Murphy's Law? Or just Life...

Does everyone out there make plans? 

Know what I mean...

What I mean is I am a planner.  I dream, think over, talk about, re-think over, yak some more... then when I am satisfied, I ask others for their input.  Friends, collegues, people on the street!

At some point in all this and I will say, sometimes within milliseconds, other times weeks or months or years even, some decisions are made and once the decision is made, the doing becomes easy.

Right?!

RIGHT?



Then, once that decision has been made and scrawled in the sands, you begin the process of planning.  How long, how much, how soon, how to.  How you gonna get there... from here.  Here happens to be where you are when you made this decision. 

Why do I use sand, you may ask.  Cuz nothing in life is guaranteed, nothing.  Well death and taxes of course, but nothing else.

Maybe you got married thinking it would never end, and yet it did.  For some several times.

Maybe you had kids thinking it would be a "piece of cake" raising them.  HAHAHA!

Perhaps you bought that fabuloso canvas that some half crazed shmuck tossed paint cans onto, thinking it would appreciate after he/she died.  Only to realize that Picasso, they wasn't.

That's why I write in sand. 

The Doctor of N Thusiasm has often been quoted...

"Make your sand castles while the tide is out, cuz it's coming back in again at some point."

Even with our *BLP's, you always have to account for the unaccountable.  We refer to that quirk of fate as Murphy's Law.  Not exactly rocket science, nor even The Law of Gravity... but somehow, inexplicably a Law nevertheless.

I have no idea who Murphy is/was, but you can be sure he or she existed.

This mysterious enigma can be a blessing or a curse, depending entirely on your point of view at the time the Law is enacted.  For instance, let's say you have been speeding all day on your fave mountain road.  For arguments sake, we'll say your riding the Angeles Crest Highway north of L.A. 

You're hitting all the apex's just right, you haven't dropped below the powerband for 60 minutes straight and just as you are coming into Burbank on your way to West Hollywood in all it's splendor,

you come up behind a local gravel truck that has just dumped half it's load onto the until now, perfect pavement.

Your front Dunlop, banked at a crazy lean angle, touches the first pebbles... and over you go.  I don't mean as in a low side... I mean over the cliff, 500' into the valley below!




Or, conversely, you meet this great chick, she smiles deliciously at you from across the waiting line at the DMV, ends up sitting next to you by chance, is single, available and a pretty good conversationalist, she gives you her number and on the way out to your car, as you wave goodbye... she lights up a smoke.  Thus shattering your wonderfully perfect image of you and her making babies together somewhere in your fantasy. 

So you see... I write mine in sand, cuz ya just never know.  

I am expecting a great little late fall getaway to my little getaway in Glendale AZ.  Been dreaming, thinking, talking, planning it for months.

It's time to leave and I am sick! 

When I arrive (sick) I find my bike isn't running, the battery is stone cold dead.  The carb is fouled up, I have little in the way of tools, time or energy and company is coming.  Four of them, by twos, for the month.

Plans change, you re-focus and get on with it.

C'est le vie.

I am nothing if not adaptable.  Riding a bike anywhere, you have to be.  Saying to yourself, convincing yourself that "the driver of that truck will respect your right of way" will get you dead real quick.  So when you ride, ya gotta be fluid, just like writing in the sand vs a stone tablet.

S__t as they say, happens.  The tide goes out, the tide comes in.

I'm in Phx, my bike doesn't run.

Two choices here...

Get MAD!

Or deal with it.

I dealt with it.

I went and bought myself a LongBo 150.

It's a decent little four stroke scooter.  Yup that's right, all my hard core chopper buddies and MotoGP replica pals... a scooter.  It's Chinese (oh I can see the sneers now) but I am old enough to remember when riders of 'real motorcycles' like Sportsters and Beezers and Trumpets, said the Japanese could only make junk.  Well we know what happened there don't we...

Before I leave here next week, amongst the hundred things I have yet to do, (like try and buy myself a suitable local dualie) I am going to put 100 miles (this is the U S of A after all) on the odometer.  Then I am going to put Stabil in the tank, take the battery out, hook it to the tender, and leave a circuit live this time.


Mr Murphy is just going to have to work harder...

BLP's Best Laid Plans