Seein' as I'm house poor, and hope to remain so, it will be something modest, like an old Honda CB from the 1970s. Nothing flashy. I'll let the big fakers and yuppies ride their fancy, precious bikes.

I have a friend with a '72 CB360, and he never touches it, but he won't let me have it. You'd think he'd display more generosity towards a friend in need, the big jerk. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

2long, the girls will ride right on the seat with me, daddy-o.

GC

GC, my H collects and sometimes restores '70s japanese bikes though he tends to like Yamaha and Suzuki more than Honda. I agree with the girl riding on the back..much more romantic to have her arms around your waist. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

FF, I'm a newbie, so I'm very suggestible and will take all the advice I can get.

Is this an idiotville thread? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

GC

Depends on what you are looking for GC, but I can ask him for help or I can ask him to email you. Yeah, seems like idiot type topic don't it? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

Hi Gray,

Hope you don't mind me leaping in, but I've been following this thread for some time now, even though I've only just registered as a user to post. Just wanted to encourage you in your Motorcycle Toe-Dipping. Depending on what you want, you probably won't have to spend a lot of money and the freedom is incredibly gratifying. We once owned a 1981 Kawasaki GPZ-550 that we used for years to get us "around" (no $ for a car) and it was wonderful. There is something so immeasurably uplifting and freeing about being on a bike, the engine whining beneath you, the wind screaming in your ears. You don't have to be foolish and dangerous to enjoy it. My opinion, like Faithful's, is that Rice Burners are the way to go. Affordable, easy to maintain, and fun.

Of course now, I just go and ride my horse for a few hours -- I get the same screaming wind in my ears and powerful engine beneath me when I race up and down the beach. Wish I could do it more than once in a Blue Moon, LOL!

~ Still Loving Him

SLH - thanks! I'm gonna get one, soon as I scrape the funds together.

I still can't listen to Coldplay. Hope to reclaim them after my divorce.

GC

Oh, Gray,

I'm really sorry about the CP sig. I've since removed it so it doesn't hurt anyone else. I read in some of your past posts that you liked Flaming Lips and a few other groups I know and like but I didn't think about anyone really recognizing my sig line and stumbling, even slightly, by it. D'uh!! It's a heart-wrenching song!! *Slapping forehead* It was pretty thoughtless of me. I'll stay away from lyrics for siggy lines, okay?

Again, I sincerely apologize.

~ StillLovingHim

SLH, it's really okay. I wish you'd keep the sig. It's good music. It didn't hurt.

Remembering back to that time a year ago... that music is part of a soundtrack, a landscape. An environment and a mood that I remember vividly, but can't describe. Like every person's unique experience.

Whenever I recall "In My Place", I go back there. I remember a beautiful day in the beginning of June. I drove north to go fishing with the sparrow's relatives, listened to this music, and sobbed. I talked to my brother for a while, but was crying pretty hard and had to hang up. Later, a marriage counselor returned my call - this was two days before sparrow told me she had no desire to save our marriage. I sat in a parking lot in a small town and this counselor talked to me for an hour, helping me to see things more clearly, insisting that we continue our conversation long after it should have ended. It was an act of pure generosity.

This memory is incredibly sad for me, but the kindness I received from the counselor - who called me several days later to make sure I was okay, but who I never met with - and the clarity she helped me reach... those are parts of the memory too, and they are things of beauty.

That weekend, I was in more pain than I ever thought I'd get. Far, far off the charts, for me at least. There were times when I seemed almost to detach from myself and examine the experience from outside. I was just astounded by it.

But that little piece of kindness I received made it a very special day. And that's in there too.

Coldplay cheated a little there, ripping off the opening from "When the Levee Breaks".

GC

You know, I've thought that too, and also heard that Sum 41's "Pieces" is very similar to Coldplay's "The Scientist", though I haven't heard the former band's music to say. I guess it's all in the ear. Do you play an instrument? ("Musician" can mean a myriad things). <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Isn't it wonderful to discover delicate facets of Beauty in memories of times that once horribly crippled us? To be able to gaze out over the horizon of our Past and Present and Future and see, not a landscape riddled with viscious thornbeds and fathomless pitfalls, but a terrain that, at least, we know we can navigate? That "soundtrack" you had mentioned -- I know it well. Anyone, I think, who has a love for music tends to apply certain songs to certain occassions in our own lives, at the risk of losing those songs forever. I'm happy to see you aren't letting that happen to you.

Just the same, I think I'll stick with my Star Trek sig for now. There's nothing heart-trending, tear-jerking or saddening about Borgs, LOL. Unless you are my husband, trying not to be assimilated by me. *LOL*

~ StillLovingHim

gc:

I have a song that reminds me of the pain of early post d-day a lot, because we bought the CD on our way 2 our out-o'-state property for a week of "something else". Ac2ally, our son went with us (we brought our model airplanes 2 work on as a distraction while we were there), and he picked out the CD.

I gotta 'fess out that for quite some time after that, I got a little kick out of my W's reactions 2 the following lyrics from one of the songs, "Run On":

"go tell that lonesome liar
go tell that midnight rider
tell the gamblin', ramblin' backslider
tell them God Almighty gonna cut 'em down"

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" /> ...sing along now, TM! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

-ol' 2long

2long... I heard the original alongside Moby's version a ways back, on American Routes.

Had my brother's bachelor party this weekend. So tired, so tired.

Nothing to report. I'm stuck, a little.

GC

As new BS appear here, I try to get motivated to help them. But I'm so frustrated by the WS script: "You're trying to control me, you're invading my privacy, I can't ever love you again, I can't choose who I love, you've hurt me in the past, I never loved you, not like the OP."

Blah blah blah. They think they're in a unique and extraordinary circumstance, but despite the cruelty they show their spouses, their experiences and attitudes are all so tiresome and ordinary.

Know what it reminds me of? When details of the private lives of horrible dictators are revealed. These lives almost always turn out to be surprisingly mundane. Soldiers go into private bedrooms of these people when their regimes fall, and do they come upon libraries filled with the works of nihilist philosophers and the biographies of idolized tyrants? Nope. They find stacks of Chevy Chase movies, "Friends" DVDs, and Lionel Richie CDs.

Sorry for the vent. WS just seem annoying and spoiled to me today.

How do cops keep from getting burned out?

On a positive note, I had a great time with my brother and his pals this weekend.

GC

One of the best things I ever heard about cops and how they can keep from becoming deadened to what they do was in a radio show about Thich Nhat Hanh and his retreats for police officers. There was a police officer who talked about how she didn't think she could do what he was teaching at first, but then she tried it.

It was a recent divorce. A custody battle. A transition gone bad -- a dad with two kids refusing to come out of the house, a mom outside frantic and panicked.

She said that in previous times, she would have just arrested the dad. Instead, she calmed him down enough to get the kids transitioned and sent them on their way with their mom. Then she sat down to talk to the dad.

Ten minutes later, this giant bear of a man was curled up in a little ball, sobbing on her shoulder.

That's what compassion is for.

The radio broadcast that I heard was from the public radio program "Speaking of Faith." You can listen to that particular show on their web site. It was pretty darned cool.

J, amazing. It always comes back to that, it seems.

Would you believe that just last night I sent an "attaboy" email to "Speaking of Faith"? I love that show.

GC

A little bird told me the sparrow's younger sister is pregnant. Second child, second father. Poor MIL must be so stressed out.

Another little bird told me something helps me to understand sparrow a little better. I know some of the ways people have reached out to her. They've said heartfelt and eloquent things to her. They've poured their hearts out. She's responded with inarticulate, clumsy, half-hearted gestures that place her at no risk and offer nothing.

Poor MIL. She must be so disappointed in her daughters. She tried to do the right things for them after they lost their father, and the two of them seem to have both gone into la-la land.

Me, the idea of ever having been with my wife is beginning to feel more abstract. Honestly, I can say... for the first time I can imagine running into her and not feeling much of anything at all.

But not today.

J, thank you for pointing me to that "Speaking of Faith" show, and for reminding me about compassion. Even though the idea is in my mind all the time, with my undisciplined ways, I'm prone to forgetting.

GC

Compassion is tough stuff. Harder than anything else I've done, I think. You're welcome for the reminder.

Sparrow and her sister will thrive, or not, as time goes on. I wish them well in their painful journeys through life. We all have the opportunity to learn as we interact with our worlds. We all have the opportunity to allow events to control us, or to be in control of ourselves no matter what the outer events are. I hope they, and everybody, eventually manage it. Heck, I hope I eventually manage it. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Musing away over a beer...

As we all know, the affair's chances? Not good. Almost hopeless! Yech.

On the other hand, there is a 100% chance that my current relationship will work out.

Even though the sex is somewhat lacking. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

GC

As long as you keep wearing that wrist brace...

Yikes, GC... why'd you have to bring THAT up? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

It's gotta be hard wanting to post things, feeling that you can't because they're reading and watching...

I wish I was smart enough to find an alternate way for you to do so...

Sail On -

SS