DC STREET 3/13: RIGHT CLICK AND SAVE

video from last thursday’s street ride. since the bike’s broken i tagged along on the cross bike and filmed.

i just couldn’t believe noone had claimed the ‘XPLODER’ tags. now i giggle everytime i see my license plates. classic.

feel the cold reality slap every day at 4:00… create a google news alert for the keyword ‘motorcycle’. 90% of the articles are accident-related. good for going easy on the throttle.

made a couple desktops from one of lee’s photos: 1280 version | 1024 version

ouch. went out for a quick spin last nite, up the street to a parking garage to work on manuals, barspins and 180s. after riding for about 20 minutes i popped a 180 and my frame did a frickin split! dunno how long it’s been cracked for, but it’s a damn good thing it didn’t break while i was flying down the mountain up in frederick! that might’ve hurt. lucky for me cortina cycles is a tiny, family run business and i’m sure they’ll help me out. that’s one of the best feeling frames i’ve ever ridden and definitely want to keep riding cortinas.

in happier news, i got my ‘M’! that’s right, i’m now a legally licensed motorcyclist… spent 5 hours at the DMV on friday. 5 painful hours of waiting, 45 minutes of test-taking and i was in like flynn.

quick trip up to the hometown on saturday, just for the day to pick up some stuff from the house before my mom leaves for AZ later this month. it was odd seeing the house so empty after 17 years of being packed full of our stuff. brought home some precious memorabilia and tshirts, including a thrasher, a minor threat and a misfits tee that i’d forgotten all about. got some sweet pics of teenage me too that i need to scan and post. the mullet and mudflap combo was key. as were the jean jacket and jams.

it’s been a helluva week, and i’m really glad today is over.

we adopted aurora last saturday and brought her home. we fell in love with all 90lbs of her right away. super sweet, silly and awesome inside, when we’re home. she just melts into a pile of dog when you rub her belly. the trouble started the very first day when she tried to eat our neighbor’s cotton puff of a dog, max. we knew she wasn’t fond of cats, but it turns out that hatred is also focused on small dogs and squirrels. not a good circumstance in our canine circus of a neighborhood. there are always little dogs and kids running around off-leash (not that kids should be leashed… well, most of them shouldn’t).

then there was the separation anxiety. we spent all of saturday with her, getting her familiar with the house and the dog door and jack. sunday we left her alone for a bit during lunch. we came home to a vision of her cute face in the kitchen window looking out at us. ‘awww, how cute’ we thought… then we remembered the kitchen table under the window. yeah, she was on top of the table. she’d knocked all the crap onto the floor and left muddy pawprints everywhere. okay, so she’s not allowed in the kitchen when we’re gone. we babygated her out and she smashes thru the gates and repeats the table incident all over again. baby gate her in the basement, repeat scenario. except that time she cleared all the food off the kitchen counters including 3 chocolate cupcakes, a handful of ghiardelli squares, Hershey kisses and 3 candy necklaces. her heart must have been going 300mph, she was just doing laps around the house till about 11pm. she even managed to break out of the metal dog crate on friday.

we can deal with all that stuff, jack did it when he was a puppy. but there was still the outdoor aggression. there’s no way we could ever let her off-leash in the backyard. what if one of the kids got between her and a small dog or cat? and we couldn’t exercise her enough, just strolling around on a leash while jack is running around free. it just seems unfair. our little townhouse backyard just isn’t big enough for her to run in. we talked to the behavior specialist at the rescue, but after leaving kristy alone with both dogs all weekend, we were both convinced that we had to bring her back.

so i took her back to the rescue today. leaving her there was one of the hardest things i’ve had to do in a long time. we’ll never forget her and i know that she’ll find a better place to live than we could ever give her.