Wrap up

Lookin at the world through the side glass. I got on the brakes earlier and blew the service line the ensuing repair set us back a couple of hours so I rode shotgun for a while.

The barracks had one of the three remaining rabbit ear antennae tvs in the country. Notice how the government in conjunction with the perveyors of the American dream machine absolutely freaked out when it looked like a handfull of people might actually loose contact with the tube during the analog/digital switchover and have to have human interactions with their family members and neighbors don't worry they will hook you right back up. Human beings are analog, the wind and sun are analog but the machine insists on all relations and experiences be synthesized through a digital interpreter and spit back out to you for your entertainment, cash and prizes to follow. Ironic isn't it when they have shows like Biggest Loser that show people loosing weight by quiting watching Television and becoming active and it intices fat people to watch more television.

Also ironic that I rail against the digital machine and then rely on it to communicate with you.

Cool Moe Tee piloting the loaded Western star east bound and down I-94








The most important part of truck driving is the stops and the vittles and the waitresses







Cheer up boys!!! Can you tell our class is almost over? The instructors don't seem too busted up over it.







Donelle and Terry








Vermin at the wheel of the freightshaker






Willman the brains of our operation.




Donelle leaving fingernail divots in a hardened plastic steering wheel






Rent a smokey makin sure we is hunky dorey



Ain't livin long like this am I baby?

2nd week

First Week

Cycle Show

It is the middle of winter and tis the season to go to the big caverns scattered around this decaying metropolitan area where scantily clad wiminks try to pawn phosporescent swag off on middle aged couch carp that haven't seen an attractive 19 year old female midrif since "Gidget Does Different Stuff" in 1964. So I hoisted my lanky self outa bed, chizeled the old man eye goo out of my eye and noticed an unusual blinding radiance eminating from the east. What to my wondering 1.375 eyes should appear but a 2 foot wide strip of asphalt and a sky so blue and so clear (ignore briefly please that it was 21 Degrees F and yes I do mean F). My heart races, holy crud a rare triple convergence, clear sky, some visible asphalt and the cycle show WHOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO. Time to go look at stuff I ......


A) Can't have

B) Don't want

C) Can't afford

D) Would get me in trouble

E) All of the above


So I slither into my ever so unattractive hot babe repellin one piece union suit long johns (my marital Maginot line) put on 20 layers of stuff, capped off with my high buck aerostich brand outergarment. It is at this crucial juncture that the 2 pots of Folgers anti freeze I drank commences pressurizing my overflow tube. I finally get that situation in order, get my duds back on and jokingly ask Dollbaby if she wants to go on a ride. She doesn't even answer she just runs for the stairs to get her cloths on!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had to stop her and tell her I was just kidding, she looked disappointed. Jeez


So the first order of business was to get gas. As the gas was gushin into her gizzard Mr. Minivan driving Dockers wearing Harley guy sauntered over and started regailing me with stories about how vastly superior every facet of his existance was over mine (duh) as he had a Harley in a heated garage so as to have no condensation, suspended on a lift so there would be no strain on the springs or flat spots on the tires, battery on a rubber mat on the bench with a trickle charge, screamin eagblah, stage blah, ultra blah blah classic blah, Willie Gee f'n whizzer blah blah. I just smiled and said "ya know that is cool and stuff" have a good day "yes I know the salt will mess up the finish on my wheels" sorry sir I will clean them off right away.


He was a "type A" guy. I am somewhere around "Type Q" he had to let me know he wins and I am a terd. Having established our pecking order in the scheme of things he felt comfortable moving on and I continued on not much worse for the wear. Since I have been unemployed I have not been surrounded by those types day in and day out I have become tremendously more mellow.


I did not feel the gentleman deserved my rancid genious as it pertains to motorcycle degradation anyway but if you are reading this you clearly are worthy.


Key to motorcycle happyness


Bike

Buy 1980s shaft drive jap bike that runs (pay cash)


Winterization/Maintenance NO


Start and or ride once a week all winter


Reasons

A) Keeps fresh gas in the carberators (quaint metallic varnish distilleries for you modern fuel injection types)
B) Keeps the battery charged

c) Keeps all oil seals supple and oil passy byee preventee (except fork seals)

4) A combination of condensation and road salt spray rots sheet metal and puts a nice cauliflower corrosion on all your exposed aluminum making you look like a stone bad ass.

5) Leave rat poison in the airfilter and make a devining rod out of cable ties that is sensitive to rat piss and put the rest of the poison where it points.

#) Ride/Repeat


When the bike stops running sell it on ebay for more than you paid for it.


Anyway I proceed up to the motorcycle show and being the only motorcycle in the parking lot they graciously gave me free parking so I pulled up front and parked on a large concrete pad, near the front door, out of the way, so the several thousand minivans would have ample room to park. This horrible breach of homeland security was recorded on several closed circuit televisions. Headsets all around the building crackled to life as their security had been breached and someone had to leap into action. So they had to roust some old security guard dude from his station seperating the Christian Motorcycle Association gear check gang from the Antique Japanese Motorcycle Restoring and promotional pen dispensing gang. Who knows? The tennis balls at the ends of their walkers could tangle up and all hell could break loose. Anyway with all the ferocity of a guy telling me to get off his lawn he informs me this is no place for motorcycles and I should go and park out in the snow drifts with the GMC Tahoes and Subaru Outbacks. Gotta love the last guy in Detroit with a paying job.


I end up casually sauntering about the premises being a little creeped out by the amount of attention sick 50 year old men were giving the scantily clad bimbos. “Oh sorry sir” “Yessir” “Yes as a matter of fact Next Time I will watch where I'm goin”


Deep breath runon sentence gibberish warning

I felt it would be a good time to go over to the Honda booth and let the well groomed representative know what the unemployed, no money having, 45-55 year old, caucasion male that has made a solemn blood oath on his sainted grandmothers grave to never spend another dime on a new motorcycle again, demographic (of which there where thousands in attendance) is looking to not buy this year. That is me by the way. I told him to tell his big cheeses in Japan to immediately start not making tons on new XR450Ls and they would not sell like coldcakes in Michigan. I also told him if they did not not make this bike immediately I would take my scrawny ass to the Suzuki dealer and not buy a drz400 with my not not money from my not life savings or my not kids college fund or maybe take out a not home equity loan from my new found vanished home equity. That is pretty much what I said verbatim, he was NOT impressed. Not one single molecule of the guy was impressed, not even the opportunistic parasitic bacterium that lived in his eyelash hair was impressed. Being an economic eunich is somewhat liberating.


Then i had kind of a realization. I think the motorcycle business is gonna go through a huge hibernation period and it is gonna happen now.


A) Nobody NEEDS a motorcycle

B) Most motorcycle guys are old (if cycle world motorcycle show attendance is any indication)

PS Note to Dave Edwards/cycle world I love Peter Egan and have bought his every book but it is over. Please buy the man a modern souless japaness motorcycle and make him ride it somewhere and remove the letters B S A and V from his keyboard


I then staggered over to the Harley booth

Hey y'all lets pop a purple pill and sit a 110" Harley make vroom vroom noises in our heads and it might take us back to 1968 and you might be Dennis Hopper and I might be Peter friggin Fonda and the Wixom Ford plant might be kickin out Thunderbirds. But no this ain't no magic carpet ride boys. We are old and fat and need a prescription for the purple pill to get on the magic carpet. The Wixom plant closed and there is enough blame to go around, top to bottom, side to side, Dearborn deep, and 8 mile wide.

I have savage Attention deficit somethingwhatever and lost focus during the show all I know is the only cool display where the chicks were cool and not trashy and the bikes were cool and the displays were cool was the Ducati display.

Once again being unemployed has put me in a good enough mood where the sight of acres grumpy old fat dudes and mile after mile of closed factories has failed to bum me out.

It is still quite sunny out as I head west on I-96 past the extinct Wixom plant it has warmed up to 28F and I am feelin good the machine is running like a top and I swing her into the left lane put my feet up on the highway pegs twist the right handle bar thingy all the way back and let 'er flow as the Dinosaurs sluggishly peel off to my right. Cain't nobody hurt me today.


Spring is coming, I hope in some classroom somewhere some D students are trying to figure out how to weasel their older brothers GSXR750 out from under them Thats right motorcycles are dangerous and they are supposed to be. A young colt feels a shiver run down his back and he sprints around the paddock and kicks up his heels and snorts and somewhere hopefully this spring that same D student will grab a handfull of right brake and throttle, dump the clutch and burn rubber till the old dudes eyes water and wheelie off down the road.

Hell yeh!

a new beginning

1-2-09

I hear a lot on the radio about this or that Wall St. entity being too big too fail, the flip side of that is a lot of blokes like me are too small too succeed. so like Sisyphus in Greek mythology who would dare to narc on Zeus, I will be condemned to continually roll a boulder near to the top of hells main toboggan run only to have it roll back down to the bottom. So in 2008 the combined forces of nature and the modern economy essentially knocked my boulder back to the bottom of the hill. So at the age of 50 I have had to drag my sorry ass back down to the bottom of the hill crouch down and grab aholt of that damn boulder again. I guess I shouldn't bitch, I have legs, a good wife, good kids, I can run, I can push the boulder, I just hope I can muster the ambition/enthusiasm for a couple reasonable attempts at the top of the hill before I die (which statistically is in 27 years). I have been up near the top on two or three occasions and do like the view.

This time at there is a low simmering level of excitement though because my new cubicle will be 30 yards long wailing down the freeway at 65 miles an hour. This time me and that rolling stone gonna become friends I ain't agonna fight it no mo.

Anyhow the market value of my services as an automotive design engineer is at this moment in Southeastern Michigan is zero hundred zerody zero thousand dollars and zerody zero cents so I am starting truck driving school on Monday morning January 07 2009. I figure I might as well chronicle the events of my transmogrification from cube dweller to truck driving feller on this web site.

http://vermintales.blogspot.com/

So after 3 months off it is time for me to start moving I have done petted the fur clean offa the dog and all the honey dews been done, time for me to get out the house.