failure weblog

in the middle of the night i had a dream where i was at a house (which i don’t recognize, but did in the dream) and tamara and her parents were coming by because tamara was leaving town so she/they were saying goodbye. of course, she was treating me like i was some random person she happened to have known as a friend over the years, and it was unbearable for me (sort of like in real life) so i left the house. tamara came after me to talk to me and i couldn’t handle it, so i fell down on the ground and started wailing/crying. evidently i was doing this for real in my sleep too, because i woke myself up. i guess i’m not really over everything…but then i already knew that. but i went back to sleep and did okay the rest of the night. got up and drove to centralia because linc seemed to remember something with jesse james and that town. he asked several locals and no one seemed to know anything, so we moved on. we crossed into illlinois around 1:30pm. we stopped in a small town in illinois name of mt. sterling and ate at a small local place called little henry’s. nothing too exciting. we then drove on to macomb, arriving around 4:15pm. took awhile to find the campus, then to find the dorm, but eventually we made it. we checked in, dropped stuff off, then headed out to c-stone to get our wristbands so we wouldn’t have to do it tomorrow. had to wait in line anyway. eventually we got through and then had to drive through the grounds to get out a side entrance. we drove back to macomb and decided to eat mexican. we went to a place called diamond daves…it was horrid. i mean, it was really horrid. at least the margarita was okay. then we headed off to wal-mart (the big kmart was already closed or we would have avoided wally world) to get sheets and pillows. back to the dorm and bedded down for the night.

all things considered, nothing too exciting today. the hotel we stayed in last night wasn’t too great…the ceiling in the bathroom had obviously leaked in the past, 3/4 of the channels on the tv were in black and white, and the tub didn’t drain very well. when we got in we were planning to go eat or something, but we ended up just watching tv and then going to bed. we got up and left around 10:00am and went to a local place called ziggie’s. they had free wireless access, so i was able to upload the entries from previous days. we hit the road a little after noon. we got to jefferson city and decided to head for columbia and then stop. it was a pretty early stop (around 5:30pm), but we only have about 200 miles to go. with the free time we relaxed some in the hotel room, then headed to a pizza shop near the university of missouri. after eating, we went to a pool hall and played pool for an hour or two. i bought a pair of headphones, but i was trying to cut them up so they’d fit under my helmet and i cut one of the wires. i also cut myself twice. yea. the hotel is supposed to have free internet (wired), but i can’t get a connection. i even bought a new ethernet cable when i bought the headphones. no luck. i’m not sure if it’s my computer’s ethernet connection or what. oh well.

well, i’m sitting in springfield missouri at ziggie’s, which is a 24-hour local breakfast place that has free wireless access. so i checked my mail and uploaded my entries for the last three days. more later.

got up around 8:15am and had a mediocre at best continental breakfast. left around 10am. the ride after mcalister was very pretty — lots of green and bodies of water. stopped in muskogee for a photo op around 11:30am. got a little lost, but nothing too bad. got to arkansas around 1:30pm. nice weather until close to fayetteville…the roads were wet, but it didn’t rain on us. it appeared to have poured quite recently though. we actually didn’t get rained on the whole day. very nice. driving through fayetteville was sort of weird because i remembered the place very well, and it was because of tamara. (i still don’t understand how she’s come to the conclusion that our relationship and marriage has no value now, that she feels no bond or desire for us to continue. what happened to her? whatever happened, and however, it is very sad she sees nothing now.) we stopped and ate at the aq chicken house, which was a place tamara and i ate several times and really liked a lot. it was good. we left there around 4pm, and promptly got lost. after meandering around, linc had wanted to stop by the pea ridge civil war park, but when we got there it was closed. we left and hit missouri a little before 6pm. we then took a couple of roads through the mark twain park that had a lot of sharp curves and drops and such. i hit the back of my heel on the road in turns three times, but only the first time did it cause me to instinctively bounce upright…which set me on a course straight off the road. the white line was the edge of the pavement (no shoulder at all), and i rode it for awhile at probably at least 30 miles an hour. i was pretty close to going off into the grass and then who knows what would have happened. but i didn’t, so everything is fine. once again i sent us off on the wrong course and we ended up very near branson. we turned around and got back on track and rode into springfield around 8:30pm. we checked into a hotel 7 (humorously between a motel 6 and super 8, all right in a row) just off of i-44.

got up and hit the road around 11am. within about 15 miles of hillsboro, it started pouring on us. geez. got to fort worth and it had stopped raining. stopped at jo and roy’s and surprised our grandmother. i hadn’t seen jo and roy in a long time. also saw rhonda and her children. it was good to see everyone and talk with them for awhile. we ate lunch with them. roy was a motorcycle cop back in the 50’s and 60’s, and he gave linc the harley jacket he wore back then. that was really cool. roy and jo seem like really cool people. mamie (my grandmother) got on linc’s bike for a photo op, which was rather surprising since she doesn’t get around too well these days. we left around 4pm. i was trying to take back roads to get across an area with no major road going in the direction i wanted, but the road signs were horrible and we got lost multiple times. but we finally hit a road on the map and managed to get back on track. crossed into oklahoma around 7pm. we stopped in atoka around 8:30pm. we were looking for a local diner, but late on sundays isn’t the best time for local places in small towns. we ended up eating at a dairy queen in order to best approximate the local flavor. we decided to drive on. we stopped in savanna at a travel lodge around 9:45pm. i don’t think we really made up much time today, but from the time we got to jo and roy’s on was a rather enjoyable experience.

stayed up until about 3am packing and such, didn’t finish everything either, so i left around noon. stopped at wild west honda to pick up saddlebag guards for my brother and bought some foot rain gear. went outside and was packing away the guards and the bottom dropped out of the sky. had to go inside the dealer’s to put on the rain gear. my tour bag got rained on and some stuff got wet. gah. oh well. was pretty wet until around columbus. stopped after that and took off the rain gear. shut my helmet on my finger and cut it. ouch. got to austin without any more rain. my brother couldn’t get the saddlebag guards on with the socket set he had, so he packed them away and we left around 5:30pm. within five miles of us hitting the road, the bottom dropped again. had to stop and put on rain gear in the rain. right after starting off again, linc got splashed by a passing car…a lot of water. rained hard on us for at least 30 or 40 miles. finally stopped. there was much rejoicing, mostly by my brother who doesn’t have a windshield and decided to wear an open face helmet for the trip. got to waco around 8:30pm and decided to stop and eat at a denny’s (that was the first time i’d eaten, except for a twix i’d had about an hour earlier…i was drinking water though). asked the price of a room at the la quinta next door – $99. yeah, right. decided to drive on to hillsboro since it wasn’t raining and we were behind schedule (originally we were supposed to surprise our grandmother who is staying with relatives in fort worth, but that was definitely out for the day, of course). within a couple of minutes of leaving waco, it started raining on us again. what fun. got to hillsboro, where we stayed in the days inn…which is what the hotel is now where _bottle rocket_ was filmed. come on, you know i couldn’t resist. we didn’t get room 212 though. still, it was nice to see the place again. i hope we paid our rain dues today…we certainly had to go through a lot of it.

mileage: 622
took the bike in this morning for maintenance. it was raining. bleh. found out my license plate was in. yea! no on the saddlebag guards though. well, they said no, then found some and said yes. but the packaging said vtx1300s and mine is a vtx1300c. sure enough, when they called in the afternoon the brackets didn’t fit. again. so they gave me store credit. (even though i didn’t get credit for labor.) i called around a bunch of honda dealers and finally found one up in north houston that had the saddlebag guards in stock, as well as the deluxe chrome rear carrier (the only one i called that had it). they also had tourmaster elite rain pants in xxl. i bought them…now i just have to drive up there and get them. and i have to buy the deluxe chrome mounting brackets from somewhere else because they didn’t have them. what fun. i left work a little early and picked up my bike. (or actually, paid for the bike and then parked it in the dealer lot and left it there until after technology bytes…it was a freaking monsoon around 7pm…streets flooding…what a pain.) anyway, the maintenance is done. the license plate is on. time is running out but i’m mostly on target.
oh yeah…cornerstone only sent me one ticket even though i paid for two and the receipt shows i paid for two. hopefully that won’t be a problem once my brother and i get there. got my new insurance card with the correct vin. still waiting on my driver’s license. and the extra batteries i bought for the digital camera.

mileage as of today: 612
on the drive in to work i stopped by a phone store to see if they had any earhooks. the guy knew what i was talking about, but they didn’t have any. he ordered some and told me they should be in by friday. i hope so. after work, i hit the 600 mark. what a blah point to hit it though: riding down a generic city street, the streets just started to get wet with some rain. in good news, i was headed to the mac store in the galleria where i bought a 15-gig ipod. when i came out, it was raining pretty hard. put on my rain gear and rode home. everything’s ready for the maintenance appointment tomorrow. excellent…

mileage as of end of today: 573
rode to work. i guess i rode it home. i don’t remember if i went anywhere else or did anything. sheesh, i’m only writing this a couple of days later. i guess this is a sign i need to be better about adding entries at the moment.

today (june 20) was my 6th wedding anniversary. yea, me! 6 whole years. i’m not sure whether to laugh or cry, for any number of reasons. i wish tamara didn’t feel the way she does, but she does. so life moves on, and i with it.