A short public service announcement:

If you’re one of those scung monkeys that listens to shit on your phone on speakerphone in public and doesn’t use headphones, the best thing one can wish for you is ass cancer. The long running painful type. Get a fucking headset or go fuck off into a lonly corner somewhere, nobody wants to hear that shit. If you can afford the damn phone, you can afford ear buds or a headset. As much as you may think you’re the center of the universe, you are not. You are one of many in a big world.

Thanks, now back to our regular programming.

This winter being on the mild side here in the PNW this year I’ve been riding as much as possible and digging it. Riding consistently in any adverse conditions builds confidence and running around in the cold driving rain like our brethren in Anglia is now par for the course. How awesome will a sunny spring or summer day be!

Speaking of spring /summer riding, it’s gonna be a busy year for moto stuff. Having traveled a shitton for work last year, this year will involve more of the recreational variety.

Wanting to get more connected and social now that it looks like I’ll be living here for the forseeable future, steps have been taken. Not that there was any reason to think I’d be moving again soon, but after 30 years of constant moving around chasing work I’m still adapting to living in the same community (and place) as long as I have.

I’ve recently joined the Rose City MC, one of the longest running MCs in the country. Tomorrow night I’ll be attending my first social with the group and am looking forward to it. Mid-April is the Alley Sweeper, basically a moto free for all around the PDX metro area where you get to be a hooligan and the cops basically leave us all be. It’s hard to beat for fun, 600 or so folks on a silly variety of rides bombing around the city…good times.

June includes volunteering for the SFRC’s Dusk Till Dawn endurance race and a return to the Touratech Rally in Plain, WA but only as a participant this year, not a volunteer.

All that will set me up nicely for the first Big Ride with B-Rad, Hero of Canuckistan, in July/August depending on timing, the first we’ve been able to plan in a few years. It’s been too long since we’ve been able to do one of our overly optimistic sufferfests and this year we’re venturing east of the Rockies, kinda, to explore new country and revisit some of the cooler places I went through on the big 11k mile trip in 2017.

Plenty informal and loosely afiliated group rides and campouts will also be done, just wanna ride ride ride!!

To prep for the season, I spooned on my first set of tubeless tires on tubeless rims a few weeks ago. Felt weird not trying to avoid pinching a tube installing them, but I’m glad to be a part of the tubeless world. It didn’t suck quite as bad as installing tubes, but still wasn’t a hoot.

These are 1000% better than the stock tires, as is typical, and while they do have limitations I’ve found them to be a sweet all around tire that lasts for awhile.

On the work side, I’ll still travel enough to keep my Alaska Airlines status, but it won’t be 30k miles in a plane again this year. It’ll be more mucky muck travel coordinating with clients and attending, and presenting at, conferences throughout the year. Already got to go to Oklahoma City during the big storm in January, Spokane, WA last week, and will be in Anchorage, AK in late March while the hooligans will be ripping it up in Central Oregon for the Another Spring Break on the Crooked River informal campout, booze/dart fest. And Raspberry Rick will be slinging Rickaritas until the hard stuff is gone or all are down for the count. Good times. Glad I quit drinking decades ago, hangovers in one’s 50s look like they suck.

Anyhoo, May will see me in Everett, WA both presenting and releasing a potential Big Deal in the realm I work in. We’ll see how it goes over.

Speaking of work, I should get my ass after it. Morning coffee time at ‘Bucks has run its course.