Studio711.com – Ben Martens

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.

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.

1. Seat four adults "comfortably." That is in quotes because comfort is a relative term. This requirement basically means four doors.
2. Full or part time four wheel drive (or all wheel drive.) This is a ski vehicle so I don't want to be afraid of snow.
3. 25+ miles per gallon. I'm usually on the low end of the city/hwy MPG range.
4. Room for four people on a ski or camping trip. I'm open to roof cargo carriers. If I don't have a cargo carrier, I'll have a roof ski rack.

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.

On Sunday, I joined up with a big group of mostly Microsoft employees for a ride around Mt. Rainier. We had 29 bikes and I covered about 340 miles in 10 hours. It was my first ride over 150 miles and my first time riding with more than 3 people. Needless to say it was quite the adventure.

Although my derriere would vehemently disagree, I had a fantastic time. It was fun to be a part of a ride that big, and the views were stellar. Photos have been posted to the Washington album and I expect more to be posted on the Jeff Henshaw's site. He was the ride coordinator, and yes, I thought his named sounded familiar too. This is the same group of guys I posted about back in March.

So why do I have a photo of a burger on a post about a motorcycle ride? That's no ordinary burger. That's a Logger Burger from a restaurant in Packwood, WA. It had 1/2 pound of beef, ham, onions, eggs, lettuce, tomato, and thousand island dressing. I caught some flack for photographing my burger. If they'd known me a little better they would have known that I've photographed more than a few burgers in my day. I was a bit unsure how the egg would fit into the mix but it was outstanding. I maybe have to attempt it here at the house. I'm still in search of a burger that matches up to our Big Boy Burgers, but this one gave it a run for it's money.

A big thanks for Jeff for putting this together. It might take me a day or two to recover, but it's definitely something I'd like to do again.

[UPDATE] Jeff has put up a post about the ride and a link to some more pictures.

I've been carrying my camera around with me on my motorcycle rides. I started a photo gallery where I'll post some of my favorite shots of Washington. I'm also going to try to add captions to each one that says where they were taken in case you want to visit them yourself.

Everything I own fits in 96 boxes. The movers dropped them all off yesterday at the condo. (Side note: I find myself wondering whether I should say "house" or "condo.") As soon as the movers were done I ran down to the garage and fired up the motorcycle. It has been over a month since I've been able to ride and I can't wait to get out this weekend. There are so many fantastic places to ride. It should also cut down the commute time since I can use all the carpool lanes when I'm riding.

So I have a stack of boxes in the house. Which ones get opened first?
1. TV, stereo, speakers, Xbox360, etc
2. Computer
3. Sheets

Those are the necessities. The rest can wait.

It's Monday morning and I don't have anything particularly interesting to write about. (It's a good thing I'm not in marketing.) Let's start with a bulleted list and see where it takes us…

• Jay has long been a SimGolf addict. I think I am too. I don't really remember much of the weekend. The game employs some sort of futuristic time-shifting technology whereby 20 minutes of gameplay results in 2 hours passing in the outside world.
• That's the first time I've ever typed "whereby."
• We had our first 80 degree weather on Saturday. I celebrated with a 60 miles motorcycle ride and sleeping with the windows open.
• I started my own Easter tradition: bratwurst, mac & cheese, and Xbox. I suppose you think that an Easter tradition should be different from every other day of my life, but who are you to judge, Mr. or Mrs. Fancypants?
• This week may involve the first Phillies tailgate of the year (Thursday.) Let me know if you're interested.
• "I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages." – William H. Mauldin

And finally let's close out with a few chuckles: