Sorry about the lack of updates. I made it back to Portland safely about a week ago, and had a grand adventure. Updates forthcoming, I know, promises, promises. It'll be worth it, I swear! I even took physical notes for everything and lots of photos this time!

I've been fighting off the lovingly-nicknamed Mexican Plague that Oz brought home from his coworkers the past few days; thankfully it seems to be clearing up fairly quickly. I came home to some relationship issues which should, hopefully, now be sorted. Cleaned up the place, because it was a clusterfuck. We went to the beach for a day, and that was very pleasant, even though I'd spent weeks along the coast on my way up from Phoenix, the ocean is calming. I had the opportunity to meet up with some of the advrider (motorcycle forum) people at a local tavern, and that was a great experience, I was escorted there by a guy in the middle of a round-the-world bike tour, who is now in India riding the Himalayas.

I was musing to a friend the other day, that half of the reason why I don't think of myself as terribly remarkable is I end up hanging out with people who are far better than I am in just about every metric I can conceive of. What's a 4,000 mile motorcycle trip compared to somebody who's been from Alaska to South America? I'm sort of just a pudgy bum who rides a bike, it's hard for me to compare myself to these trim, financially successful go-getters. I'm terrified when I go offroad; I see some of these guys fearlessly climbing up mountains like a damn goat. I'm a nerd? One of my friends is studying to do computer security professionally. I'm an artist? I've got friends that could do art professionally if they had half a mind to; my art feels like the refrigerator scribbles of a child by comparison.

I don't find this depressing, not really. I look at this and consider myself pretty average as a person. I know a lot of people who are more timid with bikes, less apt to be nerdy, less artistic. What I often forget, is that those who are on this scale that I compare myself to at all - the people who break the mold, who go out and LIVE life, grabbing it by the balls, following their passion and not letting go - these people are a minority. I forget that the vast majority of people let their time be consumed with the endless drumbeat of mediocrity, who give up their dreams in lieu of security and stability, such as it is. I forget that the traits and skills I seek to emulate are particularly rare in women. So, I might be average in that 10% of passionate dreamers, but at least I'm in that 10% at all, which has to count for something, right? I have some exceptional friends and acquaintances.

I suppose I should be more grateful that my circumstances have allowed me to structure my life this way. I am free to follow my passions and to reach for mastery in the things which I've decided are worth pursuing. I have a roof over my head (or a tent), I have transportation, I can find food, I am in good health. I have a partner who cares for me. I don't have bills, responsibilities, or other people who helplessly depend on me. My only constraints are what I place on myself, my only burdens are those I choose to take on.

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my shortcomings that I fail to appreciate what I have.

I should take some time and prioritize my life. I feel like I'd be doing a lot better if I spent less time doing things which add no value - constantly busy without accomplishing anything.

I'll make a concerted effort to do a writeup of my trip, because it was fucking awesome. Bike needs work done, which I need to see to shortly, and I need to sell off the spare odds and ends that I got from the previous owner. My financial situation is a bit iffy, but hopefully selling off my Rebel and the exorbitantly priced set of racing rims the guy left me will help finance some of the upgrades I need/want to do. I have a lot on my plate, between bike repairs, upgrades (I am making some panniers), finishing art projects, setting up my website, etc. Blah blah blah blah so much to doooo augh.

I feel like I should be catching my breath, but I feel more under the gun here than I do on the road, more responsibility and obligation, especially because I end up not just taking care of my own shit (and boy howdy do I like to bite off a lot), but all of the household chores that nobody else will. Everybody else here is fine living in a pit of their own filth. Oh well, at least I don't have to worry about work for the time being, and I don't have a schedule. I need to stay positive and focused.

So, I guess it's just time to watch the rain out the window and try not to hack out a lung...

I kinda want to go to this. It's like a mad max ren faire. Oh yes. Costumes required.

I removed, cleaned and greased the bike's chain, changed the oil and oil filter, cleaned and greased the air filter. Still need to adjust the clutch cable before I take off but that should be pretty quick.

Arizona is a funny state. The Phoenix metro area is one of the few places that actually requires bikes get checked for emissions every year. I find it funny that this place has stricter emissions in that regard than much-ridiculed California... yet I see tons of black smoke-belching cars, trucks, and city buses that put the worst possible yearly output of a motorcycle to shame. Supposedly they have done studies and found that putting bikes through emissions had no noticeable impact on air quality, but it will remain in force until at least July, when the EPA will rule on whether or not AZ can exempt bikes.

For now, I had to strangle my poor, poor motorcycle to get it to go through emissions. For those of you who don't know, running a machine with less fuel in the mixture (lean) will cause it to run hotter, which is not good for the machine, but is required to reduce the amount of emissions. Many bikes, mine included, come lean from the factory for this reason. To get my bike to pass emissions, I put about 3/4 a can of Seafoam in it (mild solvent which is reputed to help break up carbon deposits), drove it 120 miles or so to Wickenburg and back, brought it home, removed the air filter, and adjusted the mixture as lean as possible without the bike choking and dying. I then rode it a mile and a half to the testing facility, and I could have baked potatoes on that engine. It passed emissions this time though - it had failed the first time. I fixed it back to where it is running as it should be, but it's pretty dumb to have to do this dance every year when there are far greater polluters at hand.

Today I go fight the DMV and hopefully get the bike plated in AZ. Ideally I'll be leaving tomorrow morning.

I don't have any fun/interesting pics of the bike yet (I will once I get underway..), so for now, here's the bike in the driveway, sandwiched between two of my parents' vehicles:



The paint job is pretty ugly, so I'm planning on painting it when I get up to Oregon. I'm thinking something like this:



I know that going off road it'll get scratched to hell, but a clear coat should help a little, and if I do this myself, I'll have the stencils to be able to fix it. :)

The less I say about that greyhound trip, the better. >.< I arrived 7 hours later at my destination than I had anticipated, due to greyhound snafus. They tried to give me a meal voucher to make up for the 4-hour wait in Denver, but they wouldn't exchange the ham sandwich for something vegetarian, so that was beyond pointless. Nothing went right and it was one of the worst transit experiences I've ever had. Needless to say, I'm pretty pissed that I spent $200 for the experience, and I'll hitchhike or hop a freight train before I ever give those incompetent, bumbling assholes another dime.

I stayed in Norman on Friday night, and bought the bike on Saturday. It's tall - very tall. The seat comes up to my waist, and I can either put one foot down or both tippy toes. I got about 70 miles that first day, due to a very late start (I had to get temp insurance, sign over papers, get them notarized, drop $200 on shipping all the extra parts back to Oregon, etc etc). The bike is mechanically sound but the plastics are ugly. There are a number of things that I'll want to modify or change before I go on my long summer tour, but I am fairly confident that the bike is a trooper and won't randomly strand me somewhere without a fair bit of notice. I'm very happy that I know what all the parts do and my skills at being able to deal with problems as they arise is definitely increasing as I learn more. :)

Saturday night I spent in Chickasha, Oklahoma. I had no camping gear with me, as I was anticipating having to carry some of the extra parts for the bike, so I packed as ultra-light as I could. A few books, one change of clothes, motorcycle gear, camera and droid, bathroom supplies. That's it. Hotel fees started adding up, and I decided that it would be in my financial best interest to get the bike to Arizona as quickly as possible.

Sunday I drove about 430 miles, from Chickasha to Santa Rosa, New Mexico. I learned that the bike will do over 100 mph on knobby tires, although the wind at those speeds is killer, and that it'll accept going 80-85 all day. The motel in Santa Rosa was absolutely terrible, $40 a night for a room where I had to kick open the door and the bathroom smelled like stale piss. When the wifi stopped working, I called the manager, who didn't speak very good english, and who said that he didn't know when I asked him if the internet was working. This cemented my desire to just drop money on camping gear instead of more goddamn hotels. $40 is a lot in gas or food.

Monday I drove from Santa Rosa, New Mexico to Glendale, to visit my parents. I'll probably be here a week, as it's my mother's birthday this weekend and I need to do taxes. I was absolutely wiped out after that day - 570 miles in one day is a LOT on a motorcycle, and is my new personal record - but things have been pretty relaxed now that I'm here. I don't have many photos from the trip from oklahoma to here, mostly because I was stopping as little as possible in order to rush.

I'm taking the opportunity while I'm here to do some routine maintenance, as it's at least another 2,000 miles to get back to Oregon. I pulled the chain off the bike and soaked it in kerosene, working it through all the links, and left it soaking in the fuel overnight (did wonders for the stiff chain). Today I washed the bike, and pulled the front sprocket cover off, revealing a quarter-inch layer of calcified, encrusted grease that I scraped off. I went through two cans of brake parts cleaner and a bucket filled with simple green, but it looks a lot better now, and I'm sure that old grease wasn't doing it any favors. In a bit I'll clean off the sprocket cover and shifter and reattach them, put the chain on with a new master link and grease it with 90w oil, clean and grease the air filter, change the oil and oil filter, and adjust the clutch cable. I got fancy oil - racing oil - and fancy air filter grease, I have no real idea what the previous owner put this bike through, so I figure that I'll spoil it as much as I can until we get more used to each other.

I'm pleased with how the bike has held up. It seems like a strong, dependable machine, and I'm slowly adapting to the height of it. The bike is stable enough to stand on the pegs without fear, even at 80mph (this will be useful when I start going off road more). I am not afraid of breaking this bike by taking it off road, like I am my Rebel. It's been getting about 10mpg less than I was hoping, although that was when I was going 85 all day... when I get up to Oregon I am going to go through it and spruce it up some. Take off the fairings and paint them, probably dark green with light green vines. Make sure the electrical harness is in good shape. Pull the carbs out and clean them. Figure out why fuel leaks if I don't turn off the petcock overnight. I'd like to do a compression check and valve clearance check, which are more involved (and scary). I'll probably sell most if not all of the extra parts that came with the bike - I don't really need two spare carburetors or the stock seat, etc. I'd like to make an actual instrument panel, instead of the instruments just jiggling in space, and I'd like to add a tachometer and oil temperature gauge. I'd also like to add heated grips, a charging port for my electronics, and hard panniers.

Overall I'm thrilled though. This bike is awesome. It's exactly what I hoped it would be. :)

Photos will be forthcoming when I have some worth posting.

Somewhere in Utah... on a fancy newfangled greyhound bus with wifi and outlets. Screaming children and overindulgent parents feeding their negative behavior makes me near homocidal and I am pretty sure most of the passengers couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map. On top of this, mechanical failures on another bus and a lack of drivers means the bus has been very crowded and basically the worst game of musical chairs where if you lose you may end up stuck somewhere unpleasant for hours after having paid $200 for a ride.

This is my hell for two and a half days.

Hopefully tomorrow morning I will be in Oklahoma and buying a DR650 from a man from craigslist and riding it over 2,000 miles back to oregon.

Crazy? Yes. Impulsive? Of course. But you know, after months of nonstop rain it is good to be moving again. To see the sun. And the landscape is certainly beautiful.

It almost makes up for it.

If the bike's a lemon I will be pissed... but not hopeless.

Man I suck at updating this thing.

V-day came and went. We didn't end up going up to the hot springs - they were still snowbound and we couldn't borrow a vehicle in time. It's alright, we stayed home and watched movies and such. Breakfast in bed was fantastic. :3 Things are going well between us, though I need to relax a bit and stop trying to force him to try new things simply because I enjoy them. He hasn't run screaming yet, which is definitely promising.

Oz has been using my Rebel to commute to work, which saves him from about 4 hours a day on public transit. On the down side, he's very tall and the Rebel is very short, so he looks like a shriner or somebody from the circus riding a minibike, haha. His knees go up over the gas tank and he has difficulty in parking lots because the handlebars hit his knees. Oh well! Better than the bus! He's also been wearing my gear, which helps him to retain at least some of his body heat in the cold. I admit surprise that my gear fits him, given that he's almost a foot taller than me, but I'm also chunkier than he is, so I suppose that helps.

I've found a DR650 in Idaho which already has a number of the modifications that I would want to do - bigger gas tank, skid plate, heated grips, etc. I'll (hopefully) be going down with Coug next weekend to check it out. It's $2700 for a 2007 - not bad, given that most of these bikes in that price range are from the early 90s, and it has a bit higher mileage than I'd like, but it seems mechanically sound. I've interrogated the owner and it seems fairly solid, no mechanical problems. Hopefully this works out! I'd really enjoy getting out more if I could do it on my own vehicle instead of using the bus, especially with the weather being as shitty as it has been.

I've been getting out a little, but not nearly as much as I'd like. It's ridiculously cold and rainy most days, and they don't turn the heat on inside, which makes it difficult to get an early start on anything if I can even get out of bed. The bus system up here gets strange once you leave Portland and get into the suburbs, and some buses don't run on the weekends, which sucks. Regardless, I have managed to get out a few days and explore around with Oz or my other friends who also live here. Were the weather nicer, I'd probably be downtown every day. There is no shortage of stuff to see and do, and an all-day bus pass is only $5 which is not bad. The food carts downtown are amazing.

Cypher and Ramsey visited, and we had a lovely time bumming around Portland. Unfortunately they brought some nasty weather with them and it snowed half an inch in the course of 5 minutes (?!) during the bus ride home. We ate delicious vegan chinese food, visited an anarchist cafe, and I dragged her to a new age store that I enjoy. Before they left, we also visited Voodoo Doughnuts, which has a surprising array of vegan pastries.

My birthday came and went, and I'm now the ripe old age of 28 (OLD!). We didn't do much for our birthdays (Oz's birthday is 6 days later than mine), Oz hates birthdays and I am pretty ambivalent on the subject. Some cake would have been nice, but I guess it's better without it anyways.

Overall things are not bad. I'm in a much better situation than before, coldness aside, I've got a man who loves me and awesome friends. I'm listless however - I haven't really done anything of any importance in months, since I came to Oregon really. I've spent time doing fun things, sure, really enjoyed going to FC and I enjoy spending time with my friends, but I haven't gotten anything done and that really bugs me. It's time for me to get out of "summer vacation" slack off mode - I always slip into this crap after I've been working for a while - and stop procrastinating on projects that I need or want to get done. It's almost like I'm stuck in some sort of pit filled with molasses, never able to move quickly enough to accomplish anything before the day ends. It's frustrating. I need to sit down and write out some very specific goals and schedule shit so maybe I will have some vain hope of actually doing something.

I have gotten one thing started, however. I had an urge to sculpt something and while meditating/in a hypnagogic state, I had this mental image of an animal paw with the eye of that animal embedded into the center of it. I've gotten about half-done with it, I still need to get some clearcoat to protect the paint and then add fur, possibly sculpt some little claws, and add a backplate, but I think it's turning out rather well so far:

Wolf Eye

I'd like to sell these for $20-30 each, once they're done. I think they'd do pretty well, I haven't seen anything like them before, and it's certainly creepy enough to be appealing, to me at least. I'd like to do some a bit smaller than this, as it's a bit large for jewelry (for me anyways). The "palm" is about an inch in diameter.

I've been gauging my ears - currently I'm at a 14 and tomorrow I'll probably size up to a 12. It's fairly unnoticeable now, and so long as I stop at 4g I should be able to wear awesome large-gauge tribal jewelry with wild abandon and not have to worry about my ears looking like gooey mozzarella if I take the jewelry out.

I recently purchased the Tarot of the Animal Lords... I love the art, but haven't actually sat down and read the book I salvaged on tarot yet. One of my many as-yet-undone projects.

Well, here's to hopeful productivity!

Rain, rain, go away...

• Not going to do the job down in SF - the guy bailed on us at the last second. I'm helping coug scrap some steel instead so that he can get the funds to move up to Portland.


• Although I could have used the money, this means I get to move up quicker, yay! I'll be heading up in the next couple days sometime.


• I'm so excited to be moving up to be with Oz. I love him bunches. I'll try not to get sap all over this journal but it will probably be hard. ♥ We seem like we'll be good for each other :3


• Planning our first adventure! Valentines day he's said he's going to make me breakfast in bed (I can't remember the last time that happened!) then we'll snuggle and watch anime, then go out to dinner, and at night we'll borrow Luffie's car, if possible, and sneak out to Bagby Hot Springs. By all accounts the last two or three miles of road is unplowed and snowed over, so we'll see what it's like, worst comes to worst we'll have a nice hike before relaxin in the tubs. :3 Oz has never been to a hot spring before! And by all accounts, Bagby is pretty awesome.


• Thinking of upgrading bike from the Rebel 250 before I head out this summer. FC trip showed me that it's a bit underpowered (haha like I didn't know). It's not that I want to spend long stretches on the freeway, just that if I need to, I'd like to be able to keep up with traffic doing 80, or do more than 300 miles in a full day of riding. I'd also like something that I can be a bit meaner to - I take the Rebel all sorts of places it isn't designed to go, but when offroad I find myself being very conservative with my speed, as I'm worried about tweaking the frame or damaging the exhaust, basically creeping along. The footpeg position also makes it difficult to stand while riding offroad.


• To that end I am considering the DR650. By all accounts it should be a fine dual sport bike, though I'll need to modify it quite a bit before it will suit my tastes. That bike is only 20 lbs heavier than the Rebel, it'll go down a flight of stairs with no problem, and it'll do 90. I'll probably make a long rambling post about that bike later on.

Oz sent me this and oh god I think my teeth are rotting out.

Damn, it's been 20 days already, almost a month. What a blur!

( FC Trip Report - Kinda Long )

So, after much deliberation, I've decided that I'm going to attend Further Confusion in San Jose this year. For those of you who don't know (HI MOM!) this is a furry convention. I have prettymuch nil for planning, but I was offered crash space with a friend who lives in a nearby city, so that clinched it. Why not, right? It'll get me out of the house, so to speak.

I think I'm going to take the coastal route, to avoid high elevation as much as possible. While learning to operate my bike in snow and ice is definitely a goal, it's not a situation I want to accidentally stumble across.

Like so:


View Larger Map

I may follow the 101 when I get to Riverdale, depends on how I feel when I get there. I'd like to get to my friend's a day before the con, which begins on Thursday, and I'm not sure how the weather, road conditions, etc will be, so I'm giving myself two days to get down there. I'm going to try to make it in one, as I'd vastly prefer to not pay for a hotel room (with the mileage this bike gets, I'm looking at roughly $60 for gas the 1100 miles or so round trip), but given that I still need to get an underquilt for my hammock setup to handle weather below 50F, I'm leaving the camping gear behind this time.

It will be good to see my friend again, as I haven't seen him in about 2 years. It's hard to believe I worked at GD for almost a year and a half... It will be good to be on the road again, as well. I'll probably spend a couple of weeks down there.

In preparation, I cleaned and re-greased my bike's chain and linkages, checked the oil, cleaned out the airbox and puke tube, and wiped some of the mud that had dried on it from my Solstice camping trip. I'll check the tire pressure and add a bit of brake fluid before I head off on Monday, and hopefully Coug and I can succeed in making a set of plexiglass air deflectors for my hands before I go, which should help me stay quite a bit warmer. When I return, I'll probably work on installing some heated grips and other various modifications I've been considering.

I've also decided that I'd like to gauge my ears. My main objection until now has been how gauged ears look when there isn't jewelry in them - some of the large gauges make the earlobes look like pulled taffy when there isn't a plug present - but after discussing it with some people and seeing what a 6 or 8 gauge piercing looks like without jewelry, I've decided it isn't so bad. I will unashamedly admit that the catalyst for this decision was seeing the movie The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and falling in love with the protagonist's earrings. I'd loved the tribal style of a lot of gauged jewelry for a while, but I've been a sissy. No longer! I'll be getting a set of tapers when I get back up this way.

Currently my brain is scattered with lots of ideas but no clear path to accomplish my goals. I need to stop procrastinating and actually figure out how to get from point A to B. I've already been here two months (!?!) and I feel like I've gotten absolutely nothing done.

Well, that's it for now, hopefully photos will be forthcoming from my trip and the con. I need to start documenting things more...

So, I've never really been much one for Xmas, it seems like each year it metastasizes into an ever-larger consumer feeding frenzy. Obligation does not leave much room for love and appreciation of the things that matter, and gifts themselves frequently take an increasing center stage, to the exclusion of the original intention of the holiday. I don't really like arbitrary gifts, if somebody has something they think I would like, or vice versa, I send it to them. I don't wait for a particular day at the end of the year to tell people I am thinking about them or that I care.

The dates of these end-of-year ceremonies always seemed equally arbitrary as well. Why December 25th? Why January 1st? Christianity usurped this relatively straightforward pagan holiday to try to subvert its followers to their ways. Jesus was never born in December. The only reason why the end of our year falls when it does is an arbitrary calendar system set into place by some Pope, and the fact that we're too lazy/mired in tradition to fix it.

The Solstice makes sense. Shortest day of the year. After that point, all the days become longer, and the next spring is born. That sure sounds like the end of the year to me. Originally, the Solstice was a pagan holiday, meant to mark the end of the short winter days and the return of spring and vitality to the earth. It carried symbols of rebirth, fertility and ever-lasting life - the yule log, the evergreen tree and wreath, the mistletoe - all pagan symbols. Even Santa himself is a throwback to an ancient tradition, which I've gone over in previous rambles about Christmas. It carries the death of the old year, and the birth of the new one. It swims with possibilities, hopes and dreams, as the unborn year can herald anything.

Death and rebirth is a theme I've been wrestling with a lot lately, in attempting to reinvent myself to prepare for the coming new year. The symbolism is too perfect to pass up.

TL;DR, going camping tonight. Solstice is at 05:30 on December 22nd, which by my books still counts as the evening of the 21st.

Oh, and thanks go to Coug for his help in mounting my new tires on my bike. I should be now able to tackle the gravel road I'll need to travel to get up to that abandoned cinnabar mine, where I'm planning my drunken bonfire festivities. Hopefully I can avoid harassment by the indigenous two-footed wildlife.

So, there's been some confusion about this part of a previous entry:

I plan to spend this winter figuring out where I want to go next, develop a concrete plan of action and figure out which skills I need to or want to focus on first, so that I can set out in the spring with clear intent.

Notably, my mother asked if I was joining a convent or a cult or something. Silly mom, obviously I'd be the one running the cult. ;)

So. What do I mean when I say things like that, or that I need to "figure out who I am going to be"?

( Cut for Length )