The Hooligan and the Traveler

Post hurricane clean-up.

Lambeau from the air

Which one is not like the others?

Super 80 Streamlining

At ORD.

Back Again

ASIS is in town this week

And so are the bums. It amazes me how the truly aggressive panhandlers seem so multiply when a large convention comes to a city. These bloodsuckers are everywhere.

ASIS, as a security consulting type group, oughta be able to fix the problem one would think. No?

http://www.asisonline.org/

Peach bread pudding

Pilot travel centers suck

Everyone I saw today had gas at $4.89/gal. Nearly everything else was about $4.09. Can you say gouge? I thought you could.

Back in Atlanta

Bimmer performed flawlessly. Great ride. And to top it off, the bike triggers the loop at the parking garage so I can come and go easily rather than tge pita tge Buell was. It just keeps getting better.

Pic from Daily's restaurant. Escargot & swordfish on their way.

Back again.

Lights came back about two minutes after I gassed up the generator for the night. Still good this morning. Supposedly according to one of Mrs. Evil's customers who works for our utility, we're actually back on the grid and not running on the monster generator units the utility brought in for some in our area.

Good Luck, Galveston...

You're going to need a bunch of Wichita linemen (and some scuba gear) to put this one back together.

Here we go again.

Power's out. Local cell tower is still online though, so that's better than last time. Hopefully they get it back fairly quickly as I'm leaving for Atlanta on Sunday.

Liberal Logic Lacking....

This will be my first political post in quite awhile. Since about January, I've pretty much given up on politics. I know who I'm voting for. Nothing will change my mind, so why pay any attention to the crap flung about trying to persuade imbeciles that probably don't even know how the presidential election process actually works.

That being said, McCain's VP pick has perked my ears. I especially love that Palin is so staunchly Pro-life that she chose not to abort her youngest child even though he is afflicted with Down's Syndrome. Some statistics show that currently, 90% of babies diagnosed with the potential to have Down's Syndrome are aborted. That a lot of abortions, I would expect.

Now for a little logic. First the given set:

Most out homosexuals are liberal.

Most liberals approve of special rights and privelages for homosexuals.

Most of the above groups state that homosexuality is not a choice.

If homosexuality is not a choice, it must be, therefore, genetic.

Now my questions.

If homosexuality is genetic, should we test for it in the womb? (It is obviously a defect, given that it is incompatible with natural procreation.)

Should parents be given the choice to abort a baby they know will be homosexual to avoid the potential hardships that the child's homosexuality will inevitably bring?

Shouldn't homosexuals and others who believe that homosexuality is genetic be Pro-Life?

Pre-emptive Ike Strike...

Before:



After:

Adventure Supplies Gathering

10 gallons of gas, case of water, box of mre's.

Adventure Gas Hunting

Needed to build a levee

New Orleans got nothing on me

The cold grey light of dawn.

Coffee by candlelight

Not how bunn intended it but wtf.

Now it's out

We'll see for how long.

whew

We're still here. A little battered but no major damage. Waiting for the sun to rise to get to work. Trees to move generator to permanently attach. Off we go. Still windy and raining though.

And it's back on.

Must've just been a auto reset fault. Generator on standby.

Power just went out.

Still not too bad overall. Hooking up the generator.

TWC WTF?

I think the weather channel is playing fast and loose with their radar colors. They're showing us in dark green/yellow and it's barely sprinkling. It's a bit breezy, but we've had much worse thundestorms as far as the rain goes. I know, it's early yet.

Rain has started

About 10 minutes ago. Nothing too bad yet.

It looks to me like the thing is turning to the west as it hits land. That should help overall if it does.

Pictures from the trip

Here is the bike at BMW of Las Vegas when it still had the dirt tires mounted. Great shop. Dale was very accommodating even when I came back un-announced on Friday with the bike mis-firing under load. They figured out one of the four coils was failing, replaced it and the bike ran perfectly after that.



A picture at The Church's home prior to installing my stuff and loading.



Now a few pictures at Hoover Dam. They're a little better than the washed out crap I took last time. I'm still trying to figure out this photography stuff.



The Concourse 1400 showed up as I dismounted. He had just ridden in from Phoenix.



You can see the ugly-assed anti-terror bypass in the background.



The lake level is ultra-low. As recently as 12 years ago it was up to the white stripe on the canyon walls.





Bike overlooking the field where Lake Mead used to be. Lots of closed up boat ramps around the Lake.









By this time it was 106 degrees and I was in full riding garb so I got a couple last pictures and called it quits for the day.

Bike in front of a big red rock.





Then I headed back to base and rolled out first thing in the morning.

The temperature extremes on trips out west are remarkable. I saw 111 degrees at one point on Friday, and Saturday on the way through Flagstaff, it was 56. It's hard to dress appropriately for that kinda swing.

Back home waiting for the storm

Arrived home about 2000 yesterday. I had made it from Las Vegas to Austin in 19 hours, three minutes door to door. That's a total average speed of 66.7 mph. The trip was just under 1300 miles. I'm pretty happy with that as I was only on the interstate (I40) from Kingman to about 40 miles east of Albuquerque. The rest of the time I was on old state highways in AZ, NM and TX. I still managed to average well above the required 62.5 mph you need for a Bun-Burner 1500 Gold. (Iron Butt Association ride, 1500 miles in under 24 hours.) So that ride should be doable if I plan my route around interstates.

Here is my actual route from Vegas to Austin.


View Larger Map

Had some pretty good thunderstorms from Vaughn to Roswell, NM and then again from Big Spring to San Angelo. There was also a moth storm just south of Big Spring. I've never seen anything like it. The bike is now completely covered in crap.

I rode the last 480 miles home last afternoon. Easiest time I've ever had on I-10. I probably saw less than 1000 cars total heading east between Houston and Baton Rouge. Even westbound wasn't bad. (Except at the backup from the tractor-trailer wreck around Anahuac.) From 50 miles west of Beaumont all the way home just about everything was boarded up and vacant. It was kinda strange. Also kinda hard to find gas. I stopped everywhere I saw an open station to make sure I'd have as full a tank as possible when I got home.

Mona did a great job shoveling all our loose crap into the house in my absence.

Now it's just sit an wait. The wind is picking up but the rain reallu hasn't started yet.