b-b-b-bad

Come on, you know you want to play with my knob. Admit it! I’m still filtering ideas about a full custom shift knob; there are too many great ideas, and I don’t wanna rush because then I’ll have a better idea the day my first one arrives, and need another. I found Bruce at Koolknobs […]

Come on, you know you want to play with my knob. Admit it!

rattle.jpg

I’m still filtering ideas about a full custom shift knob; there are too many great ideas, and I don’t wanna rush because then I’ll have a better idea the day my first one arrives, and need another. I found Bruce at Koolknobs can make ’em out of printed material also so I can use original artwork emailed as well as physical objects.

I’ve also considered using a MacRae clan badge, or even a piece of tartan fabric (I have a kilt sample in MacRae Red).

Too many ideas. Hence, I’m getting the above rattle-snake knob, because you know what I am?

B-b-b-Bad!

(sing it with me now)

take it, torchwood, and my truck

I spent last night trying to write; my family were out, and I was alone, and reasonably free of urgent must-do tasks after having worked most of the weekend. I had in mind a short piece of erotica, something inspired by a scene in an episode of The Shield (the phrase ‘take it‘ has a […]

I spent last night trying to write; my family were out, and I was alone, and reasonably free of urgent must-do tasks after having worked most of the weekend.

I had in mind a short piece of erotica, something inspired by a scene in an episode of The Shield (the phrase ‘take it‘ has a way of inspiring my erotoc imagination). I have characters in mind and the barest bones of a story.

Alas, I had a can’t-sit-still moment. I felt like I’d been pounding Pimp Juice all evening;Iwound up fidgeting and twitching, couldn’t stay in my chair long enough to actually keep my hands on my keyboard. Instead, I did laundry, washed dishes, and then finally managed to watch the season two opener of Torchwood (James Marsters snoggin’ John Barrowman; I mean, come ON, how can you not love this show a little?).

At least I got something started, though, so we’ll see. By boss is on vacation, and that used to be a good time to write, back when I had a little leeway to goof off; but who knows, maybe I’ll find a couple of hours this week for producing slacking.

In other news, my truck is due back somewhere around the end of the week. I miss it like a walrus misses his bucket. I’m drivin’ a tan mini-van right now, and I could not feel more out of place than I do in this vehicle. The only good thing about vans is that when the seats come out, there’re a great place for a mid-day shag, but who has time for a mid day shag anymore? Plus, I just put a better stereo with ipod integration in my truck, and I’m about to tear off my own ears from having to listen to the radio.

truck carnage

How this happened is rather a long story. Let’s just say there was a lamp-post, and a concrete garbage can. Was, because they suffered sudden, catastrophic failure when introduced rather rudely to my truck. “Hello lamp-post, What cha knowin’?” This is the aftermath vis-à-vis y truck. The other parties faired less well and are now […]

How this happened is rather a long story. Let’s just say there was a lamp-post, and a concrete garbage can. Was, because they suffered sudden, catastrophic failure when introduced rather rudely to my truck.

“Hello lamp-post,
What cha knowin’?”

This is the aftermath vis-à-vis y truck. The other parties faired less well and are now more or less expensive land fill, but alas I seem to have no photographic evidence.

Truck Carnage-1

There was absolutely no intoxicant involved in this. I swear. Unless you count Hunnid Racks.

girl on a motorbike

I sat at a light, and watched a girl on a motorbike.

The bike was yellow; the girl was in leather, jeans. Her booted feet looked like a child’s, tiny black leather boots.

She passed me in an intersection as I waited for green, and then I tried to catch her; in my huge gray truck, it was hopeless. But I tried, ran a light to stay with her, passed my stop.

Her helmet was decorated, neck to crown, in sparkling stickers, whorls and flourish and little stick-on gems. It was a helmet a little girl would imagine on a princess, should a princess ride a motorbike; perfect and elegant, yet child-like.

I lost her at the next light, carving between cars on her fleet little yamaha; her black braid trailing behind her in the wind. I never got a look at even the sliver of face a motorcycle helmet would show, only a pair of mirrored shades, no more.

I turned my truck around, a great tire-screeching arc, and went back to my errand.

This is the song I dialed on my iPod as I drove away.

 

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Titanic

I pulled the trigger. That ain’t mine – mine’s an 06 and it’s a darker color (they call it granite, I call it gun-metal gray). But it’s close enough. Pix of the real one to be posted as soon as I get time. Edit: I found a better pic that’s closer in color. Still not […]

23 Titan Crew Gal-1

I pulled the trigger.

That ain’t mine – mine’s an 06 and it’s a darker color (they call it granite, I call it gun-metal gray). But it’s close enough.

Pix of the real one to be posted as soon as I get time.

Edit: I found a better pic that’s closer in color. Still not mine but you get the idea.

400Px-Nissan-Titan-Crewcab

Trucks, but not monsters

I have not fully escaped the tenacious grip of toadian motor madness. I try. Stop thinking about it i tell myself. Spend thee no money on wheels. But they call, the motor vehicles. Take me home they say, in a hellish chorus of steel and rubber and internal combustion. Take me home, temptresses with shiny […]

I have not fully escaped the tenacious grip of toadian motor madness.

I try. Stop thinking about it i tell myself. Spend thee no money on wheels.

But they call, the motor vehicles. Take me home they say, in a hellish chorus of steel and rubber and internal combustion. Take me home, temptresses with shiny paint and gleaming chrome.

I can resist anything but temptation, as they say.

After the modern muscle car that recently held my fancy (and from which I reluctantly turn aside, high price and un-proven mechanical merit gradually drowning out the take-me-home-tonight siren song of the word hemi), I’ve turned back in time to a former love.

Trucks, I say. That’s what I’m all about.

While my first car, and my second, were boat-sized american iron from the third quarter of last century, the first two vehicles I ever bought with my own hard-earned dough, and the first and only new car I ever bought myself (and i say that again, for emphasis, one, and only one, in near thirty years as a driver. I’ve bought myself only one new, shiny vehicle) were both trucks.

I’ve owned a lot of vehicles over the years. Five or six different motorcycles, two jeeps, an impala, three mini-vans, two trucks, three or four SUVs, a datsun 200sx, a chevy nova, and I’m sure a couple more I can’t quite recall. And of all these, when I run them through my head, four stand out out (not counting the motorcycles). The Jeeps (one inherited from my father, one bought used as a replacement for Dad’s under-powered wrangler), and the trucks (both blue, both toyota). Those were me.

I have a bit of ego invested in what I drive. I’ve come to that conclusion of late, while pondering practical solutions to a practical vehicle problem. I look at a wide range on non-descript, affordable, practical, fuel-efficient options. And I cannot even imagine owning them.

I try to think practical. Utilitarian. Solve the problem – Form Follows Function, as my friend Stephen, the founder of Utilikilts, like to say.

I can’t do it. Car as Ego.

I hate driving a mini-van. Yet I can see driving a seventies party van. I hate driving a sedan; yet I would love to drive a cadillac (an old one, not the more recent, soulless ones). I can imagine driving a rolling oddity like a Scion xB, yet I can’t imagine driving it’s less odd brother, the xA

My car needs to say here’s who i am to me.

And so I return to that old love, the truck.

Of course the very first thing I do is to start thinking in size-queen terms. I shop up the ladder; big, bigger, and then on to fuckin’ huge. Trucks so big I’d need two garages to park them.

I wouldn’t have something like that if you gave it to me; yet I am shopping for it. I can’t stop. I’m almost to Monster Truck territory with this.

I’m picturing riding high in some stupid-huge truck with my tattooed arm out the window; Hey baby. And they wonder what I’m compensating for.

And then I wind it back; what do I need, actually? And I step back through Dodge Rams and Toyota Tundras and Nissan Titans (which I think of as the Nissan Titanic, and that makes me want one), and wind up back down at a level that’s just close enough to sane that I can think about it, which is where the danger in. Trucks with names like Frontier and Tacoma.

I sat down the other day and calculated trade-in values and car payments, and thought about selling my Peets stock to make up the difference.

And I fear, when I finish this, I may go test drive.

Someone stop me. I don’t need a truck.

Put on ‘yer Daisy Dukes

I’m in the grips of full-on motor madness, à la Mister Toad. This all started because of my kids (really). See, I drive a jeep wrangler. And that’s a great vehicle, if impractical; it can take the beating, it goes forever with only minimal maintenance, it looks great dirty or scratched or dented. And in […]

I’m in the grips of full-on motor madness, à la Mister Toad.

This all started because of my kids (really). See, I drive a jeep wrangler. And that’s a great vehicle, if impractical; it can take the beating, it goes forever with only minimal maintenance, it looks great dirty or scratched or dented. And in the summer, i can take off the top and doors, so getting into and out of the back is easy.

But in the winter, the hard top is on. And if you’ve ever gotten in and out of the back of a small car, you know how this is. Jeeps are small; really small.

When my kids were small, this was nothing. They could scramble in through the back like hamsters in a habitrail, and they loved getting in and out of a car this way. Only, they’re no longer small. The big one, just turned 13, is as tall as I am, with longer legs, and she has my build (mile wide shoulders). The little one (eight and a half) is almost a foot taller than most of her class mates, and while not built as much like a linebacker as I am, is still a burly kid.

So gettin’ em in and out of the back is starting to be a pain. They fight over who has to ride in back all winter, when we have four in the jeep.

So that’s where it started. I started making a list of reasons I needed to think about a more practical vehicle. It started with the wrangler unlimited, Jeep’s new version of the cj8 Scrambler, a longer wheelbase jeep. This is a great vehical and it was smart of Jeep to re-release it, but it has some big trade-offs (longer wheelbase means you lose some of the handling qualities that make a wrangler so brilliant to drive). Then Jeep released the four-door wrangler unlimited. I was working up some serious lust for that, until i actually saw them in hawaii. And it turns out they’re really pretty ugly, like someone mated a wrangler with a hummer and got the worst of each.

Meanwhile, some time back I was talking to CG about cars, and she pointed out the new Dodge Charger.

I didn’t really notice it at the time. Sure, a new sedan with the old name. Whatever. But i looked at it and noticed a key word.

HEMI

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Leigh Ann Hussey

Fuck.

This is a friend of mine – or used to be, hadn’t talked to her in a couple years. Old ‘net friend from motorcycle newsgroups; a gifted violin player who played in local celtic bands.

LIVERMORE – The Alameda County coroner’s office identified the motorcyclist killed when a dump truck ran over her Tuesday night as 44-year-old Leigh Hussey of Berkeley.

Authorities were investigating late Tuesday the circumstances that led Hussey to inexplicably lose control of her BMW bike about 7:20 p.m. and slip under the back axle of a yellow dump truck on westbound Interstate 580 near North Livermore Avenue, Highway Patrol said.

Hussey was crushed by the truck’s two rear tires and was then thrown to the right hand shoulder, Highway Patrol officer John Pabst said. She was pronounced dead at the scene from massive trauma.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/14596956.htm

While she wasn’t a close friend, she’s a close friend of several of my friends. And I don’t even know what to say. Other than, you know, ride safe people.

When the kick-stand ain’t down

Ok this has to be shouted.I DROPPED MY MOTHERFUCKING BIKE in the MOTHERFUCKING PARKING LOT.There…. Because, you know, I DROPPED MY FUCKING BIKE.God I hate when I do this.

Ok this has to be shouted.

I DROPPED MY MOTHERFUCKING BIKE in the MOTHERFUCKING PARKING LOT.

There. I feel better. Well, ok, no I don’t.

Because, you know, I DROPPED MY FUCKING BIKE.

God I hate when I do this. And I drive a big plastic monstrosity, a trophy 1200 (That one ain’t mine, but mine’s just like it, or was until just now when I DROPPED IT!).

It’s the classic one. Kick stand wasn’t quite down and I let go.

The damage is mostly cosmetic, with one busted turn signal (which is of course like a hundred dollar part — fucking british import), and a friendly co-worker helped me get it back on two wheels so I didn’t blow by back picking it up, which I have done before with other bikes.

But christ. Just what I need to start my evening…

[made with ecto]