The one with a new morning routine

I have this morning routine...it involves getting up, something about food, stalls...horses? I'm so tired from this new morning routine that I can't even tell you what it is.

7:30: Alarm goes off. I roll out of bed, crawl over to the dresser, pull myself up, yell at it to shut up and turn it off. Seriously contemplate going back to bed but keep going anyway.

7:45: Go out and clean three of these and the hallway between:

8:30: Go back inside and sweat because now I've gotten used to the freezing cold and quite like it.

8:35: Watch some TV and eat some breakfast. Wonder why on earth I got up so early if I have time to sit and do nothing before I have to leave for work.

8:40: Change alarm time to 8:30.

8:45: Remind myself that if I waited until the last minute I would go to work smelling like horse pee. Remind myself that while clients may not know what horse pee smells like, they will know I smell nothing like something their pets have ever produced.

9:00 Begrudgingly change my alarm to 7:30 and climb into a shower desperate to wake up.

9:15 Leave for work and contemplate how many days are left before I'm off and thus can sleep a little later. Then when my day off rolls around, I'll end up waking up early anyway.

FFR

The one who is the man I love

There's this man...he's kind of cool. He's pretty much the love of my life. Sappy? What sappy? Oh, you mean me. Yes, I'm a big sap. We both are. But don't tell Working Man. He's desperately trying to hold on to his "MAN" card. For those of you who've been married awhile...how long was it before they gave up? Or do they ever? Poor guy, he gets razzed so bad at work when I change his ring-tone to something lovey-dovey. Meanwhile, he's the man I love and I'm the woman who's lucky enough to have him love me.

Uh...anyway, right. Pictures of this man I so dearly love. How many times can I use "love" in a single entry? I'll let you know. Love.

So...first off, I love Working Man because he lives up to his nick. He really is a working man.



Sometimes, he works harder...



And sometimes smarter. He started clearing this out using a shovel. Then he realized the tractor could be faster.



He uses tools, a lot. I like that he has a ton of tools and knows how to use them. (Better yet, I LOVE that they have their own shed. No tools in the house...except for butter knives. C'mon ladies, how many of you have used a knife as a screwdriver? How about a rolling pin for a hammer?)



And Working Man is goofy. He does this...and two nights ago, he shook a handicap sign and pretended it was shaking him back. Goofy.



Better yet, homeboy is STRONG. Mmm, look at those muscles!



And he's a perfectionist...and sometimes not. I would have walked in and placed the salt block perfectly next to the trough. He just dropped it.



Last of all, I love this man for his smile. Sweet, endearing...full of love for his wife who is not helping in the slightest, is watching the pygmy goats escape, and taking pictures of him even when he hates it.

I love this boy.

FFR

PS: I think there were twelve "love" words in there (I did include lovey)...oops, fourteen now. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The one with all the boys

When I went on the ride with FIL D on Friday, I was the only girl. As such, I have a lot of pictures of all the boys. Usually, the girls are sorely outnumbered but I never imagined I'd be the only girl. It was a good chance to observe the behaviors of the male species in a group. It's pretty much exactly as you would expect. Lots of talk, beer, food, sarcasm, and competition. Oh, and sarcasm. I mentioned that already? I just wanted to make sure you knew it.

Oh dear Lord, please forgive me for the fact that I cannot tell one man from another when they are in their leathers. Nick, I think.  Correction...this is Al. All the rest are correct but FIL D informed me that this is Al, not Nick. We do have a Nick, he's just not him.



This one, this one I know. We call him Peter Fonda. He's got the cool old-school bike, the old-school helmet, and bowlegged as can be.



Forgive me...again...the leathers...I think, maybe, this is Mike.



This is Lou, I know him. He rode with us last Sunday so I managed to learn who he was in leathers and on his bike.



And Norm, I've ridden with him enough to know who he is in his leathers. Plus, one of his ears has enough diamond studs in it to blind you (it's representative of all his grand kids).



And Bubba, the bright yellow jacket made it entirely possible for me to remember him.



Uh oh...leathers, dark helmet. Shoot. A look through my other pictures confirms the dark helmet is Jack. Hi Jack!



Well, I can see his face, I believe this is Jim.
I seem to be missing a picture of George.*Frantically searches one down and uploads it*



This should be George.

Well, that's 9. There were 11 of us. Without a picture of me or FIL D, that's everyone. So...if I didn't butcher it too bad...you should now be introduced (after a fashion) to a small number of the boys. FIL D will probably correct several of my labels. I'll let you know how it goes.

FFR

The one with the giant rubberband...

When biker's ride together, a cardinal rule to live by is to ride in lines and staggered. This gives everyone enough space in the event of a problem, but still allows everyone to stay together. Plus, it makes us far more visible.



We use hand signals for all of our movements from right to left.



And when we're stopped, we all stop side by side.



When we change lanes, FIL D says it's like watching a giant rubberband. It really is, the back eventually catches up with the front's motion but it takes a minute.



FIL D rides sweep, the guy in the yellow there, Bubba, is our new head road captain but he wasn't leading this ride on account he didn't know where he was going. But everyone has there own place and we all fall into it really well.



When we park the bikes, we park them in lines.



When we leave, we all get ready in the same stages, kind of scary.



Of course, if you're slow, you might get left behind. We try not to leave anyone behind but if you're in a big group and you're last...well...



We like our lines.



And we like our hand signals.

FFR

The one with Uncle G

When everyone gets ready to go riding, we all put on our leathers. As such, it becomes difficult to tell one person from another (until you learn their leather style and their bikes). But Uncle G is really easy to tell:

Can you tell yet?

How about now? Very distinct.

I've seen white ones, but never the bright green one. At least, not in our group. For this reason, I always know when I'm photographing Uncle G.

FFR

The one with pretty pictures

When we're out riding or when I'm out driving or just walking or wherever I am, I tend to get some nature pictures. Problem is, I don't usually have a way to work these photos in to what I'm writing about, so they accumulate. Today, I'm going to do a pretty photo dump. Please enjoy:

These two photos were from our ride on Friday, on our way home I snapped these really quick then popped into my editor to make them better.



This one I snapped on Sunday on our way to the convention. I love that I managed to catch so many birds. I've been trying to do this for weeks and haven't been successful.



The focus on this is intentional. I really like the rain splattered windshield being in focus and still seeing everything behind it.



I just wanted to show you the fog. All of the fog. For a week we had endless fog. Now it's gone...somewhat. We'll see how long that lasts.

FFR

The one with all the pretty bikes

At the show on Sunday I took pictures of a bunch of my favorite bikes...and some of the weird bikes.

I loved the colors on this bike. Especially with the aged coloring.

This painting is stunning.

Love, love, love this rose. I don't much like roses but this is beautiful.

Okay, here's a weird bike. Little headlight...behind a large magnifying glass. I wanted to see this one lit up.

The joker. This bike was incredibly painted. There are question marks even on his skin!

This frog is so cute!

Here's another weird bike. There are eyeballs in the seat.

And this one is MADE of eyeballs.

I love the color of this one more than the content.

Mini bikes!

There were a lot more bikes there and there were plenty I would post here but I don't want to overwhelm you. I think the eyeballs in the seat or the bike made of eyeballs did that all on their own.

FFR

The one with all the luck

About once or twice a year I get extra lucky. Yesterday was one of those days. A whole group of us went to this:

We got there very early because of this:

We anticipated a crowd and we got one. Our bikes were completely blocked in. A guy on the street from Sac Harley gave us free tickets to the show, lucky #1. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. To start, we went to breakfast at some little place down the street.

We were having fun...but it took over an hour to get our food. When I finally got mine, I got the wrong one. When they brought out another one 15 minutes later, it had cardboard in it. So I got it free. Lucky #2.

Lucky #3: When we got out of the show, we were still blocked in but there were some guys out there watching the bikes in front of ours and were able to pull out for us.

Pretty lucky day for me. I'll post some pictures of the bikes at the show tomorrow.

FFR