Time marches on

I generally order my parts from Bikebandit.com. Tires too. I get a 10% ama discount and something like 1% of all purchases accrue as store credit or "bandit bucks". For an AMA member, it's a pretty nice thing they got goin' on.

Remember that new radiator cap I was hoping would stop the coolant leak? I then took it to a mechanic only to be told I need a new radiator cap and possibly a new radiator?

Well, I got in touch with BikeBandit and they said they'd send me a new-new radiator cap and I told the help agent I dealt with to ship it to me here in Dallas. Turns out it's going to Austin. Whoops. They screwed up and refunded me on the original shipping since the replacement is free (or so they said they would) but here I am in Dallas, having to stay longer than planned.

I feel I have to go to Dealy Plaza where Kennedy was shot. I also figured I'd go on a short hike since there are places for that too. Other than that I have no idea what to do here as I only planned on staying 3 days anyway and everyone has told me there's nothing to do in Dallas.

So I figured I would perform a little experiment:
Any requests? This is a "blog"; I'm not writing this for myself. I'm writing this for you, dear reader. Is there anything you want to see pictures of in the Dallas area? Anything you want written about by a novice "blogger"*? Anything at all? Even if it's not Dallas related? Just name it. Want to see pictures of the fattest cat in the world? Just say so.

*[note: a "blogger" is one who writes in a "blog" {note-note: a "blog" is to the internet what a composition notebook is to the world (note-note-note: The internet is to ideas what a stinking landfill is to an empty field of beautiful green grass)}]

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.

"You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas." - Davy Crockett

Oh boy has it been a while. I assure you I'm not dead. Time just flies when you're having fun, and lately that's all I'm doing. That and stressing about my dwindling funds.

Ah, New Orleans, a city with soul. New Orleans is a very cool place. You're never far from music, alcohol, or good food down in New Orleans. I was staying in the spare apartment of one Dr. Simonson, a friend of my aunt and uncle's who was out of town anyway. So I regrettably didn't even get to meet my host, but I did meet some very cool people who let me crash at their place for the second night since it was in New Orleans proper and Dr. Simonson's apartment was on the westbank in nearby Marrero.

The first place I went was City Park for the botanical and sculpture gardens. On the way, I stopped for a real nectar cream flavored New Orleans sno-ball. It's kind of a cross between a sno-cone and a slushy:



I didn't get to the sculpture gardens in time, but I walked around city park and got some good pictures.

After city park I went over to the French quarter. Here I am on a streetcar that wasn't named "Desire":



See? I'm still alive and in one piece!

The French Quarter of New Orleans has a life of it's own. It's right on the river and extends back inland for 6 or 7 blocks.



As I was returning, I walked up Bourbon street a ways. Bourbon street is aptly named. The way it's set up is a bar, 2 or 3 daquiri places, then the pattern repeats. The music flows through the streets and the booze flows through the people. It was hot as an August night in New Orleans so I decided to look for a cheap frozen drink. I picked up a small "Ecstasy" daquiri (151, everclear, and blue curacao) for $6.50 and got a good strong frozen buzz on while I made my way back to my host's house.

The next day I met up with another very cool person (are those the only kind here?) for lunch and a couple games of pool. Afterwards I went BACK to city park to get in to the sculpture garden on time.

I think the bird makes this shot.



After the sculpture gardens I met up with a bunch of friends of one of my hosts for dinner. A fun time was had by all.

I wish I had more time and money to spend in NOLA, but the next day I headed west to Texas. It was another long ride. Parts of it were very scenic:



I spent a night, a day, and a night in Houston, and then rolled on out to Austin where I've been for the past 8 days...8 days?! Wow. Time really DOES fly. I've been hanging with some good friends of mine and lazing around for the most part. I did go to Zilker botanical gardens for more walking around taking pictures of plants and scenery. I know most people find pictures without people boring, but they're the kind of pictures I like to take. So rather than take up the limited space in my flikr photostream, I've posted the New Orleans and Texas pictures to my photobucket here


As I was returning from Zilker (a 15 minute ride) my bike's temperature light came on and coolant sprayed out of the radiator cap luckily not burning my leg through my pants. So at this very moment my bike is in a shop.
[Update: It's just the radiator cap! Hooray for cheap, do-it-yourself fixes!]

There's a Vietnamese dish called Phở (pronounced "fuh"), and as I was riding around I saw a Vietnamese restaurant that I had to go in to:



We ate at the Phở King restaurant. The food wasn't just good, it was Phở King good. My friend even took home a Phở King menu.

I'm going to hang in Austin for a bit and try to stir up some random I.T. work fixing computers so I can to offset the cost of repairs. Next up: Dallas!

Fort Walton Beach, Florida to New Orleans, Luisiana

Marathon 7 hour ride today.

I took the scenic route (Highway 98) over to Pensacola. And I am glad I did. The Pensacola Bay Bridge is beautiful, it's a shame there was no place to pull over and get a picture. Then I rode on I-10 most of the way over. In Alabama, just a few minutes outside of Mississippi, I saw a rainstorm up ahead. I really liked the way you could see exactly where the rain began so I pulled over to take a picture.



I am standing on dry ground looking at a rainstorm. Isn't that awesome?! I didn't see any lightning though so I was going to ride through it. As I'm putting my camera and phone in a ziplock bag, I notice the rainstorm is much closer. Just as I finish zipping the bag closed, the first drops hit me. This thing was moving FAST! By the time I saddled up, those first drops became a torrential downpour. It was raining incredibly fierce. In this heat, it was glorious. I was already pretty much soaked in the few seconds it took me to saddle up and start my bike again. It was raining so hard that traffic slowed to about 30 mph because you could only see about 400 feet in front of you. Sweet refreshment. I broke through to sunshine and the Mississippi border in about 5 minutes, cool and refreshed. Oh boy did I appreciate that rain. Of course, 40 minutes later I was completely dry save my feet and hands and starting to get hot again.

I kept on I-10 until Landon, Mississippi, where I cut down Highway 49 and got on scenic highway 90 heading west. I got on 90 in aptly named Long Beach, Mississippi. It was indeed a scenic route and a good choice. One thing I did see on 90, was an ocean that was barely moving, and miles and miles of beach...with absolutely nobody on it. Breaks my heart. Maybe I'll pick up a souvenir tarball while I'm here.

An extra day in Fort Walton Beach

Yesterday, after frantically calling around every place I could find, desperately searching for a place that can repair a motorcycle tire, I found Racetrack Powersports right here in Fort Walton Beach.

I dropped off my bike, went across the street to Thai Kitchen for lunch, and when I returned there was only a short wait before my bike was fixed up and rideable. So a big thanks to Racetrack Powersports. If they weren't there, I would have had to buy a new tire and have it installed and it would have cost me 3 times as much and at least another day.

It's 11:00 and I'm a-heading off to The Big Easy.