Taken, Brent. Taken.

On June 20th, 2009 my sister got married to this Mr. Steed at my grandfather's house near Macon.


There were some tense moments...


Maybe a little doubt...


Then this happened.


But in the end it all turned out great! I'm very happy for my sister.


And welcome to the family, Matthew!


Technically this one is still available, and for quite a small dowry due to attitude. Email me and I'll send you the ebay link. No reserve. Warning: likes cats.

The rest of the pics are in the gallery.

The Commute

My vHoldr camera arrived today. Brent sent me a link to an article about it being on sale for one day at Amazon.com so I bought it and "saved" about $200. The camera is just a few inches long with a wider than normal lens, built in microphone, 1gb microSD card and battery good for 2 hours of shooting... or so they claim. I used the sticky adapter that comes with it to attach it to the side of my windshield so I could record the commute home.



This is a clip from the 40 minute video (420mb). The wind noise is terrible so you might want to turn the volume down. You can see the quality is ok (television quality) and though its prone to shaking its not that bad. Overall I'm really happy with it given the price. The software that comes with it is hokey but it works. The online services take forever. For example it took about 30 minutes to upload this short clip. But its possible to copy the .avi files directly off the camera when its plugged up by USB. Overall I'm very happy with it.

Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys

They say some people have more money than sense. I'm blessed with not much of either. This weekend "Black Diamond" Ray Pendergraph and I took the KLR and F800 up to an ORV park called Houston Valley. It's 22 miles of trails designed for ATVs and off-road motorcycles located a short distance from Dalton. When we arrived we paid our $5 entry fee and grabbed a map but didn't study it that carefully before taking off into the woods.



The trail started off easy, like a rough dirt road, but grew progressively more difficult. Eventually we realized this wasn't one of the trails listed "easiest" on the map. I guess we're not entirely sure but using the gps to narrow down our location and comparing it against the map, we determined we had ended up on the "black diamond" trial, which is somewhat higher in difficulty than the "more difficult" trails. Along the way we only passed little dirt bikes.



We survived the black diamond with only my one fall, headed back out to the parking lot, picked a new trail and went back in. This one was listed as "more difficult". Immediately it went up and down hills that 4wds would high center on. Up and down up and down up and down. Coming up one hill there was a vertical flat stone that looked innocent enough but somehow left me on the ground with the moto on my right foot. I got up and knew my foot was going to hurt. It felt like it was 5x bigger than normal but I could stand on it. When I fell Ray didn't notice and rode off but a man and his son came up the trail on their dirt bikes and helped me get the bike off the ground. The man said I had an "awfully big bike" for these trails. Yeah, probably so. Ray returned shortly after when I didn't arrive at a clearing up ahead.



I didn't know how badly my foot was injured so we turned the bikes around and headed back to the parking area. By then we had been riding most of the day so we decided to head back to Marietta, stopping at a Cracker Barrel along the way, then took 41 back down towards Acworth with a short detour around the lake. When I got off the bike in Atlanta my foot was really aching, but only when I tried to walk on it. I had a birthday party to go to though so I went by the apartment, hobbled into the shower, changed, and went to Marlowe's for the start of Steve Pinder's 30th birthday extravaganza.


Anna and Steve.


My normal foot next to my Frodo foot.

The next day Jen and Steve convinced me to go to the emergency room. In my medical opinion, the foot was not broken. I knew this because I imagined a broken foot would hurt a lot more, even when pressure was off it, and I had completed my MD earlier that morning at emedicinehealth.com.



We were at the emergency room for 3 hours but we had Starbucks and Photo Hunt on the iphone so it wasn't that bad. They took some X-rays and eventually the doctor came around to tell me it wasn't broken, that I should elevate it, and that I should stay on it to keep it from getting stiff. It's been two days and its already getting better. A broken foot would take 6-8 weeks to heal. Judging by progress made over the last two days (from hurting, to really hurting, to not hurting so much), I expect in a week or two it will be back to normal. All's well that ends well.

The Route Through Utah (And A Bit Of Arizona)

View Larger Map

I said awhile back I'd put up the route, some idea of the costs, etc for the trip but I've been lazy and hadn't gotten around to transcribing the route that was drawn on my printed maps in Google Maps. Google Maps limits the number of points you can add so I'll have to do it in pieces. Above is more or less the route laid out for me by some motorcyclists I met in Logan, UT. Before reaching Spanish Fork I entered via 89 (The Oregon Trail Scenic Byway that passes near Bear Lake) and went to Logan, then Ogden to Salt Lake City and hit the interstate down to Spanish Fork. The route was later validated by Judy and Ralph who I met in Salina, UT. They also filled in the Arizona portion for me. This route takes you through some of the most beautiful country in the US. You go through a ton of national forest and will swing by Bryce Canyon, Zion, Monument Valley, and Arches along the way.

As for the cost, I mostly stayed in hotels only camping two nights. I intended to camp more but further north it was very cold at night, my tent was too small to be comfortable for anything but sleeping, the availability of the motorcycle made me feel like I could be out of the middle of nowhere and into town in 30 minutes, and its kind of boring to sit by a fire by yourself. I would have camped more had more people been along on the trip and I had a bigger tent.

So anyway, camping for a night means paying the park entrance fee at state parks plus the camping fee. That comes to at least $15 and probably more like $24. I had a national parks access card ($80) so I could get in the park for free but if I remember correctly camping at Bryce was just shy of $20 for one night. Of course in Utah you could find plenty of out of the way places to camp for cheaper or even free. Some camp sites along the side of the 89 were $3 per night. Hotels, on the other hand, were anywhere from $50/night to $109/night in Moab where all the hotels were full. The average was probably close to $60. For two weeks that comes to $840 (yes that's expensive...). Gas was pretty cheap and I was getting about 52mpg thanks to long winding roads with no stops. At home in the city I only get about 45mpg but I like to get up to speed fast.

I didn't carry alot of food around with me so I mostly picked up meals at cheap restaurants. Seems on average it was about $8/meal. That's about $400 in food. I don't eat fast food though so you can go cheaper.

Other than that there's not much in the way of expenses. I didn't buy any souvenirs of value, just some postcards and things. There were other incidental costs, $5 here and there for getting into places like Monument Valley, toll roads, etc. All of this did make for the most expensive trip I've been on though. It'd be better and cheaper to get 3 or 4 people together and camp a lot more, cooking on the camp fire and that sort of thing.

Sydney To London On A "Moped"

There's been ride report on ADV about a guy traveling from Sydney to London on a postal bike. Right now he's somewhere around Thailand and India. It got off to a slow start but its worth perusing, particularly the later pages which is where the image above comes from.

Here's his main website.

Construction Everywhere

Not sure if it came from 14th St or the interstate... Don't think it made it past the raised rubber fortunately. Those tires aren't cheap!