The dude and the child

Jeff and Nikki were going to New Orleans for a convention from Thursday until tonight. They were bringing the kids (Matt: 17; Veronica: 6) too. It was going to be family fun in NOLA. Until Matt decided he wanted to stay home. He said he didn't want to miss any classwork, but I think a small part of it might have also been some good old I'm-a-teenager-and-I-don't-want-to-step-outside-the-comfort-zone-so-I'd-rather-sit-home-and-play-video-games-in-my-free-time-than-spend-a-long-weekend-in-New-Orleans-with-my-family.

Now since Veronica is 6, her going was contingent on Matt being able to watch her for a few hours during the weekend. So now they're up the creek because they got accommodations and plans and need a somebody who can babysit from Thursday to Sunday.

Alright, I have occupied their living room for a damn month, I'll step up and let them enjoy their weekend by offering to babysit.

Smile!


Alright, I don't have nearly as much patience for children as it probably would take for this but we've both survived and that's what's important.

Things actually went fairly well but dinner each night was a bit of a battle.

Ah, willful children will be the death of themselves on me one day.

It was a cool day in Texas today; I'm looking north with a half smile.

"Inspiration, move me brightly"

About a week ago I met one of Jeff's friends and I saw him again and he tells me I've inspired him. "Inspired how?"

He's in the army and he's being deployed to Iraq again sometime soon. He says when he gets back from that tour of duty, he's retiring from the army and taking a trip around Europe. He's put a lot of thought into it, had a whole bunch of places he wanted to visit.

Whatever I hope to experience myself, to have inspired another human being to have an adventure is one of the greatest things I can accomplish with this trip.

The ebb of chaos

It is not, as I had hoped, an affordable fix. The radiator, where the cap screws on, has somehow been warped or bent. I suspect this happened the last time someone was removing the cap or putting it back on which would have been just before this trip. Meanwhile, the guys at Wood's Fun Center (a huge motorcycle shop which sells all makes of Japanese bikes and Spyders as well) knew I was on a budget so they bent it back into shape until it no longer leaked. Is it fixed for good? No. Is it manageable for now? Yes. Have I been eating enough vegetables lately? Methinks not.

Rather than have to drop 7-hundo on a new radiator for my bike, for now it only cost me an hour of labor. Just have to keep an eye on it. I may end up having to hole up somewhere and get a job after all.

I got to hand it to Wood's Fun Center (off IH-35 in Austin, Texas). Given my budget constraint, they did everything that could possibly be done, and I get the feeling most places would have just said "bad radiator, buy a new one".

One of the employees of Wood's Fun Center has a Honda Rebel 250 chopper. My first bike was a Rebel 250 and I'll always be sentimental about that model, and anyone who has taken their 250 and turned it into a bobber gets a LOT of respect in my book.



Not just time, effort, and money; love has been put into this bike.

Saturday I actually woke up sick and got worse throughout the day. I had a cold that peaked at around midnight so I woke up yesterday feeling better, and today it's all but gone.

So my bike is back and ready to go and I'm healthy again but to make my friend's lives easier I agreed to babysit their 6 year old while they go away for 3 days next weekend. Least I could do since I've been freeloading on their couch for the last month. So I'm staying in Austin until the 28th.

Austin Part 3

So as of Monday, September 20 I'll have been here a full month. That's about 3 weeks longer than I'd planned.

For the most part I laze around playing video games because my bike hasn't been in running condition and my hosts both work. But we hang out, they took me tubing, I've been enjoying their pool, and other random stuff that happens when you hang around.

Here is a picture of a place I went while there was a thing happening:



Lucky Lounge is a pretty cool bar and Flush is an alright band. Check them out at FlushMusic.com but they definitely do sound better live.

I put my new radiator cap on my bike and filled it with coolant. Hooray! All fixed right? Life is grand. My funds are slightly below where I'd like them to be so I posted some ads on Craigslist for random IT work now that I can move around again.

I get a call later that day to fix some software issues with a laptop. I ride over to their place and it turns out my radiator cap is still leaking. I'm 100% sure now that that my coolant isn't circulating based on the fact that the level in the overflow tank hasn't changed a bit since Virginia.

Turns out I was fixing the laptop of an incredibly cool person. I went to do 40 minutes of IT work, and ended up staying there chatting for 3 hours. They're into bikes too and they said they'd help try and fix mine. They also let me ride their Nighthawk 250 around the block, and gave me a book to borrow. Here's to new friends!

While there I get called in to a Jamba Juice to run a software update on one of their machines. Now the way that works is I call Jamba Juice's own tech support line, get access to their server, download the software update onto a thumb drive, and then bring it over to the terminal and run the update. Turns out Jamba Juice's tech support wanted to leave work early so after waiting around and enjoying a complimentary smoothie, I ended up not being able to work and left. Only this time I was working through a consulting company so everything is on the books and I got paid anyway.

Did I just make money for meeting some awesome people and drinking a free smoothie? Yes I did.

"I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE LIFE! Sing it with me now!"

It's now about a week since I wrote the above and yesterday I performed my first cooling system drain, clean, and refill. I'm slowly acquiring mechanical know-how!

Today I rode my bike to a Honda service place and on the way it leaked coolant so I left it there and hopefully it'll be a relatively affordable fix.

Now I need your help, dear readers. I'm entering a helmet skin design contest but each entrant only can enter one design. The winner's design gets put into production, and the winner get's a free one. So I want you to tell me which design to go with:



or



Ah, the ages old battle of turtle vs. snake-like-thing-with-teeth boils over into the arena of protective motorcycle gear...

Yeah I kind of screwed up on the back of that turtle shell one but keep in mind that what they actually end up producing is just based on the winner's design and a professional artist tweaks it to bring out what we've intended so that turtle shell one will look more like an actual turtle shell if it wins.

So click that comment button and let me know which one you like more! Please?

Thanks a million, nay, a BILLION!

Random pics

This guy knows what's what:




This wine apparently goes great with demons and sticking forks in electrical sockets:



"Keep Austin weird, y'all!"

Contemplating water

Here I am 87 days into my trip (73 if you want to start counting after I went back home from Laconia for the 4 days) and I'm in Austin, Texas. I've gone less than half the distance I planned on and it's already September.

When I started this trip I figured it would be over by now. I thought "I'll be home by the end of October at the very latest."

The only thing I'm sure of now is that I have no idea how long I'm going to be on the road.

And I'm ok with that.

It would be nice to be back home for Halloween, but I refuse to rush. If I breeze through everywhere without seeing anything, without feeling the spirit of the place, than what would be the point of traveling at all?

The trip itself has a life of it's own and I have to let it carry me where it will, not fight against it nor try to impose my will on it and change it's course. It is an experience that must be appreciated for what it is, not forced into an arbitrary time frame. This trip, as all things should, must be shaped only by the present and not by expectation.