In case you didn’t know - I commute 100 miles a day for work. I live in a small country town & commute to the big city of Charlotte, NC.

I recently purchased a motorcycle to help offset the cost of gas. Well, ok so it doesnt really save me anything, but at least now I am paying out about the same amount in bills, but getting a motorcycle out of the deal.

When you are riding a motorcycle for about an hour, you get to experience things people in cars do not experience. See things they may miss.

Yesterday & today I saw 2 Lamborghini Gallardos heading away from Charlotte. Which I found strange. I was confused why anyone that could afford these cars would be heading in that direction. Each of these cars cost a minimum of $175,000.

Today following the Lamborghinis was a Mercedes SLR McLaren 722. This is an awesome car. I almost fell off the motorcycle looking at it. The Mercedes runs approx $495,000. Once again my thoughts were “Where the hell are these people going?”….

This is what the Lamborghinis looked like

This is a pic of the Mercedes

Ok on to the other interesting thing that happened this morning.

Have you ever been driving down the road & had a bird almost hit your windshield? They normally don’t actually hit the windshield, but go up & over it because of the car being aerodynamic. Well this brings about 2 things?

First - come to find out, once the bird goes up over the roof of your car, it loses its cute little flying ability & turns more into an out of control tumble. Trust me I know. This is what I saw today. A bird tumbling over the roof of the car in front of me. It was tumbling straight for my face.

This seemed amusing at first.

Now this brings us to the 2nd part. Remember where I said the bird avoids the windshield because of the car being aerodynamic? Well me sitting on a motorcycle is NOT aerodynamic.

Luckily just before the bird hit me in the face, it stopped tumbling & flew off.

So I learned today that 1 - there is 3 people driving around small town nowhere in some really nice cars & 2 - when a bird gracefully flies over your windshield, it results in a very ungraceful like tumble & roll over the back of your car.

Here is part 2 of my recent blog update -

A week or 2 ago Michelle and I went out for a picnic lunch.

We decided to have it by the water near a dam we had found.

Upon arriving at the parking location for said dam location, we took all of our stuff out of the car (food, drinks, chairs). When we picnic we do it in style…. ok it leans towards redneck style, but that is still a style. Bad part about bringing so much stuff, the parking area is about 3 or 4 blocks from the river area.

Once we made the hike, we set up our chairs right near the water and started eating. What? Eating is an important part of having a picnic. After a couple minutes Michelle tells me she hears something in the bushes near the water. I do my best to convince her it is just the wind, that I am looking towards the bushes & do not see anything.

Another 5 or 10 minutes passes, enough time for me to get about 3/4 of the way through my chicken & Michelle jumps up out of her chair and gives a small semi-quiet scream. Of course I am still eating my chicken, but being the nice boyfriend I am I ask her what is wrong to which she replies “SNAKE!!!!”. So I pause in my eating & look down to see a 4ft snake about a foot & a half from my feet. Well, since I was already committed… I finished my chicken… wiped my hands… took a drink… made sure the snake didn’t want anything… and got up and moved back to the area Michelle had moved to.

After this we finished up our lunch & went back to enjoying the peacefulness of the area. After an hour or so we decided to pack up & head home.

On our way back to the car we came across a NC Wildlife Officer. He was checking on anyone fishing in the area to make sure they had their licenses. Unlike FL Fish & Game Officers, he had no desire to search through our personal belongings for illegal materials. He did unfortunately inform us that we must have caught the area on a good day because normally it is so “rough” around here that he would never bring his wife to this place for a picnic or to fish.

That really sucks because it is a very nice location & a perfect fishing spot.

Oh well, we had a nice day anyway.

Here are pics -

LINK

I never update this thing anymore… I think I am like 3 or 4 weeks behind now.

Luckily not that much interesting stuff happens to me…LOL

Lets see, what do I have to tell you???

A couple weeks ago my friend Ken T. (LINK to his blog) came up from Florida. We had a great time. Michelle & I were both able to get some time off of work while he was here.

We were trying to figure out something to do or somewhere to go & decided to ride over to Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Even though I have lived here almost 3 years (and worked 15 minutes away from it) I had never been over to the speedway.

Since we are all NASCAR fans this was a very fun trip. We were able to walk all over the grandstands & watched the Richard Petty Driving School do there thing. After about 30 minutes outside we decided it was way to hot (almost 100 degrees), so we went & checked out the gift shop. While we were in there someone said something about taking “The Tour” so we had to ask how much it was. Much to our surprise it was only $5 per person and was about a 45 minute tour around the track & infield/pit area.

We paid our money and headed outside with a group of 15 or so people. I was wondering how we were physically going to tour the facility. Were we all going to walk around the place? Was it more of a “here it is, have a nice day” or what??

Once outside they directed us to a long conversion van that we all squeezed into. Just about the time Michelle was finding out how cramped the van could be & that her air conditioner vent did not work, someone on the walkie talkie said something about another person for the tour. This sounded horrible. How were they going to cram more people in this sardine can?

I head Ken T. say something to the driver about “I am with a group of 3″ and next thing I knew we were all kicked off the van. Not the first time I have been kicked out of somewhere but I was confused at what had transpired and why we were now back out in the heat.

Come to find out, Ken T. had just got us lined up with a sweet deal. We were moved to a 15 person van with only 1 other person in it. This was like our own personal little tour. Our driver was a nice 70yr old lady. She drove us around the outside of the speedway giving us more information than I will ever remember about the place. I figured for $5 you couldnt beat this. Especially since the A/C was nice & cold.

The best parts of the entire tour was when we took the van out on the actually track. You know, where the race cars get to drive. Our little old lady driver stopped in the middle of one of the turns, which is at an angle that makes you feel like you are going to roll the vehicle over. It was at this point that she said “If we all lean to the right, we will NOT roll over.” Hmm, was she reading our minds???

Now for the funniest part. As we sped around the track at 70mph (I know this isnt fast for most of us, but in a large van with a 70yr old lady driving…it is FAST) the lady takes her hand off of the steering wheel and starts pointing to black marks on the concrete walls surrounding the track saying “Those are from the race cars, we haven’t had a van hit the wall in a little while.” Well, thats good to know.

We did some other stuff while Ken T. was here, but mostly we hung out & we had a nice laid back time.

Ken T. - I am glad you were able to come up from Florida. You are always welcome at our house bro.

Here are pics from Lowes Motor Speedway (actually the first couple are from a very lame motorcycle show, only 3 bikes in the actual show)-

LINK

Wow, it has been awhile since I have updated my blog.

Sorry… bad blogger, bad…..

Ok so it wasnt that long.

Some of you already know about my recent purchase, but due to personal reasons I was unable to blog about it.
Until now…..

I bought a motorcycle -

You like it????

Ok here is the real pic -

I wasn’t sure about going from a “rice rocket” to a cruiser… but I knew I am getting to old to ride the super fast motorcycles… I am actually very happy with my decision. This motorcycle is very comfortable & plenty fast enough.

I use the price of gas as a great way of justifying this purchase. I ride it into work at least twice a week. With me working about 50 miles from home the great gas mileage on the motorcycle saves a lot of money, equals the cost of the bike, redirects the money I would spend on gas into money I spend on extras for the motorcycle.

For those of you who have never owned a motorcycle - DON’T… They are addicting, evil pieces of equipment. Once you own one, you must always own one…… go out and buy one. This one gets between 48 & 55mpg.. If you purchase a smaller engine you could get as much as 70mpg no problem.

Here is more pics - LINK

I have more to blog about (weekend update & stuff).. but I will save that for later, I should at least act like I am working while I am at work….