Alex’s Homestead
People won’t believe me when I say: This strip in particular is very important, for reasons you won’t find out for quite some time. Stay tuned!
Feeling rough after a crazy weekend. Welcome Home party for our roommate, who just got back from Afghanistan. The party was… well, I’m typing this at 11 pm Sunday, and I’m still getting over the physical and mental hangovers. He’s a very dear friend to me and Mel, and he was welcomed back by piles of barbecue and beer… and other fun.
Long story short, while rescuing a friend this evening from two destroyed rims (thanks to a couple giant chunks of polished granite countertop someone let fall off their truck on the freeway), I nearly got creamed by a dipshit running a purely red light, swerved, and tagged the curb – and of course, that curb somehow slashed my sidewall. Gah. So much fun today.
But I roll along because ain’t no shit so far done stopped me.
I look forward to seeing how this ends up being very important in the future. I have a few ideas, but I’ll keep them to myself for the time being.
Also, you can never go wrong with Shinedown. That band is amazing.
I foresee a shooting range in the future for some reason.
An outdoor range *in city limits*? Heh, not even in politically solid-red territory. But we can all dream…
I think we have one of those just on the outskirts of the city I live by. It’s a range of some sort, I know that much.
a little sewer pipe and some creative baffles and no one needs to know! Let them guess why you dug a 100 yard trench from the back of your shop toward the nearest stand of timber and piled up all the dirt at the far end!
There are at least two within Phoenix city limits. One is the Arizona police academy range, the other is a private rod and gun club.
Can’t be all to uncommon. Heck even here in the Peoples Republik of New York there’s a county run (IE by the actual parks department) range. It’s not in NYC mind you but is in a rather residential, suburban area.
Congratulations (?) on winning the “We have more idiot drivers than you” competition between Dallas and Houston for yesterday.
Lived in Houston. Been to Dallas. Y’all wanna see some idiots? Come to El Paso. These people will go 45 on the freeway (no joke, we have MINIMUM speeds posted on I10) and manage to be bigger menaces than if they were speeding. It makes Houston driving a welcome relief.
Not the first time that rims were destroyed. I had a similar incident in VA just before I moved and I told you all about it. I will say the next asshole who tries to kill me will likely be on the receiving end of a beating with my cane (aka heroic cripple stick).
I so hope “trim the hedges” is purely euphemistic.
I see I’m not the only one who read the subtitle on this, let out a snorted snicker and muttered, “So to speak!” 😀
I can also see why she might not like her place, as any neighbors are still close enough to cancel any gun range plans. Plus, while she might live within the city limits, they don’t want to send police or fire out there, leaving it up to the sheriff’s dept and VFD for any emergencies, in spite of paying city property taxes. Bleh!
My wife rides her motorcycle to work every day there’s not snow. She texts me when she gets there and tells me if anyone tried to kill her on her way to work. Once a week, some asshat in either an suv, or a minivan, or sometimes a pick-up, pulls out, changes lanes, almost rear ends her, or once, backed up through a parking lot at her. (The minivans and suvs usually have soccer ball stickers)
Nobody has left shit in the road for her to run over yet, but it’s only Monday.
(Black and red Ducati monster 695)
I’m amazed at how often people miss seeing cars, let alone motorcycles. Almost had a truck change lanes into the side of my Cougar yesterday. My favorite was the person who pulled out of a gas station into the side of my dad’s Silverado. He was moving with traffic, and she caught him in the passenger side door. Apparently she “didn’t see him.” How the hell do you just not see a 3/4 ton pickup truck?
Get your wife to start telling you how often they have phones up to their ears. I bet it’s well over 50%.
Motorcycle AND bicyclist here, and it’s well north of 50%, in my experience. I’ve started telling them I see them… and I’m not terribly diplomatic about it….
My only vehicle while the hubby is at work is a bike, and thus far (owned it for about three months now) I’ve had one fourway stop incident (lunatic in a truck ran the stop to try and squish me) and one moron-on-cellphone-merging-on-top-of-me. Of course, we live pretty far out in the sticks (200 acres of timber for a backyard), so the incidence is lower than the poor sods in city traffic.
(Honda Shadow 1100, by the way. 1986 model.)
Ehn
I’m always careful about motorcyclists, but I really get peeved when it’s slow traffic and I see bikers ignoring traffic laws and going in between cars or driving up the shoulder.
Here in California, it’s legal to ride between the cars in heavy traffic. The idea is the motorcycles get out of harms way. It’s easier to see the motorcycle (so you don’t hit it with your car) when the bike’s not bogged in traffic.
A significant amount of motorcycles are also air-cooled, which means that they’ll overheat and damage the engine if stopped for too long.
Unfortunately, most car drivers don’t know this.
Lane splitting is legal here in Texas as well.
Really??
Well, I’ll be damned. You made me check. Turns out the bill that was introduced in 2009 died without becoming law. Huh. And yet, every biker I see in TX splits lanes constantly.
Well yeah… we don’t need no stinkin’ law… lol. I just didn’t remember anything about it from my MSF course.
“legal” and “tolerated by the cops” are two different things. It seems the police tolerate lanesplitting on major highways near Boston at rush hour as well; at least, I can’t ever recall hearing about anybody being pulled over for it.
Not legal in Pennsylvania. People (mostly squids) do it anyway. Had somebody do it this morning to go around traffic and get 3 vehicles ahead at a red light. (Not a scooter, either–a good-sized V-twin, didn’t see/recognize the make.)
Overall, disrespectful motorcyclists decrease safety for all motorcyclists. (Same is true for bicyclists, by the way.) Car/truck drivers (cagers, if you will) see the bad ones and think all riders are like that, and then treat them all like that. Fair? No. True? Yes. Want proof? Next time you’re hanging out with some people who don’t know you ride, and who don’t ride, casually mention the “bike with a loud exhaust” that blew by you the other day. Then, hang on to your hat, because a shitstorm’s a-comin’ as the group tries to top each other with how much motorcyclists piss them off. A lot of things that are accepted as good practice in the riding community (eg, riding slightly faster than the flow of traffic so you’re less likely to get rear-ended) are viewed by cagers as more ways motorcyclists suck. (While I’m on the subject of commonly-accepted dangerous practices: loud pipes cost lives, and high beams make you harder to see.)
By the way, the “overheat and damage the engine” argument does not hold water. Ask yourself if you’d be fine if it was done by 1-ton pickups with belt-driven cooling fans; then, apply that answer to every motor vehicle. If your vehicle can’t operate in the conditions you are trying to operate it in, it’s your problem as the vehicle’s operator and nobody else’s. This is especially true in modern times, where there’s no excuse for not knowing traffic conditions before you hit them.
The “over-heat” excuse might be viable here in Tucson, with an air-cooled motor (like my CB750 Nighthawk), but I haven’t had any problems in 6 years of city commuting.
My water cooled TL1000 gets really cranky in traffic even up in WA on warm days. But then, I get cranky in traffic too, so it’s really a moot point.
I’ve observed aircooled bikes having problems when there were several miles of backup stop & go traffic. I’ve also observed them pulling off to the shoulder to wait it out until they could continue at speed. It is not necessary to break the law.
I posted this mainly because I’m curious about the “no excuse” comment you made. Yesterday, my husband and I were driving southbound on I-5. There was the most horrendous backup I had EVER seen in the northbound lanes–I counted seven miles of stop & go traffic backed up when we stopped at a store, and by the time we were done shopping it was around ten miles. Curious as to what caused the mess, I turned the radio on to the newsradio station that advertises “Traffic every ten minutes, on the fours!” The radio didn’t find it worth mentioning.
If the news stations aren’t talking about it and you don’t have friends thoughtful enough to call and warn you that your route is completely embuggered, I don’t see how one is to find out before plowing into such a mess.
Traffic info for major highways is available (for free) on GPSes at a $100 price point. That’s a fraction of the cost of the cheapest running street-legal bike I’ve seen, never mind gear etc. If you already have a smartphone, there’s a free GPS app called Waze which includes crowd-sourced traffic info. Or, of course, you can get traffic info on any device that can access Google Maps. That’s what I meant by “no excuse”… If you actually have strong motivation to avoid being stuck in traffic (such as “it’ll wreck your bike”), there are plenty of ways to keep it from happening.
Unfortunately, as you noted, radio stations are often useless now. Most urban areas have so many backed-up places at rush hour that a radio station wouldn’t be able to cover anything else, so they only mention things which are of note to somebody who already drives that route every day.
Okay, so I’m a bit of a Luddite–no gps, no smertfone, no internet at home. (I’m typing this at the library, in order to access which I had to ride….yeah.) And I own an ’86 Honda not due to some unnatural fetish about leftside exhausts (#$%! thing gets my calf every shift unless you’re quick about it), but because it was cheap. (No bike payments=priceless.)
No doubt if I had a NEW bike, the investment would be worth it. As it is, in backups on the bike I stay next to the shoulder and keep a wary eye in the mirrors. Escape Route 101.
The odd thing about the above backup was that it was in an unusual area–not the normal commute-is-a-bitch slowdowns that happen every weekday. I attributed it in conversation with my husband to being so far out in Rural areas that the radio couldn’t be bothered…after all, if it doesn’t inconvenience Seattleites, it drops WAY down the urgency scale. Bah.
Lanesplitting is actually safer that sitting in traffic waiting to be rear-ended. Maybe about ten years back, someone analyzed FARS accident data from California, Texas, and Florida–three states with twelve-month riding seasons. At the time California was the only state of the three where lanesplitting was legal. They found that allowing lanesplitting resulted in about a 40% reduction in rear-end collisions involving motorcycles without a corresponding increase in accidents of other types. (e.g. as one would expect from sudden lane changes or riders being doored.)
In any event, it’s standard practice most places outside the U.S. The only reason to make it illegal is spite: “If I have to sit here, then so should you.” Never mind that getting motorcyclists out of the traffic flow actually increases road capacity and gets everyone home sooner. It’s misguided queue fairness.
Agreed got spoiled by that when I started riding in England. Sigh…
Yeah. I should be able to drive my car onto sidewalks and shoulders and medians to get around other cars. I’m sure it woulde further “reduce accidents of other types”. No reason to oppose it except spite. 😛
Hear you on the flats. Woke up Saturday with a flat on one truck. Blew a water pump later that day. Got a flat on the other truck on Sunday. It has been bad tire karma week.
On the other hand, there are many days that tempt one to trade the house for lawn care.
Former bicycle commuter here — I did that for seven years in Detroit. There was one, and ONLY one, group of drivers by vehicle type that I could count on yelling and screaming at me, and trying to scare me off the road.
Guys in customized non-work dually pickups.
Every other group, some were cool and respected my space while others were jerks, but if I saw a gigantic, gorgeous truck with custom accessories and a dually rear axle, I knew I was dealing with an asshole. Trust me, those are the guys who are trying to compensate for
small penises and frustrationpersonal deficiencies.