Hiccup

Sometimes topics just kind of fall into my lap.

I love riding my Harley. Unfortunately, however, part of the deal in me getting the bike in the first place was that it would be my only form of transportation to and from work--year round. While the spring and fall absolutely rock, and the summer (though hot as hell) is nice, the winter here sucks big time. No--it's not Minnesota or New England, but I wouldn't have agreed to ride a motorcycle 35 minutes to work year round if we lived there. When the temperature is 28 and you're going 55 MPH--it gets damn cold.

So there I was...cruising down a main throughfare in sunny and cold Tucson, AZ. My bike has been hiccuping lately, for reasons that I didn't know. Normally it hiccups, maybe backfires a little, and presses on like a good little bike. Well, in the left lane of said major thoroughfare, with no breakdown lane, my beloved Harley (ok, not as beloved as I couldn't feel my legs or hands) hiccuped, backfired so loud I thought a gun had gone off, and promptly died. With no throttle to keep me moving, I couldn't get over to the right side of the road, where the breakdown lane was. I pulled to the curb, as unconcerned motorists honked and sped by.

I turned the engine over and over, but no matter what--she was done. There was a gas station about a half-mile behind me, but in the mean time, I just prayed that no one would hit me.

Suddenly a cop appeared...then threw his lights on and pulled a guy over a quarter mile up the road. Thanks.

A few minutes later another cop pulled up and blocked traffic for me. He even helped me push the bike for a little while. Now THAT's a cop.

Turns out, in the end, that the spark plugs that I put in last year had fouled and quit. My buddy drove me to the auto parts store, and for $2.40, it was fixed (I think). Hopefully I'll be able to make it home in one piece.

I think I'll be selling the Harley before we leave for Montgomery.

Leader

I've been thinking of writing about politics, Iraq, anything going on in the world like I used to. But I just can't.

I read through my news blogs, reading about how the media is calling today the "3rd Bloodiest Day of the War,"about how Iran has banned IAEA inspectors from their country, or how the #2 Al Qaeda dude is taunting us regarding our new Iraq strategy. It makes my head hurt.

The world is not better today than it was when I started blogging from a war zone. And it's not the military's fault. I would venture to say that it's not even the President's fault, although my reading of Cobra II doesn't help my opinions of the administration. If I had to point a finger at anyone, I would point it again at the politicians in Washington as a whole, as I did over a year ago. There are so many fingers in this pie now that no one knows what to even do with it, and the combination of a sensationalist media coupled with self-serving politicians makes it monumentally worse. Again, I point my fingers at them and ask, "how many of you have sons in Iraq?" They make such a stink over everything, both Democrat and Republican, and fight and bicker so much that nothing gets done--so they take a day off to watch the BCS Title game.

How can our government survive while operating like this? How many people are going to die before someone, anyone, steps up and unifies those who are making decisions about our lives? Our next president has to be a leader--at this point I almost don't care what he stands for, as long as those who make the decsions will follow him.

That's why it's hard for me to pick a topic--because the system seems so broken that discussing it only gets me angry and frustrated.

Winter Wonderland

Snowbunnies

This is so cool.

We got 3 inches of snow last night. It hasn't snowed here since 2002. It's funny, because growing up, days like this were commonplace in Massachusetts. Tucson really has no idea how to deal with a snow day.

We went out last night and built snowmen, made snow angels, and had snowball fights until it was dark on the golf course. Really cool

Cowboy making his first snow angel

place to play with snow, by the way.

Today, they gave Princess a 2-hour delay for school, but cancelled all the busses. When I brought her in at 10:00, there were a grand total of 5 kids in the class. Made you wonder what the hell they were thinking in not just cancelling school for the day.

Princess's Super-Snowball

It's supposed to snow again tonight--I'll update with pictures when I get home, since they have suddenly blocked my Flickr account from work. You can see them now under my photos.

Housecleaning (Almost) Done

Whew.

And so begins the new format. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Some new stuff--I linked my other blogs at the top, which might offer some insight as to why I've been so absent from this blog for a while.

Unfortunately I can't figure out how to get my drop-down blogroll to send a selection to the next website. Any ideas as to how to fix that would be more than welcome.

Thanks to Gecko and Fly for the new template. It took a lot of tweaking but I finally got it to work.

Hopefully I can start my therapy (blogging) again.

New Direction

New world a'comin'.

With my newfound love of Flickr (amazing what you can get for a measly $25) has come a newfound desire to update this a little more often. I've been tinkering a lot with another template and hope to have a new version of this (Desert Odyssey 3.0) up and running soon. Either that, or I may scrap the whole DO thing and go in a completely different direction ala She Who Will Not Be Named.

What do you think?

UPDATE: I think I may have been a little overzealous here, but I was making good progress and just jumped in. It will be fixed soon.

Countdown to the Ring - Last Day

In theory, my Ring should be here any minute.

It is being shipped via UPS, ironically, the same people that lost my priceless original Ring in the first place) overnight from the company to my house, and is in a truck somewhere in Tucson.

I hope it fits.

Just the thought that it's in Tucson has got me all giddy. If I didn't live a half hour away I'd drive home to get it as soon as it showed up.

When we got our Rings in 1993 there was a tradition we upheld called "branding." There's no stone in the face of the Ring, just a molding of the Palmetto Tree and the numbers of your class, with the seals of the school on either side. The seniors would come crashing into the barracks to grab their favortie juniors (and sometimes sophomores, and if you had gotten drunk by that time freshmen) and tackle them to the ground. Said junior would then be the fine recipient of a "brand," in which the senior would press his newly-minted Ring into the forehead of the junior, hard enough to leave a near-perfect imprint of the Ring's face on his skin. Fiesty juniors would fight, which would result in the imprint coming in the form of a punch, rather than a press, and could sometimes be pretty ugly as the punch would smear across the kid's forehead. Smart juniors would simply acquiesce and submit to the tradition.

A problem that sometimes arose from this is that on the night we got our Rings, there were a lot of festivities, namely the Junior Sword Drill performance and the Ring Hop. Several times a year, we had formal dances and guys (their dates, anyway) generally didn't like to have their pictures marred by a big divot in their noggin. During our year, the JSD was banned, so that part was taken away. But we did have a Ring Hop, and the guys I chased down submitted easily in exchange for me going easy on them.

I think I'll brand my kids tonight (lightly, of course) since although a package from U People Suck isn't quite the same as a tear-filled ceremony in Summerall Chapel, it still is a very big deal to me.

My first Ring had the inscription "Ad Astra Per Aspera," a variation of the NASA motto, which means "to the stars through hardship." My best friend at the time, Dennis Tantalo, and I wanted something that we could put inside both of our Rings, and that's what we came up with. Afterwards, there were a number of phrases that I wished I had put in there instead. I also had my name, and "For Jenny," as a dedication to my sister.

This time around, I thought for a while as to what to put inside my new Ring. I kept my name and dedication to Jenny, but for a quote I was kind of at a loss. My life is so different now than it was the first time I slipped the Band of Gold onto my hand. It got me thinking of not only how different I am now, but also how different my life is compared to what I had envisioned it to be back then. Initially, it was all negative--I was supposed to be a fighter guy dropping bombs on the bad guys and breaking hearts all over the globe. Instead, I'm an overweight father of three, riding a desk. The more I thought of it, the more I agreed that I wouldn't want it any other way. Instead of focusing on what I had wished would happen and didn't, I looked back on all the accomplishments I've had since that day in October of 1993. Of all the dreams taht I didn't know I had that have since come true--most notably my three kids, the most incedible dream I could have ever had. After thinking of that for a while, and of my Grandfather who was there then but has passed on now, I came to the conclusion that he would be proud of me today for all that I've accomplished, and what he would want me to think of every time I looked at my new Ring.

"Dreams Fulfilled."

Ben Smile

Ben Smile

I've been getting so many comments from family and friends about this picture that I figured I'd post it on here. We took a no-notice trip to Waco, TX a few weeks ago. 1999.8 (no, I didn't want to drive around the block) miles in 2 1/2 days. For the trip we rented a minivan and bought Ben a forward-facing seat, which he (clearly) absolutely loved.

New Daily Read

Just found a GREAT blog--Useless Advice from Useless Men. Every post I've read so far had me rolling. Check it out.

Picture Update

Since we figured out that our older Canon camera is a whole lot better than our current ones, we started taking pictures that are web-worthy. Unfortunately Blogger isn't allowing me to post them, so they're in my Flickr account on the sidebar.

Countdown to the Ring

In about twelve days I should be getting my replacement Ring in the mail.

On October 9th, 1993, I walked across Summerall Field in a long line to file into Summerall Chapel, what I still feel is the most beautiful church in the world. After a few speeches, we each walked up to the front and were given a small grey jewelry box, which we carried back to our seats. The tradition was for the entire class to put them on at the same time, so until the last senior had his box in hand and was back at our seat, we couldn't take them out of the box.

A lot of my classmates opened the boxes to look at the prized artifact that we had all worked so hard to get. For some reason, I remember taking it as a final test of discipline to wait until I put it on to lay my eyes on it. While the remaining 150 or so seniors' names were called, I stood there in the pew, in my full dress uniform, and stared at the grey box in my hands. I thought of all the people that had gotten me to where I was, of all the trials and tribulations of my life and time at The Citadel, of my family, my God, and my hopes and dreams. I said one final prayer of "thank you" to God and to my sister, Jenny, as the last names were called.

I can't remember the exact words, but the MC at the front of the chapel said something along the lines of "and now, members of the Class of 1994, remove your Rings from their boxes and place them on your hands, joining the thousands of men who have come before you in the Long Grey Line." I do remember the noise of hundreds of boxes snapping shut as we all put them on together, and I remember tears filling my eyes as I looked at the Band of Gold on my hand for the first time.

That was 13 1/2 years ago. Five years ago, my Ring was lost in the mail, and I vowed never to replace the Ring that had meant so much to me--as it wouldn't mean as much. It still won't but I finally caved and now it is only a couple of weeks away. I've been thinking that we should do something special the day that I get it, so that I can put it on with my family there at dinner or something. Not sure what to do at this point.