playing hogs of the road

today is the 3rd anniversary of me owning my 1965 ford f-100 pickup. which means it’s also the 4th anniversary of the date my divorce was official. (though tamara had sunk it years before the legal formality took place.) but i don’t care to talk right now about the years tamara tarnished the memories of, let’s just celebrate 3 years with a cool pickup.
a couple of weekends ago i went by the half-price books and returned the michael buble cd that wished it was a bjork cd. unfortunately, they had no other bjork cds. but i went through the stacks again while i was there and came out with a few things:

• written in chalk – buddy & julie miller (new west)
• down in it – nine inch nails (tvt)
• tramp on your street – shaver (praxis / zoo / bmg)

they also had lyle lovett’s first cd, but the case was empty and there was no number to tie it to a cd stored behind the counter. i went ahead and took it up and asked — they said without a number it was useless, and they threw the case in the trash. i got that nin ep because it is halo 1 — i.e., the first nin release. i already had halo 2 and 3, but i’d wanted halo 1…plus i figured it might be somewhat rare these days.
awhile back i did the instant (streaming) netflix thing and watched the isle. it’s a korean film. as usual with korean films, beautiful cinematography, but the plot is somewhat twisted and dark. the blurb for it says the guy is an ex-cop, but i never got that from the movie. maybe it’s in korean somewhere. anyway, there are these little bitty floating…houses, i guess…they’re just one small room (maybe 10×10) with a 2 or 3 foot roof…and you rent them to fish. or i guess to bring hookers to, because that seemed to be a very popular thing to do there. so this guy is going there to kill himself, but he can’t seem to do it. then he falls into this odd erotic/tense relationship with the girl who doesn’t ever talk that runs the rentals. it’s an odd dynamic between them and weird things happen. an interesting story nevertheless.
i finished reading anna karenina last night. it seemed like it mostly had this slow steady pace with lots of ruminating about philosophy and sociology and such, but then it seemed like tolstoy must have said “man, i need to wrap this thing up.” things started happening very quickly, and some of it seemed like it just happened suddenly without much understanding of how things got to that point right then. but overall it was a good read. i got a fair number of memorable bits from it. it was interesting to see how i could identify with different characters, or how i could sympathize or be mad/annoyed with certain characters when they did things. i could understand anna’s husband’s position, but also could see how people viewed him negatively (and how he knew it but didn’t understand why exactly). but i also could identify a fair bit with levin.
two weekends ago i was going to jack and sue’s (in my pickup) and i saw an accident. and i was almost part of it. i’d just gotten off of the 59 feeder and was going west on beechnut. it’s 3 lanes westbound and i was in the outside lane. the middle lane was stopped up so some guy in the middle lane moved over to the outside lane. except there was a car halfway up his side. they put on their brakes and tried to swerve without hitting the curb. i slammed on my brakes and since i have drum brakes i went ahead and hopped the curb halfway into a parking area in case i couldn’t stop in time. the car who scraped the side of the car in front of me just kept going like nothing had happened. the car he’d hit followed him. so even though i was planning on turning at guessner, i kept following them. i eventually got up beside the hit’n’run guy. he was an older hispanic guy. the car was used, but only had paper tags from carmax. he didn’t speed up, didn’t slow down…just drove like everything was fine. at one point the car behind him honked at him. i was beside him and he looked confusedly over at me. i motioned my thumb back to the car behind him. he kept going. i got in front of him, then we went under beltway 8. he then turned into the h.e.b. there. the other car turned in too, so i went up to the next entrance and came around. the hit car blocked him after he parked and i got out and walked up. he seemed clueless, spoke hardly any english, and claimed he hadn’t hit anybody. i’m pretty sure he was drunk and/or high. the cops showed up quickly. after denying it was him and being told the cops were on their way, he offered them $100 and said it was “nothing”. i’m sure it was several hundreds if not one thousand or more in damage (paint, body, trim, etc.). when the cops showed up he acted like he didn’t understand any english at all…or really spanish. the cops put him in their car. he didn’t have a license or insurance. so i guess those people should have taken that $100.
this past weekend i went on a motorcycle ride to galveston with brad and jason and some other people (about 7 total). we left in the morning, went down 45, had breakfast at galveston, rode the highway over to jamiaca beach, then took 288 back up to houston. i didn’t think i’d get too much sun, but it was longer than i thought and i got a bit toasted. plus my nannini goggles let too much air in at the bridge of my nose so one side of one of my eyes got bloodshot (i guess from the air pressure and/or volume). the other thing was the people leading the pack all rode very cautiously, and the speed limit. i’m not used to that and it was somewhat unnerving being in a middle lane of traffic and having cars passing me on all sides and pulling up on my tail.
i need to take my bike in for the first maintenance (1k). i’m over 1600 now. and i still need to get that engine ordered for my bel-air.
“we fillied around for a while with other travelers of the night, playing ‘hogs of the road’. then we headed west. what we were after now was the old ‘surprise visit’. that was a real kick, and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultra-violent.”
–alex, clockwork orange