(Jared - Let’s try to do this when you get your bike out of the shop.)

A long sigh comes out of the crowd as Jerry makes another motorcycle/travel post…

(BTW - I think that’s the direction I want to take this blog since I would love to start traveling more in the near future.)

Jared and I were talking the other day about doing a “Guy’s Weekend” somewhere provided he’s able to get away sometime soon. Getting away is easy for me since I answer to little more than the Call O’ The Wild lately. I’m pretty sure that we would ride our motorcycles, but any other men that want to come by other modes of transportation are welcome. We would like help from the ladies to plan this, but it is intended to be a man’s retreat, so please keep that in mind. I would like to go somewhere in the mountains and rent a cabin, but I’m not sure where yet. It would need to be only a few hours or less away and hopefully surrounded by curvy roads so we can go out and lean our bikes into some turns if we desire to do so. I wouldn’t mind getting some fly fishing in and teaching guys how to do it if they want. Once we get there, we discussed that there should be little structure, but some planned time together would be great. There will also be no Wild at Heart, smoking peace pipes naked in a sweaty tee-pee type stuff, Okay? People will be free to do quiet time together or separate, and at whatever time they like. Amenities are not a big concern as long as there is A/C, a kitchen, and enough places to sleep. A porch to sit on would be great. We want to just bond as men, but not force it on anyone. If you want to sit alone in your room, that’s fine by us, but I’m pretty sure anyone that comes will want to participate because we’re so much fun to be around. If you’d like to just meet some other guys to be around, this would be a good opportunity to do so. We’re primarily talking about 2-3 days of relaxation and escape from our busy lives to reflect on God, and what it means to be us.

So whadda ya say? Does anyone know of anywhere we can go or have ideas about things we can do? The cheaper the better and FREE would be awesome. Being the kind of guys we are, anywhere we stay will probably look better after we leave than when we arrived. Or maybe we could do some light handiwork as a trade for letting us stay? If you would like to come with us, either comment below or email me or Jared. We’ll talk more about dates as details come to us.

Hopefully we can make this a reality for some guys that would really enjoy a trip like this.

Sorry I haven’t been posting lately. I’ve been in training for the past few days while taking the MSF RiderCourse. This course is for motorcycle riders so that they can gain confidence and knowledge in a place safer than being out on the street in traffic. It’s a 3 day course with over 24 hours of class time and riding on the range. I had wanted to sign up for the experienced course, but now I’m glad I got into the basic course. As it turns out I really learned a lot, even though I’ve actually been riding for several years.

Do you want to know what I learned?

DAY 1: I started off with 4 hours in a classroom with 10 other people. We learned basic road safety and operation of controls. Most of this part I already knew, but it proved to be extremely valuable since most of my classmates had NEVER RIDDEN A MOTORCYCLE. (more on this in a second)

DAY 2: We started at 7:45am and went straight out to meet the bikes we would be riding for the next 2 days. This is the bike I rode.

(MSF secret: I found out on Friday night that the Alpharetta facility has a few dual-sport {onroad/offroad} bikes in their stable, so I requested one and got it. Boy did I get lucky…)

We were familiarized with our bikes and quickly went out on the course (a giant slab of concrete with a bunch of moveable cones) for some basic maneuvering. I really enjoyed this as it got me used to slow speed moves on the bike, which is something most people never learn to do well. I was really nervous because most of the people I was with had never ridden before, so I wanted to jump off my bike every time I heard another bike rev up because I was sure a 300 pound missile was about to fly into my backside. Everyone eventually learned to shift gears, weave through cones, and get comfortable balancing and moving around. I felt I breezed this part which was later confirmed on the last day. We then went back in the classroom for a few more hours to process what we had learned on the range. Every one of us then went home dehydrated, sore, and tired to study and get ready for the test on the latter part of the next day.

DAY 3: We straggled in at 7:45am and went straight to the bikes. We started out by doing figure eight circles in a REALLY small box and then doing emergency lane changes at the call of the instructors. This is where they got back at me and I had a tough time because you had to shift through the gears, signal, check mirrors, look over your shoulder, swerve, brake, and gear back down all at the same time. I got through it, but it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. We later learned to stop the bike in a turn and some other fun stuff and then went to lunch. After coming back from lunch, we went through one more exercise in emergency braking and practiced for our tests.

The Test: The instructors asked the class if we wanted a demonstration of how the test should be ridden. We all said YES!!! This is when they told me to get out on my bike and take my test… I thought, “OH CRAP!!” It got worse when the class next to us all came over and sat to watch me run through it as well. Talk about pressure! As it turned out, I breezed it and only had one moment that I was sure I got deducted on my score for. (I carried too much speed into a turn and pulled in the clutch to downshift, which was against the rules, but I came out of the turn well within limits.) After I was finished I noticed that everyone else was really quiet and nervous so I thought this would be a great opportunity to lead up and asked the instructor if I could cheer on my classmates. They said sure, so I started honking my horn and cheering before and after everyone completed a section. The whole class took my lead and the mood lifted and everyone ended up having a great time and passed the test. I was soooo proud of everyone. Passing this test is not an easy thing to do. I was more nervous for it than almost any other test I’ve ever taken. Then we came back into the classroom and took a book test and were scored and given our results and pins and stickers and little cards that prove we completed the course.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I think this was a great opportunity to learn about riding and to meet some really great people. The course is extremely safe and fun as well. I was surprised at how well people that had never ridden a bike before were able to learn in such a short span of time. I was also surprised at how much an experienced rider can learn from it. I highly recommend this course to anyone who currently rides or is thinking about riding a motorcycle. On second thought, I recommend this course to everyone to gain an appreciation for what all motorcyclists are dealing with when you see them on the road. It is an awesome experience.

Now when you see me on my motorcycle, you can rest assured that I am a certified safe motorcycle operator and I’ll have the sticker on the back of my helmet to prove it. It’s a good feeling…

Now I’m going to bed, I have a retreat at the Ritz Carlton Oconee to attend tomorrow.

I’m only two days away from starting my motorcycle training course.  I actually have no idea why I’m so excited about it.  It’s going to be 2 1/2 days of standing around watching an instructor do something pretty basic and then repeating it when they point at me.  There will be classtime where they show us videos.  (Maybe we get to watch some of those gruesome Driver’s Ed. videos again because that would be really cool!) I’ll be standing on a parking lot wearing really hot body armor (I’ll post a picture of that tomorrow.) and I’m pretty sure that unless I have an H2O IV hooked up, I’m going to die of dehydration.  Maybe I’m just trying to get myself psyched up for it.

Maybe they’ll have one of these…

Now that would be cool!!!

Sweep the leg!

I looked over my latest blog entries and noticed they were all about motorcycles and such, so I wanted to add this in.

How many faces do you recognize?

Wow, this guy is crazy!  Every time you think he’s going to stop, he doesn’t.  He spent half of his time with the rear wheel either spinning or sliding.  The other half he spent doing a wheelie.

This weekend I’m taking a motorcycle course, so all this week I’m going to be posting videos of motorcycles for giggles.

Let’s take inventory of the past week…

I get a motorcycle running again.  I take all of my gear and bike luggage out of storage and get it washed up.  And suddenly the following magazines appear on my desk.

One would almost think there’s a motorcycle road trip somewhere in my immediate future.  As a matter of fact, there may be.  It turns out we’re now a little over half way through 2008 and I still haven’t taken a single day of vacation.  Normally I would go the whole year without taking it, because I feel that through holidays and such, the average American gets plenty of time off.  (Ugh, that is totally something a workaholic would say, isn’t it?) But this year I’m going to teach myself to use vacation wisely because I usually end up frustrated around Christmas when someone tells me I have something like 12 days of vacation left and have to take it before January 1.

Maybe you can help me out.  What are some good places that you know of?  I would like to go north since the mountains will be cooler around this time of year.  I enjoy seeing little known art, museums, and other non tourist trap type things.  (This is all part of that fear of crowds thing I have.)  I also enjoy nature and history tours.  I really enjoy “learning at rest”.  If I go on a vacation, I go to slow down and escape, but I can’t baste myself on a beach like a turkey.  I need to be moving and I love learning new things while I’m doing it.

So, If you were going to plan a getaway somewhere in the Smoky Mountain area, where would you go?  And no offense to anyone who may like the following areas, but Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, and Dollywood are not even a consideration at this time unless you really sell it to me well.

July 4th will be here before we know it.  The 4th of July is all about freedom and I believe that no one celebrates that freedom with as much creativity as rednecks do.

That my friends is my 1979 Suzuki GS550E.  As you can imagine, this bike is a lot of fun.  (So much fun that I left it sitting in storage for almost two years without even starting it.  Yes, I know how stupid that is!) But now it is back on the road again.  I stopped by my storage unit last night to begin what I thought was going to be a multi-week project to get it started and running again.  I changed the battery, changed the leftover gas for fresh gas and I pushed the starter button not expecting anything.

Woo-hoo  It started!!!!!!

So today I went out and got it all legal and stuff.  The bike got 2 times cooler when the lady at the tag office told me I qualified for an antique vehicle tag.  That was exciting too!

So now as I prepare to commute, I have run into a problem.  I have to get a toll pass to get through the toll road and have to figure out where to stick it.  The instructions say to stick it on your windshield, but I’m not about to ride down the road with that thing stuck on my front visor!  Should I just slap it on top of my helmet instead?

What do you think?

I also have never named this bike.  Many may know that the Geo is called “The Barbie Urban Assault Vehicle.”  Well, What should we call this one?

Today (June 17, 2008 ) is Mozilla Download Day.

Mozilla is trying to set a world record for downloads later today when they release Firefox 3.  There currently is no attempt recorded with Guinness, but after today there will be. So keep watching the site until it’s released and then download it.  (You are looking for Firefox 3, not Firefox 2…) For those that don’t know, Mozilla Firefox is an amazing web browser for PC and Apple.  Their plug-ins are incredible and they are much better at preventing malware than Internet Explorer.

You know you want to be a part of history!