I just got back from a nice 100 mile motorcycle ride with Matt, Jim, and Simeon. In a couple hours I'll be headed over to the Gaulke estate for some grilling and fireworks. From what I've heard, his fireworks show rivals the one at Gas Works Park.
Enjoy the holiday!
The first weekend of my summer begins with a camping trip. Tim, Chelsea and I are headed for Penrose Point State Park. The park itself doesn't seem all that remarkable, but there were only a few choices left since this was a last minute decision. Our goal for this trip is simplicity – no pots, no pans, no dishes, no stove. It's just going to be cooking over the fire, relaxing, reading, and playing lots of cornhole. I'll post some pictures when I get back. Have a great weekend!
Gas is expensive. The image on the right is one of my new Vista sidebar gadgets that shows gas prices in our area. You can mouse over it to find the cheapest stations. You can see that the average price out here right now is $3.47 making us the second most expensive state in the union. It hasn't changed my driving habits at all, but I'm really happy that I got the Subaru (27-30mpg) instead of the Envoy (12-15mpg.) Soon I'll be back on my motorcycle which gets 50+ mpg and then it will be even better.
There are lots of emails and MySpace messages going around about not buying gas on a certain day. It drives me bonkers. Do you really think this works? If you don't buy gas on Wednesday, you're going to have to buy it sooner or later. There's even a Snopes entry about this:
Gasoline is a fungible, global commodity, its price subject to the ordinary forces of supply and demand. No amount of consumer gimmickry and showmanship will lower its price in the long run; only a significant, ongoing reduction in demand will accomplish that goal.
It's a sunny day and the days have been getting warmer so naturally my thoughts are wandering toward the fun that summer brings. What are you looking forward to? Here are some of mine:
Kyle has been saying that I should get into mountain biking, and now Tim has his bike here and he's finding local trails. I might have to pick up a mountain bike and join him. It seems like everyone in Seattle rides a bike so I guess it's the thing to do, right?
Saturday started off with a trip to H&R Block. I always say I'm going to do my taxes on my own, but then tax season rolls around and I find myself in the comforting confines of H&R Block. I walk in and two hours later I walk out. No stress. No worrying. No procrastination. Uncle Sam cut me the biggest rebate check of my life. I think I need to adjust my W-4.
Saturday afternoon it got up to around 65 so I rolled the motorcycle out, cleaned it up, and took it out for a nice long tour. I'm loving winter out here, but I'm also looking forward to some nice warm days spent on the road.
After church, I headed up north with Tim, Chelsea, Matt and Laura for a quick trip to a casino and then shopping at the outlet malls. As promised, I made a stop at the roulette table, put $40 on black, and promptly won. It feels good to take money from the casinos. That money (and a lot more) was quickly spent by the girls as I assigned them both the honorable role of "Ben's personal shopper." I rarely buy new clothes and a lot of that is because I know I lack fashion sense. It's a lot easier to buy clothes when two females approve the purchase.
Now it's time to start the short work week. Thursday morning I fly back east to visit friends and take a trip to Maine for some skiing. They've been getting dumped on so I figured I would go check it out. Thankfully we're supposed to start getting snow up in the mountains here this week too (5-7 feet are predicted through Friday.) It has been pretty dry lately so all the skiers are happy to see that winter isn't over yet.
I'm writing this from Washington state. Sometimes I have to stop and remember that. I'm in Washington. Last year I complained a bit about nothing noteworthy happening. Maybe I was just gearing up for all the changes that took place this year.
The move from Jersey to Washington was the biggest part of my year. A few people weren't happy with me leaving while others were excited for the opportunities I had out here. The one common sentiment was "Wow, I don't think I could do that." I'm not the kind of person to randomly quit my job and move across the country. I put a lot of thought into it, and these are the top two reasons that I left.
Those were the positive reasons for the move. The negatives were harder to stomach. I've never had a group of friends like the ones I had/have in Jersey. I've always had a friends in other places I've lived, but we had a huge group in Jersey. I made friends there that I'll have for the rest of my life regardless of where we end up. I knew it would be hard/impossible to recreate that experience anywhere else. I'm not exactly a social butterfly, and it takes me a while to make good friends. I was NOT excited about finding a new social circle. That one reason alone delayed my job search for about 6 months.
I do feel like a bit of a hypocrite. Last year I wrote about how there weren't any major events, but the year was defined by good times with friends. So what did I do a few months later? I ditched my great group of friends and headed west for a job that I wanted. I still haven't figured out how that makes sense.
It was a tough decision, and I spent countless days in prayer about it. I had previously been nervous about the move from Indiana to Jersey and from Jersey to Minnesota, and look at what God provided for me during those moves. It was foolish to doubt that He'd be just as generous if Seattle was where He wanted me to be. He opened so many doors in the process of moving out here that the choice was pretty obvious.
So in May the movers came and packed up everything I owned. I attended a great party with all my friends and said my goodbyes. And then I took off on my one way trip to the great unknown in Seattle.
This is the third cross country move I've made. It's not easy, but it's intriguing to see the similarities and differences between them all. The first few weeks are insanely boring. I don't know anyone. I don't have anything to do. And even if I had something to do, I don't know where it is. But this time was a little different for two reasons. First of all, I was set on putting an end to rent checks. I spent the first three weeks talking to mortgage companies, looking at tons of houses online and in person, and having long chats with my realtor about interest rates, housing market fluctuations, and future plans for the Seattle area. Secondly, I had family here. I'd only met them once at Rachel and Luke's wedding, but it was a place to start. Thankfully they're not too crazy, and they've all quickly become great friends. My transition would be entirely different without their warm hearts.
But that's enough about the move. I did other things this year too! I discovered the Melting Pot, almost got tossed out of a Phillies game, spent a couple good nights at Chain's house, bought a house, attended the NASCAR race in Michigan, went to my first Mariners game, hiked and rode to some amazing scenery, flew back to Jersey for Jay's bachelor party, spent a few nights in a tent with great food, showed my parents the sights of Seattle, stood up at Jay and Juliet's wedding, spent Thanksgiving in Spokane, and kicked off the ski season with a bang.
I won't even begin to speculate about what might happen next year, but I do have a few goals:
You'll notice those are pretty small goals. There's nothing too life-changing in there. That's because I'm finally feeling like I've planted myself in a good place. I'm here for the forseeable future. I might try to make the leap to a house with a yard at some point, but that's the only move I could see myself making and that won't happen for years. But who am I to predict the future? I've been wrong a hundred times before… and that's the exciting part.
Historically we've been focused on how many miles per gallon you can drive. It's an interesting exercise to take a slightly different view and look at miles per dollar. [via Digg] This takes into account local gas prices and your MPG. It would be slightly more interesting if they factored in typical maintenance costs for your car, but this is a good start. My Mustang gets 5.86 MP$ and my motorcycle is 14.41 MP$. That means it costs me about $3.50 more in gas to take my car to work than my motorcycle.
Some of you know that I'm in the market for a new car. I have a specific one in mind but I'll leave that off the blog for now. I'm curious which car you would pick based on my requirements.
Those are the filters I have been applying to lists of cars. What would you pick based on those requirements? Are my filters flawed? I'm open to feedback.
If I've told you what vehicle I'm leaning towards, please don't post it in the comments.
It's great to have my weekends start to fill up. I'll be travelling all over in the next two months. I'll be in Jersey Aug 18-20. The next weekend I'm going camping with Chelsea, Tim, Laura, and Matt. And finally I'll be in Syracuse/Geneva for the big wedding the third weekend of September. I also just volunteered to be on the Drexel recruiting team so I might get some free trips back to Philly. It's going to be a lot of travelling, but I'm looking forward it.
Lost My Marbles
I'm not really into modifying my vehicles. Upgrades to my motorcycle consist of a new seat and a little stick-on clock so I know what time it is. So what's the first real change I made to my Vulcan? I shoved a marble in the engine. Let me explain…
My bike has always popped/backfired when I decelerate hard. The exhaust pipes were also really blue when I bought the bike. After searching around on the web the other night, I learned that this is a common occurrence with Vulcans. It's caused by an EPA addition to the bike that allows extra air into the exhaust system upon deceleration to burn any unused fuel and reduce emissions. Side effects are an overheated exhaust (blue pipes) and loud popping.
The solution is to remove the gas tank, change some air hoses, and remove that valve. The easy solution is to remove the air filter, find that the vacuum hose that controls the valve, and shove a marble in the end. This seems to be a pretty common solution. As one forum poster put it, "You don't need to buy marbles. Just go find any other Vulcan owner. They probably have a bag of 99 marbles laying around."
I was more than a little nervous about the change. After studying some websites and reading the maintenance manual, I was about 90% sure I had the right hose. So I shoved a marble in the end and reassembled the bike. As I turned the key, I had visions of a marble bouncing around in the cylinder, but it all sounded ok. The engine purred as I flew down the road spewing gas droplets into the environment and killing wildlife for 100 miles in all directions.
After a 15 minute test ride, I think I'm going to declare this a tentative success. I was unable to get the bike to backfire and it ran well. The real test will be coming down off of Mt. St. Helens on the big Sunday ride. When I rode down Mt. Rainier last year it was backfiring like crazy.