Traffic Jam Thoughts
It occurs to me that I will be spending a decent portion of my time commuting from home to work now. Its not a bad commute by any means, a short 15 miles blast up Highway 1 with some gorgeous views of the Monterey Bay and I roll through Rio Del Mar, La Selva Beach, Aptos, Capitola, Soquel and finally into Santa Cruz. It could easily be much worse and I'm not complaining.

But I do think while i'm rolling north or south. Mostly its just stupid stuff about the other cars or work ahead or house work over the weekend. And, when I'm in the truck, I'll keep my Clie handy so that I can record thoughts as I go (it helps if I switch the capture button to automatically go to the Voice Recorder instead of the camera but I forget almost everyday).

One thought that I have every single time traffic comes to a stuttering halt during the morning rush to work. I'm almost always within spitting distance of someone in an overpriced rolling testament to conspicious consumption. Either an $80,000 Mercedes or an Escalade or Hummer or some other wanker wagon. And the best part about sitting in a traffic jam with these folks is that, hey, I'm in a thousand dollar truck stuck in traffic alongside a car worth fifty or eighty times my truck. And they're stuck too! There's no traffic benefit to having spent all that money on the uber ride. Sure, they can get a massage from their car seat while they hang out, can watch tv on their dash or surf the net but they're still not going anywhere fast, just like me in my crappy old truck (sorry, truck, you're not crappy in my mind, just in the sneering leers of the dudes in the chopped and tinted Honda Civics and Toyotas).

And then there are the days when I ride the motorcycle which is NOT a crappy bike. Its a rolling high speed sculpture that I love looking at as much as I love to ride. Its fast, elegant, sexy and fun.

When the traffic comes to a halt and I'm on the bike, then the true value of a motorcycle comes into play. See, while Mr. Rolex and $900/month car payments sits and cools his heels, I'm playing my favorite game of center line fever. My motorcycle, at less than a tenth the cost, does do something that those big expensive cars cannot, I can roll right through a traffic jam and still get to where I'm going. So there, take that you overpriced car buyers. Get a motorcycle and traffic jams become irrelevant. Of course, it IS harder to pose and look all cool in your Corinthian leather interiors when you're wearing the leather.

Yes, it is dangerous to partake in centerline fever, the activity of running down the narrow opening between two rows of cars. Its got bumps out here, we've got lane jumpers without signals, we've got the oversized nimrods in trucks too wide for their own lane closing off the passage momentarily, we've got to deal with angry road ragers getting pissed at us as we weave through the traffic and trying to cause us harm with their vehicles (remind me to tell the story about some over raged asshole in his white Ford F150 over the Sunal Grade a few years ago). As bikers, we are exposed to the elements, we understand and accept the added danger of our unprotected position because there are counterbalancing factors like the ability to centerline, the ability to go from 0-60 in 3.5 seconds (show me a car that can do that for under $50,000!), the ability to park anywhere and the ability to go from a reasonable 70 miles an hour to a buck twenty as fast as it takes to say it. And none of this takes into account the backroad bombing, canyon careening and all of the other joys of riding a motorcycle for fun as well as for travel.

In Let's Get the Heebie Jeebies News
Joseph Smith: The Face of an Alleged Pedophilic Murderer and the full story about this guy who's been identified from a security camera as abducting an 11 year old girl who's body was just found in a church parking lot. Its times like these that I do hope there is a hell because scum like this deserve to roast there for all eternity.

And ANOTHER New Word
I just got out of an interview presentation and cannot take the credit for inventing the word but it is so damned fine that I'm tempted to do so anyway.

Stragedy - when the best laid plans result in an utter and complete cratering. I.e. the company's business strategy was sound in principle but in action ended in the loss of sales and the eventual bankruptcy of the company, it was a stragedy.

The definition may need a wee bit of work but its a quality word for the lexicon.

[Update: I came up with another new word today while commenting over on Snooze Button Dreams, bladdatory - over or pertaining to the bladder, urinary tract or urine or a cooler name for a bathroom with urinals as well as sitters.]