Campout 2006: More Campers, No Crayfish

(For those of you who couldn't give a hoot about all the motorcycle news, don't worry, this is the last major MC thing for the year so I'll be back to semi-normal after this post.)

This past weekend was the 3rd annual campout at our house for my dad's group of motorcycle guys, the Deadhorse Motorcycle Group. The story goes that, trying to organize this group is like beating a deadhorse... hence the name. As soon as we bought our house with the big areas of foresty nothingness and the peaceful river, my dad said "you HAVE to have a campout here". And we did. Three times now.

They're a fun group of wacky guys and girls with names like Guzzi Guy (and his lady, Guzzi Floozie), Batman (aka Inbred Fred), Rage, Too-Tall, Sparkplug Joanie, Doc Toe, and Joe. That's my dad. I swear he must have a nickname but he won't admit to it. It's just Joe. We earned a nickname only because it's too had to say Luke and Lisa too many times. We're Leak and Lusa now. I'm still not sure which end of that I'd prefer.

Friday evening was the kickoff of the campout and it was HOT. Joan showed up early as usual to set up her gear. Lauren from Long Island, a newcomer to our campout, was the next to roll in, shortly followed by one whopper of a thunderstorm. Lauren, Luke and I made it under Joan's awning before the rain started to come down too hard and we sat and waited for it all to end. Another camper, Brian, showed up after the rain and my dad showed up, too, and we all hung around the fire my dad set and ate chili. A good start to the weekend.

Saturday morning, another hot day. We all rode together to Track 9, a great breakfast place in Willington where they never seem to bat an eye when we show up with a big group of hungry bikers. Big breakfasts and many cups of coffee later, we were full and heading back home to get ready for the annual crayfish hunting expedition. The best part of the whole "crawfish jambalaya" thing. Fish nets in hand, river shoes on our feet, we set off. Unfortunately, all that rain we got on Friday brought the water level up so high, and the runoff combined with the current made it all impossible for us to hunt crayfish. We were exhausted from walking against the current and bruised form falling the rocks and we had about eight crayfish. Luke and Paula managed to snag a few more back near our campsite and we probably had about a dozen in total - until The Incident. The cause of The Incident is still not known, all I know is that I saw the bucket we used to hold the crayfish floating in the river shortly after Someone jumped into the river near it. I don't know if the crayfish all ganged up and tipped the bucket on their own, or of a wave or a foot knocked it when that person jumped into the river. All I know is that all of our crayfish escaped. After touting "Lisa's Famous Crawfish Jambalaya" - there were no crayfish. It was just jambalaya. How sad.
But more campers showed up and some visitors came for the day. I finally got to meet Melissa's James and see that Melissa was still, in fact, alive, since I hadn't seen her for so long and was seriously beginning to doubt it. I made a vat of jambalaya and it was all gone in record time - amazing! We cleaned up and then all settled in for a little guitar music by the campfire.
Our neighbor, Roland, and one of the campers, Voyle, played and sang and our friend Chris was supposed to be there, too, but had a scheduling conflict and couldn't come. Chris is an amazing musician and has a great singing voice and sings this fantastic song about firefighters called "Cold Missouri Water". Well wouldn't you know it, Voyle broke into song and I started humming along and realized - HEY THAT'S CHRIS'S SONG!! That was unbelievable. An obscure folk song about firefighters and two men who have never met, but should have met that night with guitars in hand, singing the same song. I took two little videos with my camera to capture the audio. I can only take 30 seconds at a time of video so here are two clips. It was late and pitch black and we were around the fire so there's nothing to see in the video but, if you know the song (CHRIS!) you'll recognize the tune. Here's one and here's the other.

Sunday morning we woke up to another sunny, hot day and everyone was packing to leave. Sioux, one of the campers from New York, offered to let me take her Suzuki SV out for a little test ride, how nice of her. It was fun and cute and so light and quiet compared to the Buell! Everyone packed up their gear and headed out. We cleaned up what was left and spent the rest of the afternoon soaking in the river. Another successful campout. Thanks to everyone who came out to visit!

BMW MOA Rally Recap: Vermont - It's Not Flat

We're back and we've finally dried out. It was a fun, albeit wet weekend in Burlington, VT.

(For some reason, Blogger isn't playing nice and for two days I haven't been able to upload the pictures that go with this post. I'll refer you to Flickr if you want to see the images.)

Luke managed to get out of work at three on Friday so we got on the road earlier than expected. It was H-O-T hot! on Friday and we were grouchy and sticky putting our gear on but once we got going it wasn't bad. Until Greenfield, MA, that is. The lovely folks of Greenfield were working on some highway construction that turned the two-lane road into a one-lane traffic jam for several hot miles. My clutch hand was KILLING and I could feel the sweat dripping down inside my helmet (nice, huh? you're jealous, I know).

On the Buell, there is no gas gauge, I use the odometer to tell me how much gas I have. The closer I get to 160 miles, the more I practice reaching for the reserve switch with my gloved hand. Well, my speedo sensor, which not only tells me how fast I'm going, but also works the odometer, died before we had even hit Springfield. I had no idea how fast or slow I was going, and no clue of how much gas I had. I signaled Luke when I had the chance by pointing to the speedometer and giving the thumbs-down sign. This is the fourth speedo sensor to die on this bike so he knew what I meant. Once the traffic cleared out and we were onto open highway again, I knew Luke was looking out for me and my gas supply so I just relaxed and cruised. And got bored. So bored.

I'm the type of person who needs to have my mind going in several directions at once for me not to be bored. Yes, riding a motorcycle requires concentration, but once you're on an open highway with no traffic, no billboards to read, and 10 miles between exits with no odometer to watch to help you pass the time, it gets to be a tad monotonous. I wish I could listen to my iPod but Luke SWEARS it's against the law. I have my doubts, but he insists so I go with it. Instead, I listen to the thoughts rolling around in my head.

Among them:

I wonder how fast we're going. If we're going 80, and that sign said 64 miles to White River Junction, how long will it take us to get there? 60 miles per hour is a mile a minute, and 80 miles per hour is a third more so is that 1.3 miles a minute? Ow, it hurts to do math...

(the theme song) "Middletown NI-ssan..." that's all I can remember and it repeats over and over in my head...

I wonder how many times I can run the alphabet forward and back continuously. ABCDEFG...

(that Shakira song) "I'm on tonight, you know my hips don't lie..."

ZYXWVUT, SRQP....

So 1.3 miles a minute is 4 miles every 3 minutes. That's 20 miles every 15 minutes... ow...

"A, my name is Alice, my husband's name is Art, we come from Alabama and we sell artichokes..."

"Middletown NI-ssan..."

I tried the state capitals, too but I don't know very many of them. It was kind of frightening how many directions my brain went. I was just finishing up my third round of "A my name is Alice" when we pulled into the fairgrounds. Thank goodness, too, cause there aren't that many names that begin with Q or X and I was running out.

So we pulled in around 8pm, registered, found my dad, pitched our tent, and were rewarded with this sight: Sunset

Saturday morning we rolled out of the tent and headed over to the Sausage Shack for the delicious breakfast special. The "special" part was the fact that it came with coffee, which I need to maintain the open eyelids and the talking and the walking. The Sausage Shack is located right near Al's French Frys. For the normal person, this name is no big deal. To the grammar and punctuation police, of which I am lieutenant, this sight made me twitch. At least there wasn't an apostrophe.

We wandered around through the vendors, I wanted to thank the Kermit Chair guy for sending me the awesome pink fabric for my chair but he wasn't at his booth when we walked by. I bought a new pair of (pink riding gloves. (This is what happened when I took them out in the rain later on.) We went out for pizza and then the rain started. The rain. I'm so sick of the rain. It was a light, relentless kind of rain that you couldn't call a "pouring" rain, but it was steady enough that is soaked everything through. We hid out under the grandstands and in the beer tent listening to the great bands and drinking cheap Long Trail before heading back to the tent to sleep in the rain. Luckily our tent wasn't in a low spot (like my dad's was) and luckily, of the two tents we have to pick from that we've never actually used, we picked one that was waterproof.

We tried to sleep but the sound of the rain, and the campers stumbling back from the beer tent, and the early birds packing up at 5am kept waking us up. We finally decided to give up waiting for it to stop and just go get some breakfast. We packed everything up in the rain, always a fun time, and went for food. We decided to just head out in the rain and see if maybe we could just escape the rain by heading south.

My dad had told us to take this certain route 17 in Vermont. He told us that we just HAD to take it, so we planned our trip south so as to hit route 17 on the way home. Well... let me just say, I wasn't sure my dad liked me so much after we saw what route 17 had to offer. I'm sure, on a beautiful, clear day, that route 17 would be a blast. And a beautiful ride over a mountain. But on Sunday morning as we headed over it, it was raining and the fog was like cotton. It was so thick I couldn't even see Luke in front of me and the road was nothing but sharp twists and turns and corners and hills. We had to slow it down to almost first gear on some corners, it was insane. I laughed the whole time because my dad was worried about me riding to he rally in the rain, if he only knew what he sent me into on route 17, I wonder what he'd think.

After route 17, we wandered our way down through Vermont. We stopped at Sugarbush for a little rest. The we had lunch in Woodstock, an adorable town filled with art galleries and bookstores. So cute! I even got to go to the Stephen Huneck Gallery. I first admired his style when I saw his Sally books a long time ago and I've loved his work ever since. His wood carvings are amazing and I really wish I had enough money to buy this.

We wandered the rest of the way home with another stop in Northampton, MA. I love Northampton and I really wish I had more time to walk around with less riding gear on. There's nothing worse than walking the streets of a funky, artsy town in helmet hair and swishy riding pants. Here's Luke looking cool in Northampton. We had an uneventful ride from there. Got home around 7 and went to pick up Miss Molly. She spent the weekend eating cat food and ignoring my mom's dog so she was chubby and excited to go home.

It was a short trip and it was a wet trip, but it was a fun trip. Thank you to everyone who helped make it a great weekend! Maybe we'll see you next year in Wisconsin!

A Wish for the Soon-to-Be Mrs. Jankowski

Have a wonderful wedding tomorrow. I'm so sorry that I can't be there but I'll be thinking of you and sending happy thoughts your way. I wish you the happiest, most amazingly wonderful day of your life. Congratulations and enjoy!

Where Did You Go?

When my nephew Cameron was learning to string words into sentences, one of the cutest things he said was "where did you go?" Put him in his crib for a nap and you could hear him down the hall saying "where did you go?"

Well if you were wondering were I went, I'm sorry, I've been busy delaing with the heat, and losing power in the heat, and catching up on stuff I couldn't do while the power was out, and making lists and packing for this weekend becuase tomorrow afternoon, we're leaving for another MOTORCYCLE CAMPING TRIP! I used to groan when, every year, all we ever did for our vacations was go on another motorcycle camping trip, but I'm actually looking forward to this one.

This trip is to the BMW MOA 2006 International Rally in lovely Burlington, Vermont. I love Burlington - home of beautiful Lake Champlain, Magic Hat, Phish, and many hippie-types who craft and have awesome shops on Church Street. It should be fun. Plus it's always a blast to camp with the BMW guys. We camped with this group many times in New Hampshire and it's always funny to be on the way to the showers and see someone with his laptop plugged into the electrical outlet that one usually connects to an RV, then see a woman with a hairdryer, curling iron, and electric toothbrush in the ladies' room. It might be camping but it's not roughing it.

I'll take many pictures, you can be sure of that. A full recap to come next week. Have a good weekend everyone!

Hummingbirds Are Cool

And really hard to photograph.
We have a feeder in the front yard that I fill with homemade nectar that they seem to really like. I was gardening under and around the feeder last night and got to see two not-too-shy hummers up close. This one hung around long enought to snap some pictures of, but they move so darn fast that my shutter couldn't capture them!
It's neat to spend time around them. Now I can recognize their chatter and the sound of them buzzig through the sky. Very cool.

Clerks: My Huge Disappointment

Oh Kevin Smith... I am so disappointed. Someone please tell me what I'm missing. The whole world loved this movie. How come I hated it so much?

I was late to discover Kevin Smith movies. Unlike everyone else in my generation, I had never seen Clerks or Mallrats or Chasing Amy. I finally saw Dogma a bunch of years ago, my first Kevin Smith movie, and the first time I saw it I hated it. I physically hated it. It made me angry. Then I thought about it for a few days, couldn't get it out of my head, thought maybe I should watch it again, and now, it's in a tie with The Princess Bride for my favorite movie of all time. I can watch Dogma any time, any place. I can watch it, rewind it, and watch it again. I love that movie. Not only does it have great dialogue and a truly interesting take on religion, it also has Jay and Silent Bob. I love Jay and Silent Bob.

Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back was on TV I just had to watch it, seeing as how much I loved them in Dogma. Strikes Back didn't disappoint. Jay and Bob were awesome and Jason Lee, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who were all in Dogma, were also in Strikes Back. Cool. So when I saw the commercials for Clerks 2, I immediately wanted see it. But first, I figured, I should see the original Clerks. Being ever the optimist, I bought it instead of renting it. Heck, it has to be as good as the other two Kevin Smith movies I've seen, I'm sure I'll love it. Oooohhhh how wrong I was. How dreadfully wrong.

Luke and I were so excited to see it, I brought it home on Friday - the 10th anniversary, 3-disc edition. We finally got the chance to play it on Saturday and sitting through it was like running at top speed into a concrete wall.

First off, it's black and white. Why? Maybe it was to show the drab life of a convenience store clerk, maybe it was the low film budget. Either way, it was hard to look at. It's impossible to see depth in a black and white movie and it gave me a headache. I did like the Dante and Randall characters, they were realistic and I actually went to high school with two guys just like them, one actually named Randall, but the other characters were just bizarre and flat and unrealistic. The barking Chewlies gum guy, the whiney girlfriend, the annoying guy who dies in the bathroom, the guidance counselor examining the eggs - come on now! I worked retail for many, many years and saw more than my share of odd characters. I'm sure that Kevin Smith did, too. And maybe there really was a guidance counselor looking for the perfect dozen eggs, but I just didn't buy it. It was too over the top and just odd for the sake of being odd. He could have thrown in an alien or a talking dog and gotten the same benefit from it.

I watched the whole thing cringing. Luke kept shooting me the "are you kidding me?" looks. I just wanted it to end but I wanted it to keep going because I knew it had to get better.

I even read Roger Ebert's review on the movie because I love him and I trust his judgment. He loved the movie. Gave it a thumbs up. I don't get it! The reasons he loved it are the reasons I hated it. I'm sorry Kevin Smith. I wanted to love your movies unconditionally, but that one was a big stinker. Glutton for punishment I am, I still think I'll see Clerks 2. Everyone needs a second chance.

Gardening Is A Group Effort

Molly checks the progress of the tomatoes.

Those are baby cherry tomatoes on the left, baby "Big Boy" on the right.

And Star holds down the weeds while she guards the peppers.

I just snap pictures.

You Want a Piece of Me?

Well you can have a piece of me! I finally started filling my Lisa's Studio shop on Etsy with goodies - little pieces of me. There is some original artwork, a couple of prints, and even a limited edition hand-bound book that I made in college. It's summer clearance time, folks, so if you ever wanted to own a piece of Lisa Gaumond artwork, now's your chance. Happy shopping!

Dear Cheapskate Gas Station Owner,

Please, for the love of all that's holy, buy some new number tags for your gas price signs! It's bad enough that I have to pay $3.19 per gallon for your overpriced gas, but to see the sign telling me the price, pieced together with upside-down 5s and 8s cut in half - now that's just insulting.

Are you really that cheap that you can't take some of that billion-dollar profit of yours and invest it in some new plastic number 3s? I understand that there might have been a shortage in 3s a while back, since gas should never actually cost that much and those numbers should rarely be needed, but we've been in $3-land for a while now and it's time that you adjusted. We drivers had to, now it's your turn.

I actually drove past a station the other day that didn't appear to own ANY 3s. The sign showing the price for unleaded read $_.2_ per gallon. Honestly. If you're too embarrassed to put it on your sign then it shouldn't be there in the first place. Show some respect.

Sincerely,
A Disgusted Driver

Mourning the Loss

I never got to say good-bye. I got home and she was already gone. Forever. She left with another man who I never got to meet and who may or may not know how to treat her right and give her the respect she needs. I will never see her again.

(Just a little warning, if you've never fallen in love with an inanimate object before, you should just stop reading now. All the eye-rolling and finger-gagging gestures you're about to commit might actually cause you harm. If, though, you've ever fallen in love with a car, a purse, or your very first motorcycle, read on my friends and feel my pain.)

Bessie is gone. She has left us to continue her destiny of gently bringing the sport of motorcycle riding to the new riders of the world. We listed her on Craigslist (and if you've never tried selling something on there, you really should - it's free and we sold Bessie in less than a week). Anyhow, we listed her and got lots of interested folks. All were new riders, which I thought was great since she's helped countless folks get their licenses over the past several years. Many of the interested parties were women, or men wanting to buy her for their wives, also great in my opinion. But the lucky person who got to take her away was a nice young man named Chris who doesn't have his license yet. He was very enthusiastic and we exchanged some emails before he came over on Sunday to take her away. I wasn't home. Luke left a family party we were at to go meet Chris and I was trying my best to leave early, too, but I called home as I got in my car and Luke told me she was leaving down the driveway right at that moment.

(I seriously feel like I want to cry. I'm completely retarded.)

I got home and asked Luke all about the sale. Was he nice? Did he sit on her? (Luke told me he was 6'5" tall!) Did you give him the title? Bill of sale? Owner's manual? Then we sat there quietly.

"I feel bad" Luke said. "I feel guilty, like we just sold our elderly aunt" I said.

We both moped around the rest of the night. You have to understand that we have had that bike for twelve years. She was Luke's first street bike. We rode everywhere on her. Long summer afternoons aimlessly driving around. Trips to New Hampshire and Lake George. She went everywhere with us. And she was my first street bike, too. There was a stretch in the middle when I wasn't riding and Luke bought his Buell where she sat unused. She went to Luke's cousin's house for a while, then came back and stayed with our friend Keith and helped him get his license. Then she came back and became mine. She showed me the ropes, threw me on the road only once and only gently, took me to my first bike week not riding on the back of Luke's bike, got me over my fears, taught me how to enjoy the wind in my face and the confidence if riding on the front instead of on the back.

This year Luke bought a new bike and suggested that I try riding his old bike. Bessie needed some work: tires, a headlight, minor things like that, but Luke thought I should just ride the old Buell instead of fixing Bessie up. So I did. And she sat. And Luke decided we should sell her. We wanted to sell her. She wasn't being ridden and she was taking up garage space. Might as well sell her. But now it's so hard to realize that she's gone. Gone.

My hope is that Chris takes good care of her and treats her well. She will do the same, I'm sure. I hope that he's patient with her and doesn't get frustrated with her since she is 23 years old and requires a little warming up. I hope that he gets his license and rides her and then passes her onto another new rider when he's ready for a new bike. I hope that he loves her like we did.

Have fun Chris, via con dios, Bessie.

New Anklets for Summer

Yes, it may be raining AGAIN, and it may be cloudy and nasty out, but it's SUMMER, for Pete's sake. Get out those flip flops and celebrate by buying yourself a sparkley new ankle bracelet! Thanks to some requests and some mild begging, I finally got around to making some new ankle bracelets which you can purchase for your very own. There are a few up on my Etsy store and more to come as soon as I can list them.

Losing Myself

You just don't realize how much of yourself - and the things that make your day function - you carry with you in your purse until you turn around at a stoplight to see that it's missing from the back of your motorcycle.

This is how my afternoon started on Saturday. And I was really mad because I had remembered to say "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit," damn it. I'm supposed to have good luck all month long!

Luke and I needed to run to the Harley shop to get some parts for the Cyclone and since it was all apart in the basement, I hopped on Ol'Bessie and we rode into East Hartford. It was a beautiful day and rather than waste the nice weather speeding down the highway, we got off in Manchester and took the back roads into East Hartford where I happened to turn around and see that the webbed bungee strap that was holding my purse to the back of the bike was now hanging loose and empty. My heart dropped.

I signalled to Luke, showed him the empty purse-carrying strap, and he blew the tightest u-turn ever accomplished on a Ulysses, there should have been an award for that. He raced back the way we came. Slightly slower on Bessie, I made the u-turn and followed, trying to keep my head focused on riding safely and stop my heart from pounding in my ears.

I took mental inventory of my very small purse:

1. My wallet - usually empty of cash actually had $40 in cash, plus my credit card, my new corporate credit card, license, work ID, key card to get into work, (both of which I'd be fined for losing), pistol permit, debit card, and many miscellaneous store cards.
2. My precious pink cell phone - I love that thing!
3. My iPod - the voices in my head, the soundtrack to my life - I cannot live without it. (Plus I just got it for Christmas and Luke would be so pissed at me if I lost it.)
4. My Palm (PDA) - also known as cyber-me. My Palm is the most dangerous of all items in my purse. Not only does it have all of my contacts, addresses, phone numbers, hours of operation, birthdays, anniversaries, appointments, and cute photos of Molly, it also has recently become my electronic check register and it has a vault of passwords, ID numbers, and other critically important information in a password-protected program that, normally I feel safe using, but once I have lost my Palm I start to doubt the security of the password-protection.
5. My glasses - I was wearing my sunglasses and had put my regular glasses into a soft case.
6. My checkbook
7. My keys to everything - home, my car, work, my mom's house, my sister's house, Paula's house, Luke's truck, Luke's Jeep, and others that I'm not sure what they open.
8. My favorite hair clip
9. Several birthday gift certificates- boy did that piss me off, the thought of someone else using my birthday presents while wearing my hair clip, listening to my iPod, and hacking into my Palm.

I'm trying to breathe and shift and drive and signal and break and throttle and breathe. I'm repeating over and over "please, please, please, please" and thinking "why did I just switch from a bright blue purse to a BROWN one? How are we ever going to spot a brown purse on the road!?" I'm mentally backtracking our path and thinking that it could be way back in Bolton! It could be anywhere. We rode on so many roads before we got to East Hartford and I noticed it was missing. I'm thinking that I don't know how I will ever replace everything in my purse and at the same time that I'd rather get my purse back with everything in it smashed to bits, run over by a tractor trailer, than have it gone forever in the hands of some horrible person who would steal my stuff and possibly my identity.

And then I see it. It turns out that brown was a good choice because it looks like a dead animal in the road! Luke spots it first and we watch as a car comes right toward it and then swerves to avoid it. Luke swoops in and kicks it out of traffic. I pull over and go grab it. Would you believe that everything was fine? EVERYTHING. Even my glasses in their soft case were fine. The screens on the palm and iPod were unscratched, my cell phone was unhurt, my wallet and hair clip were still there. I am completely shocked. Totally amazed.

So ladies, be careful with your purses. Hold them tight. And always say "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit."

Happy Fouth Birthday Cameron!!

And a BIG CONGRATULATIONS to Dan and Mitzi Minor who finally got to meet their baby girl, Molly Bess, on Monday, July 3, at 7:39PM. She weighed 7lbs 5oz and was 21 inches long. Mommy and Molly are said to be doing great! Congratulations to the new family!!

Happy Birthday Paula!!

And happy fourth of July to everyone else!