Hell’s Canyon Motorcycle Rally 2008

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

Main street bike showJune 13th we went down to Baker City to attend the Hell’s Canyon Motorcycle Rally.  We left Friday morning before the birds started singing.  My son and I took the motorcycle while my wife and daughter rode along in a chase car.  There were three other bikes in the group and we put some of the excess gear in the truck.  The weather was great which was good news.  Just a few days before we left there was news of snow along the route to Baker City.

Instead of taking I84 all the way down there we turned off at Biggs and took the back roads instead.  As the day went on the weather just kept getting better.  It was really neat to ride among the gigantic wind turbines in the wind farms. It was humbling riding between the hills so close to them.


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The Family MansionThe camp grounds was an RV park called Mountain View RV Park.  Their facilities were really nice.  Showers and toilets were in great shape and the staff was friendly.  Our camp site was located in the grass behind the toilet and shower building.  The grass was really well kept and it felt great to kick off the boots while we put up tents.  Once things were in place we took the complimentary shuttle bus downtown for dinner.

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Bidi’s World Microblog Digest for 4/15/2008

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Here are the latest happenings from some of the various microblogs I use across the net.

  • [news] MonoTracer Covered Motorcycles For Sale (from Geekologie - Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome) - 12:05 am
  • [twitter] I have running late. Messes up my whole day. - 9:02 am
  • [news] VirtualCol Releases Fokker 50 (from FlightSimX) - 11:25 am
  • [twitter] Finishing up a coding project and trying to stay motivated. - 11:36 am
  • [twitter] Wow, Didn’t expect to meet a local on Twitter. Good to meet you @oregon_tony. :) - 4:49 pm
  • [twitter] Finally signed up my blog on orblogs.com. - 5:35 pm
  • [twitter] Getting ready to head out and grab a little Birthday Taco Bell for the wife. - 7:37 pm
  • [twitter] That is one fat pinkie. Snake is going to eat good tonight. - 8:37 pm
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Bidi’s World Microblog Digest for 3/17/2008

Monday, March 17th, 2008

Here are the latest happenings from some of the various microblogs I use across the net.

03/16/08

03/15/08

  • [twitter] Coding on a weekend for fun. What the heck am I thinking? Fun for crying out loud! - 4:02 pm

03/13/08

  • [twitter] Just installed TwitterFox on my work PC. My favorite firefox twitter plugin yet. - 12:42 pm
  • [twitter] Time is moving way to fast these days. I can’t seem to get anything done. - 5:21 pm

03/12/08

  • [twitter] Dog training is almost over. Rocket is doing well. Next week is graduation. :) - 10:27 pm

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Synaptic System Failure

Monday, February 4th, 2008

I had a truly amazing year in 2007. As the year went on, I got more and more ambitious. By Christmas I had so much going on I think the creative part of my mind just shut down.

I would wake up in the morning and think about all the things I wanted to do during the day and it was a very long list. I’m only talking about the things I really wanted to do too. There was also all the things I had to do. It got so bad that not only did I start using a calendar but I even scheduled stuff out into 2008.

Indecision over what needed doing first became a huge problem and all the while I kept thinking of new projects and endeavors I wanted to start which just added to the confusion. By the time December came around all I wanted to do was focus on our Christmas vacation trip to my parents and nothing else. The blog, podcast, gaming, and everything was on hold at this point.

Here we are in the new year and I’ve finally had time to think. I’ve decided it is time to focus my priorities and here is what I have planned for 2008.

It’s time to wake up JD’s Musical Alchemy and get back to reviewing the music I love so much. Putting the show together was becoming a chore and taking away from the enjoyment of finding and presenting the music. This was mostly because I kept trying to find better ways to improve the quality at the cost of more labor. My goal for this year is to keep it simple so I can focus on the music.

The boy's first ride.I have a hand full of motorcycle trips scheduled for 2008 already including a rally in Eastern Oregon. Except for the occasional weekend ride I’m going to stick with what I have scheduled instead of trying to fit in every event available this year.

Last year I found a cool gaming group that seemed to focus on “organized play” games. Shortly after hooking up with them the coordinator for the group stepped down from his role. I had thought I would be able to help put together game days to keep things moving but it looks like I won’t have the time to learn enough about the games to really do a good job scheduling events. I should be able to fit in the occasional game though and I hope to be able to referee a campaign at some point with a system I’m familiar with.

I’m having a blast gaming with the family too. In addition to continuing to play World of Warcraft with the wife, we purchased a Wii just before Christmas and picked up a few new games over the holidays. The Wii has a very different style of console gaming and I’ll go into that in more detail in another post. I have also picked up a number of table top games for the family to play together.

We also have a new addition in the family. Rocket is a one year old Lab/Aussie mix. He’s smart, friendly, and a huge ball of energy. We started basic training this week at PetSmart and even after just one class I’m already seeing progress. While Rocket is a family dog, much of the responsibility falls on me as it was on my insistence that we adopted him from the rescue group.

The last thing I want to do is work on my painting. Last year I decided to get back into painting in water colors. This year I hope to continue that and perhaps even take a class or two. My next Christmas my goal is to be able to make my own hand made holiday cards.

So 2008 is perhaps going to be even more busy than last year. It is my hope that it will be better organized than last year though.

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Beautiful custom V-ROD

Monday, September 24th, 2007

We were out taking a walk the other week and came across this beautiful custom V-ROD. The customizations were slight but gave it a very striking look.

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