Construction Lady

I almost forgot the funniest part about our trip to Attica.

We were headed home on Wednesday, and there was road construction on 41, a few miles south of Attica. There was a woman holding the stop sign for our lane, letting the other lane come through. First off, Gary was rolling pretty hard before he came to a stop, about 5 feet from the lady, so she was nervous about that. Then, she turns away from us, towards oncoming traffic, standing about 18" or so from the yellow line.

A big semi rolls through, and the wind off of it catches her sign, blows it over her shoulder, and she damn near fell flat on her ass. After that, she moved, ever so nonchalantly, a few more feet away from the yellow line, and refused to turn around and look at our car. Lucky for her, because we were laughing our asses off.

Good Tims!

4-wheelin'

Last Wednesday, I went with a group of guys from work to a place called the Badlands Off Road Park, in Attica, IN. We took our 4-wheelers, for a day of mud slinging, hill climbing fun.

We left Bloomfield around 7:45 am, after breakfast at the local DQ. We had six guys going, and we had just enough room for all six quads, two Polaris Sportsmans (400 and 700), a Yamaha Kodiak 450, two Suzuki 400 sportquads and a Yamaha Raptor 700. We got to the park around 9:30 or so, attached our $5 bicycle flags to our 4-wheelers and got riding.

I've not done a whole lot of riding, but this place seemed like it had it all: mudholes, hills, jumps, rocks, sand dunes, and even a jeep sized culvert.

It was pretty cool in the morning, and we took it relatively easy for an hour or so, until we started getting hot, went back and took our heavy gear off and got back to riding. I took a donut kind of hard, and my quad threw me. I was able to kick it back onto its wheels before it rolled over on top of me, but my pride, my back and my arm were hurt. I went back to the truck, dressed the wound and got back to riding. I almost got thrown again later going off a jump, nearly went over the handlebars.

I got hung up in the mud in the morning, and had to be winched out. Later that day, Gary decided to go through a big puddle, that turned out to be deeper than he thought. His quad was up to the seat in muddy water, and when he jumped off of it after it died, it was floating. We pulled it out, turned it on end to drain the water and towed it back to the truck. After changing the oil (the old stuff looked like chocolate milk), he was back on the trail.

One of the sport quad guys went up about an 75 degree hill and got thrown off his bike at the top. The bike started back down the hill, but luckily didn't tumble. He must have had a golden horseshoe up his butt.

Towards the end of the day, we were looking for that big culvert and my belt started slipping. Waterlogged, right? nope, not a drop of water came out when i took the drain plug out. It just gave up the ghost. I had enough to make it through in low gear, but no more big hills for me. We found the culvert and Gary rode his quad through it and jumped out the end into about 18" of water.

In the end, the only real damage was to my elbow and Brian's leg got scraped up. He's lucky it didn't break though. My belt was probably going to go anyway, and after 3 oil changes, Gary's good to go. We rode about 6 hours, and had about 5 hours of drive time. It'd be more worth it if we'd have camped out and ridden for 2 days, but i'm not sure i could have handled a second day!

Sonsabitches!

if you're my mom or my wife, excuse my language, but i'm really pissed about work today.

Tuesday after lunch, I got a call from my customer, asking me to be in VA today, Friday, to answer technical questions in a brief. For some dumbass reason, I said yes, if my travel arrangements would go through. I submitted my request, selected the only flight for the return home that would get me in at a decent hour tonight (before 9pm), and it cost $800 (one way). I advised the customer of this, and she said that was fine. I was off on Wednesday 4-wheeler riding (it was hella fun, will blog a blog about it later), and secretly hoping my request would get denied due to the price of the flight or the short fuse on getting 'r' dun.

Wednesday afternoon, I got an email on my blackberry saying it was approved...shit.

Thursday morning, I get up, get ready, and leave for the airport, sore as shit. I get to the airport and check my email to make sure who my flight was with because I couldn't remember. I scroll through the email and see "Detroit" on the return flight...what? Sure enough, without asking, they put me on a flight that has a connection through detroit, puts me in Indy 3 hours later, saves a whopping $200 (at the cost of an additional 3 hours of OT for me) and basically just pisses me off. If they would have just denied my request, I would have been fine.

Anyway, I call and see if they can put me back on the original flight I requested, but they can't. it's not a contracted carrier. The best they can do for me, out of 4 semi-local airports is a flight that gets in at the same time, but is direct and doesn't leave until 6:30 tonight. at least i won't spend all evening on a damn airplane.

To top it off, I'm not here to "answer technical questions". I'm here to "give most of the brief".

In the words of Aaron Karo, "fuck me"

*changed title to make it more SFW, sorry Bean