Yesterday I killed my first gopher in over a year. Used my 9 to take it out immediately. Caused quite a stir around the place.

Erin returned yesterday and while I saw her when I drove in, Nina didn’t get to see her at all. D.J. was over and they are an item. Erin refers to him as her little brother.

Banking today. Breakfast afterwards. May go riding when I get home, or I may just nap. Sleep is elusive again.

Yesterday at the RRR, we had a very nice day. Spent a good portion of the afternoon running the biker’s rodeo and my bike was used in the slow race by one of the Harley store owners. Jim drove the store truck up so he didn’t have a bike in LV. I tossed him my fob and he did well, but didn’t win. He lost to a dirt bike on the final heat.

This day was loud and casual conversation was hard. Loud bikes, loud music, and sirens going off occasionally. The 1%’ers were noticeably absent this year and those that I did see where off the main drag.

Very few people were open carrying this year and those that I did see most often were from the law enforcement biker club. They were there in force. I’m guessing there were about 40 present and they always moved in groups.

Lots of beautiful bikes. More non-harleys than last year. Quite a few Indians. Some metrics. This was the 10th anniversary rally and we both think that it was smaller than last year. I’m sure the Waco massacre had something to do with that, but that’s just a guess on my part.

Although he was less stupid than most of them. He locked his keys in the car. I went through the usual process of trying to open it with a slim jim and like I knew I would, I failed. Here’s where the less stupid part comes in, HE LET ME BREAK A WINDOW TO OPEN THE CAR! That has never happened before! I used a sharpened punch to pop a hole in the window without having to destroy the whole window and then I taped up the rest of the window to keep the fractured safety glass from falling in the car. If he insisted on waiting for a locksmith, he would have blocked my pumps for hours while waiting and since we’re already down one pump, I decided that I couldn’t let that happen.

IN OTHER NEWS . . .

Today is the Rough Rider Rally in Las Vegas. I went alone yesterday and scoped it out a bit, but I was too early to see all the bikers. Nina and I are heading to Santa Fe to meet at the dealership and join people from SF on a group ride to Las Vegas. It could be 10 riders or it could be 100 riders, but at 10:00 we head out to LV to join in the fun.

Spanish Market today in SF. I won’t be there. Rough Rider takes precedence in my mind. We’ve enjoyed Spanish Market in the past and I’m sure we will in the future too. Indian Market happens next month and I’ll probably be out of town. No markets for me this year.

Oh well, time to get the bike ready for today’s ride.

Some moron in a Penske rental truck hit one of my pumps and we have no way to get his plate from our video. The quality is too poor. We do have insurance, but I’m not sure how much they will pay for this since the pumps are over a dozen years old. They may have to replace both pumps and the in store computer, but it now becomes a waiting game. We now have 3 working pumps instead of 4. People that stop here to buy gas are impatient and get mad if they have to wait. Oh well, we’ll see what happens.

• I rode into town yesterday, after saying goodbye to Erin for the weekend, and went to SFH-D to wait for the Old Fartz. Talked with a lot of people until they started arriving.
• Skip was MIA and we were unsure of where to go. Usually Skip or Bill has a destination in mind prior to our departure, but since both were absent, we were left on our own. No one had the restaurants phone #’s, so I used my iPhone to make the calls using SIRI.
• We rode to Los Alamos to the Blue Window Bistro for lunch, there were 9 of us. This is a nice little restaurant whose patrons gave us some cautious looks, but since we’ve been there before, the staff were happy to see us.
• They have a very nice menu and I had the salmon tacos with a strange but delicious salsa, but what the others had also looked amazing.
• John Nutt asked me to lead the group back since he planned on peeling off shortly to head home. This was my second time leading the Old Fartz. All went well and we headed back to the dealership with people leaving the group as they neared their homes.
• At SFH-D I met with Racheline about the Rough Rider Rally and we reviewed the volunteers scheduled for the rodeo we’re running at the rally. I’m a bit nervous about this, but I’m sure it will be fine. We’re running 5 games and the rally people said it should take about 2 hours to complete. Talking with John yesterday, he said that these things are big among the bikers with groups traveling to rallies across the country to compete. Since this is the first time in 3 years the Rough Rider Rally is having the games again, they expect a low turnout.
• Tomorrow starts the rally. Thousands of bikers, hundreds of cops, dozens of vendors, loud bikes, 1 percenters, booze, guns, and loose women. I’m thinking this will be a great weekend!
• After leaving SFH-D, I stopped at the Jeep dealer and fired one of the salesmen. After that I sat in the sales tower chatting with the sales manager and the few sales people that know me. Big turnover there in the past several months. New faces on the sales floor and they’re clueless as to who I am. I enjoy screwing with them.
• Great day with friends and a beautiful riding day.

I started this version of my blog on 9/5/11 after Apple decided to kill the free blogs they hosted. We’re coming up to the 4 year mark in little over 1 month. While I try to post here daily, there are some days that I miss, whether it’s forgetfulness or just there was nothing to post, it happens.

We’re coming to a new phase in our lives soon and I hope to be able to continue this in an interesting manner, but the voids may be more frequent.

Going back and viewing pictures I’ve posted over the years, the one thing that is most noticeable is how big Erin is getting. Man she was an itty bitty bundle of trouble back then!

I own this server space until 2020, and who knows what will happen by then, but I will keep this going as long as people keep looking at it.

• Lunch with the Old Fartz today. It will depend on the restaurant of course, but I enjoy the group.
• Talked with Catherine yesterday. Now that she’s relocated to Santa Fe, she’s getting all sorts of el Valle real estate interest. It’s that bastard Murphy and his law that’s screwing with her.
• Joe had surgery a couple of days ago. I need to call him and check and see if he survived.
• Tori’s bike was at Harley yesterday. Last night Rudy, one of the service guys, called me and gave me the inspection report. Great bike in excellent condition. According to the sales staff, she stole that bike and it’s worth almost twice what she paid for it. And to think, I started riding on a Honda 50 but she’s starting on a Harley Sportster.
• Erin leaves today. I guess the early departure has to do with her week long vacation out east to visit with the family.
• A guy in Taos threatens a cop’s family when the cops are there on a disturbance call and now he’s going to sue the cops for his treatment? He deserves what he got, if not more.

I found this to be amazing. Tori, take note!