The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

So, what a wonderful few weeks I have had. They say that you must experience the bad in order to understand the good things you go through, and that must be the case in everything. Including things as seemingly un-profound as motorcycles and Ford Broncos. First the motorcycle:

A few weeks ago I became the happy parent of a Yamaha WR250F. I think the F stands for “fast”. After a few tweeks it was ready to go. I had to swap some throttle stuff and some baffle garbage that the EPA thought was important, but that impeded my “need for speed”. It’s basically like a little off road rocket ship now. My wife was supportive under one condition. She said “your not allowed to buy all that safety crap that makes you look like a dork when you ride around.” Realize that my wife holds the title of former Miss Anti-Safety… of the world I think. She will not wear a seat belt, thinks helmets are gay, drives like Mario Andretti, or at least a female version of the same, and believes that she could easily defend herself from a house full of AK47 wielding terrorists with a girls aluminum fast pitch softball bat.

Well, in marriage we should all try and keep all or promises, but sometimes we don’t. I bought a helmet and boots, which she was okay with, then the other day a Yamaha mechanic offers me all his “old gear” (last years) for $40. Of course I bought it. So there I was last weekend with my chest/shoulder protector etc… riding around when I discovered what all that stuff is for. My uncle finished top 10 in the Baja 1000 four years in a row on a motorcycle. He told me “the first 400 miles are the most dangerous.” Well, I believe him. There were four of us, me, Cody, Jason, and Sean (I can never decide when you call your friend Bishop and when you use his name). Anyway, we were riding around the badlands outside Worland Wyoming, and I decided to unleash an impressive display of speed by passing these dorks. My evil plan was coming together perfectly until a big sink hole appeared in front of me. Well, I almost made it. I got spit sideways over the top of the bike and annihilated a small hill with my right shoulder. Did I mention that I really like protective gear. It took me a minute to shake the cobwebs out, but after that, the only thing hurt was my ego, oh ya, and my knee that hit the bike upon ejection. Interestingly enough, my knee pads were in my bag back at the truck, I didn’t think they looked cool. Suffice it to say, I think they look cool now.

We rode for another 5 uneventful hours. Dang, its fun. We also met up and made friends with some local pros. They’re all in high school of course so it’s like “hey who are those guys. Oh, those are our 30 year old loser guy groupies who follow us around to try and learn stuff.” Actually the kids are pretty cool, and don’t give us too much guff for trying to pretend we’re teenagers.

My wife gave me endless crap about the protective gear, and will doubtless continue to do so, but I have long since realized that although I am bulletproof, a little extra insurance never hurts, whereas not using it usually does.

The other glory to depths of depression happening was Bronco related. I have spent the majority of the winter in my garage outfitting a 1968 ford bronco with a long list of improvements: disc brakes, roll cage, new seats, new sound system, new transmission, flowmaster dual exhaust etc… and topped it all off with a fuel injected high output 5.0 engine from a Ford Mustang. Never buy valve covers on ebay. It started, purred like a kitten (a really big mean kitten) and ran like a dream, till I backed down our slopping drive and oil poured out in a stream down the length of the driveway. Warped ebay valve covers. I was so pissed. Of course not as pissed as my wife who looked at the driveway as being more important than my Bronco project. Well I fixed that problem. Then the stupid fuel pump went out. I go back and forth from loving that Bronco, to hating it. It is I have decided not unlike a marriage. There are good days and bad days. You just have to keep believing that this thing is so cool and has so much potential, that if you just keep working, it’s going to be awesome.

Hey, it takes a few crashes and oil spills in this life to really appreciate the jumps and the purr of a good V8.