Monday, May 14, 2007
Busy weekend
Time fills us with experience, even as it slowly eliminates our opportunities to partake in those experiences. It erodes our bodies, even as it expands our minds. Some will break down as their time goes on, while others will delight in every moment they travel through. And it has been noted before that traveling through time is really a journey through space. Every second of every day we are collectively traveling through space, whether or not we are aware of the journey.
Saturday I spent most of the day sorting, loading, and unloading food for the annual Stamp Out Hunger food drive. A coworker's husband is heavily involved with the Palm Harbor Food Pantry and they receive a massive amount of food from the Oldsmar and Palm Harbor post offices. The number of volunteers varies, but at one point we probably had 30 people sorting through donated food. Most of the first day (Saturday) is spent getting food out of the post offices and into the small church they use as a sorting and storage facility for the Pantry, which means Saturday is when most of the heavy lifting happens. After 7 hours there, I called it a day and headed home for the night.
Sunday, dad and I went for another tour of the Brooksville and Floral City areas. The temps were nice, but the sky was hazy when we departed in the AM, so the weather could have been better. Traffic wasn't bad and we made good time to the area sport bike riders refer to as "The North Run". We putted around 54, 41, Bellamy Road, 52, eventually ending up at a friend of my dad's property in Floral City. Pop's buddy Gene is an old school rider with many a mile in the saddle who is building a log home on five acres of land in Northern Florida. Seeing an actual log cabin in the middle of the construction process is pretty impressive. The fact that Gene is building the house himself is downright amazing to me. He has been involved with construction work his entire life, but that does not diminish the significance of actually building his own house with his own hands. Such an endeavor is a rare, rare thing these days.
We caught rain during our break in Floral City, which meant waiting out the worst of the storm, and getting wet on the way home. We eventually got back underway and decided to take 41 all the way back to Little Road/East Lake Road. Luckily, the only rain we hit along the way was light, but the wet roads definitely turned up my anxiety's volume. This was my first ride in the rain on a bike the Deluxe's size. Thankfully, it was uneventful. We linked up with a pack of riders and had a fairly relaxing ride home. Unfortunately, we were a couple of hours later than expected, which meant that Mother's Day was more or less blown. Mom and I are going to have a "rain delayed" lunch next weekend, but I get the feeling she is disappointed I have been spending so much time riding with dad.
In other news, I managed to keep my 4.0 alive, despite struggling with accounting in the beginning. To get an A, I had to earn 96 points or more on my final. I'm not sure what my final score was, but it must have been enough. I'm only taking one class this Summer, an advanced drawing class in St Pete, so I'll get a short breather before the Fall push kicks in. Aside from that, it's work, workout (when I can), try to find time for the bike, and maybe squeeze in a social engagement once in a while. How someone as boring as I am can be so busy is beyond me, but it happens. I try to remember what it was like to have spare time, but the concept itself seems entirely foreign to me now. Good times... :)
Stumbled across a quote on one of the motorcycle forums I frequent that I thought I'd share. It has no real relevance to my post, but it did give me a laugh. "If you go around chasing down every stupid asshole that does something idiotic in your presence, you are gonna spend a lot of time trying to fix the unfixable." - "dgator66", HDForums.com
Labels: life, motorcycles
Read or Post a Comment
I have to say Erik, Scott and I were both disappointed in you and your Dad for not putting Mother's Day first and riding second. The rain delay wouldn't have mattered if your priorities were Mom first and foremost. I know you and your brother had your Father as a role model when it came to celebrating holidays... so you get off the hook a little bit there, but that doesn't mean you can't learn from his mistakes. Were not there so there isn't much we can do but you and your Dad are and should have made your Mom feel a little more important on Sunday. Shame, shame, shame... I'm a mother now, so I get to lecture you on this sort of thing :) :) BTW, thank you for the phone call, it was very nice.
I screwed up, no doubt about it, but I think mom understands that I didn't just blow her off. Bad planning is a bad thing, but being an outright ass would have been unacceptable. We're going to lunch this Saturday, so it's not a total loss.
i laugh at the idea that there are people out of high school who still experience boredom, lol. there are simply not enough hours in the day... for me, anyway...
good luck with all you've got going on...
Seriously, I'm what most people would describe as a "loser", but I still have NO SPARE TIME beyond what I forcibly line up. Even with school out, it seems like the only thing I do is catch up on things that got the back-burner treatment while class was on. Fecking Hell!
Random p.s. Who is anonymous? It's a total mystery to me!
...anonymous?
Every once in a while I get anonymous comments and it drives me nuts!