer without rest.
Recovery time has become mandatory.
I won’t be stopping for an extended rest anytime soon though. I’m within shooting distance of home…just a few hours of hard running. Home. I’ve caught a whiff and there won’t be much besides fuel stops until I reach it.
At least…that’s the plan. I’m just entering the hottest part of the day.
I’ve been straddling this machine and piloting her through waves of heat for eight hours. It’s damn big out here.
Relaxed and alert, but beginning to favor my left leg and back when the road is rough. The back’s never quite been the same since Alaska…and the leg…well…that was probably the ladder thing…or maybe half a hundred other abuses. The long hours in the saddle…two days of hard running…bring back the pain.
The memories too…return without having diminished their power over time. Pain and vivid recollections…complete with intense emotions…flow freely on these runs.
Pain and memory…of the two…it’s hard to decide which is stronger. Sometimes they are indelibly connected. Often they come unbidden…sometimes I dredge them up on my own.
Good memories, bad ones. It’s the experience that drives me. It’s the total that makes me what I am. I would not shed either if I could.
The pain I could do without though.
When I was a young man I’d have called it weakness. Today I call it battle scars. I’ve earned the right.
I’ve earned the memories. I’ve earned the pain.
Dubious honor…that.
The big machine’s running lean. I hit reserve twelve miles ago. There’s at least that many miles remaining before the next exit. The nearly empty tank…with the extreme temperatures of the day, the sun, and the heat of the big power-plant thrumming smoothly along underneath it…is hot enough to burn the insides of my thighs, even through my jeans. I eye the odometer and the map again. There would be fuel at that exit…I hoped. With any luck I might even make it that far.
My helmet feels like it’s closing in on me…the heat, the sweat. I’d toss it right now but years of experience in hot weather tell me I’m actually better off with it on. Blast furnace winds wouldn’t help cool my exposed head much. Besides that it holds my earphones in. The music is part of what keeps me going.
Or maybe it’s just the ride. Sometimes I’m not certain.
The toes of my boots are sandblasted half through by thousands of miles in these exact conditions. That says something. I don’t think too much about what. The soles are long gone too…dragged lightly on their edges as the pegs burned off on the roadway through many hard turns. This is my fifteenth pair of riding boots. Already it’s time for pair sixteen. I can’t remember how many sets of pegs though.
Longing for home, yet somehow, dreading the end of the ride. I glance at the instruments and tap the speed up just a bit. Maybe the fuel would hold out.
Yesterday some friends passed me on the highway. We rode together for a bit…until it was time for me to peel off to gas up the big cruiser. We shared the ride but never spoke. Just a wave as our ride…as the road…brought us together and then guided us apart.
I find myself thinking about them now…with their destination and the timing, they are likely out here too…not too far away, yet they may as well be a world apart. Our routes diverge near here. I wonder if they are having a similiar ride. Similiar thoughts. Similiar pains.
Riding is like that. Elements are in common…but how they are combined is intensely individual. In the end, the experience is unique.
The big machine starts running rough. “Hey boss,” she’s saying, “we’re about dry.” The searing hot tank punctuates her remarks.
“I know babe.”
A big green highway sign says the exit is a mile ahead. Heh…we’ll make it. Again.
As I pull to the pump I realize that I’m panting. Still, I fuel the bike first. After, I stick my helmet in the bagged-ice freezer and chug the liter of water I bought from the halter-top clad, 20-something, tanned Oklahoma girl running the station. They grow ‘em nice here.
I stare at my hands. Yep, I’m overheated. I stretch a little and try to moderate the shakes. More water, some of it over the head and down the back. I allow myself five minutes and then I retrieve my (now cold) helmet and mount up.
I’ve still got that whiff of home…and the warm and willing woman waiting there for me.
Hot, sore, exhausted, and pushing on. It’s time to fly.
Tomorrow I’ll have to pull the big bike apart…I destroyed the rear tire on the outbound leg…not far from this very spot. Plugging a hole that size…that likely shredded the belts…is only for getting home. Heh…well, home after I ran the three-thousand miles I had already planned for the trip first. Now I need to pull it and see if it can be patched from the inside. Yeah…sure. Already I know I’ll be shelling out the bucks for a new one. Gad.
I hit the road and push the bike to highway speeds…and somewhat more. The blast furnace winds are familiar now…and will make short work of whatever rest that last stop provided.
And I’m smiling.
God help me, I’m ENJOYING this.
Another gas stop and I should be able to make it home. I glance at the map again…hmmm. Maybe not. That’d be stretching it. Perhaps two stops. We’ll see.
The highway sings. The big bike’s lonely wail joins in. The music on my mp3 player enhances, rather than covers, this tune. Suddenly, a symphony, and I find myself singing.
Yeah, I’m enjoying myself. I don’t know why. Frankly I don’t care.
But I do occasionally wonder.
Can you tell me, friends…that it’s not about the pain?
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Are you listening?
Jul 23rd
They really do talk…if you take the time to listen…and believe.
On my commute home…northbound on US75. Traffic was heavy, very heavy…and getting worse the direction I was headed.
Up ahead I could see the eastbound ramp to I635 was clear though…that would work. I’ve been here all my life…I know every shortcut. It was time to bail on this road.
This interchange is massive…some of the bridges 150 feet in the air and heavily banked. The downgrades are unusually steep as well.
Yeah, so they are usually fun. When I hit it at night, I consider this billion dollar structure to be my personal, motorcycle, jungle gym.
I headed for the right lane, cleared the traffic, hit the steep, curving, uphill ramp, and twisted the throttle to its stop.
Full power on a Valkyrie is an absolutely awesome thing. She hooked up, dug in, and flew.
But she took that moment to speak as well.
“Uh, boss?”
“Yeah, I felt it.”
“I think it’s pretty serious.”
It was. I already knew the problem. “We gonna make it home?”
She actually laughed at me. “Oh please. When have I ever let you down?”
She has a point. In 140,000 miles, as long as I’ve kept her in fuel and tires, she’s gotten me unfailingly to my destination. Besides…in Dallas traffic…if it will roll, you keep it rolling. Lives can depend on it and abandoned vehicles stand no chance at all. The animals will tear them apart.
We are a team…she and I.
Home safe. I parked her in the garage. She’s down. She’ll get me home as long as I do my part…but my part also includes knowing when she’s had enough.
“I guess I’ve been pushing you pretty hard lately.”
She snorts. “Lately?”
Heh…she has another point. My philosophy on machines (and indeed, on most things in life) is to, “Ride ‘em hard. Fix ‘em when they break.”
Anything else is a waste of potential.
I won’t be able to work on her today…or tomorrow. My job…and other aspects of life intrude.
“I don’t like this boss.”
“I know babe.”
As the door rolls down she asks plaintively, “You will fix me, right?”
It was my turn to laugh. “Oh please. When have I ever let you down?”
She sounds better. “Ah. Good. It’s just that…well…I simply need to fly! It’s what I was made for!”
“I know babe. Me too.”
I’ll have to take the cage into work tomorrow. “Big Iron”, 450 hp v-10 Dodge, patiently waits in the drive. I’ll need to put on the new license plates I picked up three months ago. They’re still sitting on my desk. Absently I wonder where I left the keys to that thing.
Maybe she’ll even start.
Some parts are on order. Others I have on hand. Some surgery involved…wondering if I should take the excuse to do some modifications. The Valk’s personality…her soul, peers through a mostly stock exterior. Me, I know what’s inside. I wonder if it’s time to show it to everybody else.
Heh…like I need another project.
Pics…of the problem and fix…coming later.
They’ll talk. It can save your butt.
Are you listening?
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
Ch-ch-ch-changes…
Jul 21st
Y’all might have noticed the new theme on the blog…I’ll customize it a bit more later…had problems with the old blog install/theme. It apparently got compromised several versions of wordpress ago…but wasn’t hacked at that time.
Then, last week, I got a spam injection. Sounds good, if you like the canned meat stuff…but since I don’t, and I don’t like the spam-spam either…it’s bad.
*queue the monty python music*
“Spam spam spam spam…spam spam spam spam” (etc)
Basically, the old version had a bug that allowed a hacker to insert malicious code to manipulate the site. They did, but never used it. The update to current wordpress version closed the bug/hole but didn’t kill their inserted code…
So last week the hackers triggered the code…which inserted a bunch of hidden links in my post pages and the front page of my website. Users couldn’t see them, but google could, which I guess is the point. The hacker was trying to get his page rankings up.
Thanks to an alert reader I was notified of the problem.
Anyway, I cleared the problem and it came back last night, so I took some time to research the problem further and discoverd I needed to hunt down…and kill…the inserted code.
Done-did…or something like that. That should do the job.
If not, my next step is to totally kill the blog installation and redo it from scratch. That, unfortunately, may delete my users accounts.
I hope to avoid that step.
I guess I’ll know for sure in a couple days!
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
A most dangerous run…
Jul 19th
Back in the house. I just blasted south…mostly took the direct route home. I have to work Tuesday ya see…
The direct route…pushing hard…1275 miles, Inzane (waaaaay up there in Michigan) to my door. A most interesting run…
Wearing the t-shirt from the F6 rider store…it was extremely appropriate. “Valkyrie Motorcycles–I ride too hard, too fast, and too far to ride anything else.”
Thunderstorms and heat warnings…seriously…BOTH…for the entire route! I remember flipping off the weather channel Sunday morning and saying, “AAAH come-on…choose one or the other! You can’t have both!”
For a change…they were right and I was wrong.
The very intense thunderstorm due south of Chicago was most refreshing…I thought I was going to drown. It was so cold and raining so hard that it was like jumping into cold water…I caught my breath and it was several moments before I could breathe again. I saw several bikes pulled off under bridges…some of them were valks (Hi Y’all!). Me? I just “gave a rebel yell” and kept on running. It was short-lived at least. The Chicago traffic just made it more interesting.
Saw several Valks along the way…some coming from Inzane I rode with a while…had to bail on them eventually as those I-states hold a wee bit more pusholine than I do…that and it was time for ice-cream.
I shut her down someplace in Missouri after a near-deer-strike (anybody know why we tend to call these “near-misses”?…I mean, isn’t a near miss, a hit?)
Enough for one day…I found me a cheap hotel.
A $5.50 frozen margarita in a Mexican resturaunt where $4.50 buys the entire (most excellent) chicken-soft-taco platter took away the pains and the heat of the day. Great choice if I may say so. It was at least 32 ounces. Yum. Yes, I walked from the hotel…and sort of floated back.
That 32oz frozen concoction was the large. The “Grande Margarita” was $60 and I skipped that one as “Margarita” was apparently the name of the hooker that would come to the room.
I’m still kind-of wondering what that charge would look like on my credit card bill.
The heat, flying trailer parts, exploding semi-tires, crashing mini-vans, and a malfunctioning gas pump added exciting moments to an interstate run.
The pump? Yeah, filled up. “Click”. “Pop”. My tank needed about 5 gallons. At the nozzle “cut-off” it broke near the line and 11.3 gallons flowed all over me, the bike, and the parking lot before I could get off the bike and find the emergency cut-off button (behind the ice machine, just in case you ever need it).
But hey! The gas was cold…a relief from the heat…and my bike is cleaner! The arriving “winky light topped” professionals were a bit irritated that I had pushed my bike out of the very large pool of fuel and me and the bike were just “hanging”, far out of the way (and away from the two first-responders that were SMOKING) to dry off.
Well, heck, what did they expect? I wasn’t gonna start it in that puddle…and I wasn’t gonna leave it whilst they shook their heads and got all dissapointed that the haz-mat team wouldn’t be available for 45 minutes (it evaporated in about 20 minutes). Is it just me or are our professionals getting sillier every year?
It’s GASOLINE. Avoid fire till it’s gone. Or put it in a tank, light the engine, and run hard. Pretty simple.
When I was reasonably certian that I wouldn’t explode I left.
Errant cage drivers and flying traffic barricades topped the other exciting moments and made this a most dangerous run. Not sure where that last orange stick-cone thing came from…exactly. Maybe they had an air-traffic corridor blocked for some reason.
Today my bullfrog sun-sceen…NOW (unfortunately) in a convenient pressurized aerosol spray instead of the old pump kind…exploded in the heat…it was in my tank bag. Pretty impressive really. I inhaled a lungful or two…my eyes still hurt…my helmet padding is melting and the inks are fading/running in my atlas maps (we put this crap on our skin?). My camera will never be the same. The mp3 player still works though! The tank bag itself seems to be fading into a parallel universe or something.
I wonder if this stuff kills vampires?
Anyway…a most dangerous run.
I think I need a tire and a fork seal or two…maybe another windshield…a blinker…perhaps a new tank-bag…but really, it could all wait…I’m ready to go again. I think I need the practice.
Nobody died…AND I can use the bike again. A great ride!
How about you?
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer
All Summer long…
Jul 17th
Riding for me…is often a time for reflection.
Notice I didn’t say “quiet reflection”. I sing along to music. I scream at thunderstorms. I taunt the things out in the wild that would have my life…or worse…
Even more dangerous…I taunt those demons I carry within me.
I seem to have accumulated rather a lot of them…despite NOT mis-spending my youth. I wish I’d have known that IN my youth…I expect I’d have mis-spent quite a bit more of it.
clicky–> This song dredges up a lot of that sort of reflection. Give it a listen. Kidd Rock does it pretty well, and I’m riding that part of the country at the moment so it readily comes to mind.
This one is lost youth…that girl…that summer…and oh yeah, I remember. I will remember till I’m dead. No…that’s not true. I will remember far beyond that…I’ll remember until my soul is lost somewhere in the vast universe.
That time...Where the hell did it all go?
My Valkyrie runs on AAA batteries…you know this, yes? I stick a AAA battery in my mp3 music player and take off down the hiighway. If the music stops, often, so does the Valk whilst I search for another battery…another dose of music.
I can define or relive my life by the music I’ve experienced as I’ve made the journey…as I’ve traveled this road. Every album…from every artist…every record I’ve ever bought…every song I’ve ever liked…all of it…fits on my player with room for another 1000 songs (ANOTHER ONE-THOUSAND!). My whole life…in a player no bigger than my thumb. Scary that…but I DO love this technology.
So yeah…it was not 1989 (as it is in the song)…it was a large number of years earlier for me. Scary how many, really. Mostly I remember working…nose to the grindstone.
It. Bought. Me. Nothing.
That one summer though…it earned me my soul.
Food for thought.
Now nothing seems as strange as when the leaves began to change
or how we thought those days would never end
sometimes I hear that song and I’ll start to sing along
and think man I’d love to see that girl again.
Life’s short. Let’s ride.
CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer