Dave was my wife’s cousin. Extremely solid dude. Dave was an artist, a sci-fi and sci-real fan, a connoisseur of fine cigars, fancy pipes and good beer. Reach out to people around you, we’re all on this earth to support and love each other. If you see someone who’s down, pick them up and try and lighten their load.
Please send out some positive vibes and prayers for my family, especially his little girl.
Dave also liked Chevy trucks and Smashing Pumpkins.
Till we meet again Dave.
Picked up a new to me vehicle on Friday. 2006 Xterra 4x4 accompanied by Señor Manuel. Paint and interior are in great condition. Engine and tranny feel great. Reminds me of driving my Wrangler, but with more power (baby). Very truck like ride. This will be my wife’s car as my quarter million mile Tundra is still going strong. Seats aren’t as comfy as my Tundra, but the ride is a bit nicer and much quieter. I’ll be swapping fluids and restoring the headlights and trim over the next week or so. Other than that I’ll leave it be.
Watching my wife give birth is the most spiritual experience I’ve ever had. Truly mind expanding. We were at dinner with friends when my wife started having contractions. We visited our midwife afterwards, who told us we had one day left before our lives changed forever. She told my wife to go home, drink a stout, and get some rest for the day to come. We split a Rogue Shakespeare Stout.
The next day my wife gave birth to our first beautiful baby girl, surrounded by family and friends. About thirty minutes after ushering a new life into this world, my wife was hanging out with family, eating pizza, and taking a much deserved break. It’s been a wild ride ever since. Props to all the mom’s and kids out there, you keep us idiot dads in line.
I’ll start off with my appreciation for @jminer and the rest of you who helped set this place up. We have some Opponauts (this one included) going through some shit this year, and it’s been very uplifting to see people get support on a car forum of all places. Here’s to hoping everyone can harness some of those positive vibes into the New Year.
I’m cruising around on the Harley, and make a left onto a metered onramp to get onto the freeway. I make note of the fancy new Tacoma next to me, also making a left onto the freeway. I check my mirrors as I enter the onramp, making sure no one is riding my ass approaching the red meter light. The teenager in the Tacoma must have been staring at his phone, because he hasn’t even started making the left yet. Good, so I head towards the freeway, briefly thinking I should just blow through the meter since I’m the only one on the ramp. I decide to be a good boy, and slow my roll as I approach the meter, stop, and wait for it to turn green.
Before it does, I hear screeching tires behind me. Fuck. I immediately start to release the clutch, and give a little peaksy in my mirror, just in case I might be able to see death right before he careens into me. As I look innthe mirror, a big white blur passes maybe a foot from my right arm. It’s the Tacoma, and homeboy is the Oppo champ, as me managed to avoid both me, and the retaining wall, correcting his skid and merging into traffic like a boss.
After giving a round of internal applause, I notice there’s another white Toyota, this one a Four Runner, sitting diagonally across the onramp, a couple feet from my rear fender. I give the driver “what the fuck?” hands as I point at the meter light, and he rolls down his window and apologizes.
I get the hell off that onramp, and see the Tacoma getting off on the next exit. Against my better judgement, I decide we should have a chat. Really bad idea, but I figured after two near misses, today is my lucky day, and he probably won’t shoot me.
We stop in a grocery store parking lot a quarter mile down the road, and the kid rolls down his window. I pull up next to it (again, really bad idea, but I was on a roll). The kid is in tears. He starts apologizing, saying he dropped something and looked down to grab it and didn’t see me sitting there. I wasn’t angy, and am starting to question why I even followed this guy. I was filled with adrenaline, but it was “happy to be alive” adrenaline, not “I want to fucking kill someone” adrenaline. I tell the kid I’m ok, but to remember this feeling, and be extra cautious while driving, especially around motorcycles. I give him a fist bump, and head into the grocery store to buy a lotto ticket.
I don’t know what the deal was with the Four Runner. Only thing I can think of is he was trying to beat the Tacoma to the zipper merge, and didn’t realize the onramp was metered. The Tacoma beat him, swerved to miss me, and then inattentive Four Runner driver sees me sitting there as he’s full throttle down the onramp. Thank god it stayed dry all day.
Holy shit, I need a La Croix. Post epic saves.
Went from 113F in southern Oregon to 60F once we hit the Redwoods. Fantastic camping in these ancient forests. Cutting all these magnificent trees down was one of the biggest of humanity’s blunders. Headed back into the abyss, so I’ll catch you all in a week or so.
Nearly stepped on this western Diamondback while dropping my kids off at grandpa’s today. My daughter spotted it before I did.
Gramps grabbed his snake stick and relocated it to the desert across the street. The snek was not happy about having his sunbathing interrupted.
It was an exciting morning.
We’ve driven across Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. We lost a turn signal, half a quart of oil and a bit of coolant. The new rad cap has kept the coolant at bay since SLC. We have two more weeks of Montana camping coming up then will probably hang out in the canyonlands for a few days. The dogs and kids are still going strong. Feeling grateful to live in a place that still has open space, and hope it stays that way for a while longer.
@dr-zoidberg Those guys buried something in your yard. Go get a metal detector.
@FourMalibus The safe places in Mexico aren’t going to let Guatemalan, Honduran and Salvadoran migrants move there in the quantities required. In some areas those migrants would face much worse persecution based on their nationalities than they would in the US. Also, the cartels often prey upon people in the migrant camps, and the Mexican government is even worse at managing them than we are. My sister was just down at the fence near Yuma handing water across to migrants as their water deliveries had been severely restricted. I’ve seen migrants camps in northern Mexico and have built houses for Mexicans living out in the boonies. Mexico can’t even care for their own poor, and they would have even more serious problems if more migrants stayed there.
Yes, the US has problems with violence, but it’s not anywhere near the same situation as in Mexico, especially for migrants. I’m not trying to make Mexico into a boogeyman (I’ll be in Sonora come February as apart of a student exchange program for my daughter), but it is not a safe destination for migrants from Central America. What you see on vacation is a far cry from how the average person lives in Mexico.
@FourMalibus Which safe place would that be? Mexico?! Here are the current travel advisories for Mexico: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/mexico-travel-advisory.html
@ash78 My Miyata Alumicross advertises it’s fancy Cf-Mo forks, but it was built in the early ‘80s. They were obviously very proud of their aluminum frames back then.
@CarsOfFortLangley said in Knifelopnik:
@AestheticsInMotion CRKT is the zany outsider of the knife market, I enjoy their offerings
I think that title goes to Spyderco with their weirdo grip and blade designs. They also allow you to buy cheaper knives with high quality, Japanese made blades, rather than CCPesium. I’ve had my Endura Wave for over ten years now and it’s still going strong. I think it was $60 and has Japanese steel. Incredibly ugly knife, but it gets the job done. If you buy a yellow grips you can dye them whatever color you want, too.
@ranwhenparked Yep. Azerbaijani soldiers were just taped executing Armenian prisoners, and Kazakhstan is quickly destabilizing along ethnic lines. Neither are good places to be right now.
@ranwhenparked There are videos circulating of Russians breaking each other’s arms with sledge hammers. I guess bone spurs aren’t enough to get you out of service in Russia.
@eaeaerick No need for a front brake on that brap machine. Let her rip!
@CB If you want a bare bones, BOF pickup, ‘00-‘10s Nissans are hard to beat. The new Frontier is a pretty good looking truck, too.
@HammerheadFistpunch Puuuuuure Michigan.
Based on that Twitter handle, I thought this was satire, until I realized she’s the other candidate. Quite the name on that one. Did Tim Robinson make this ad?
@Miss-Mercedes Diesel is cheaper than 87 here by almost $0.20 per gallon. Go figure!
