Tomorrow morning I get on a plane to make my way to Seoul, South Korea for the fall semester. It's bonkers on several dimensions. The fact that I've been planning this for a year and now I leave tomorrow. The fact that our president has gone from threatening the peninsula with fire and fury to chumming it up with one North Korean. And it's bonkers because home and family are never sweeter before a long adventure without them. But I'm excited. Trepidatious. But excited. Also, I've been busy traveling and packing so I didn't have the chance to make a post about it until now. But, last week I was in California and a friend invited me to break some bread. kleinbl00 and I ate at Home in Silverlake, Los Angeles. The fried pickles were bomb and we got sandwiches for dinner. Before you ask why, just know they were phenomenal. I recommend the place. Oh! And the company was pretty nice, too :)
I got the shakes, Hubski. Chronologically speaking this is when I always get the shakes. It's that point where I've been in LA too long and I start accidentally calling it "home" and I look at real estate because sweet jesus there has to be a better way to live. It's that point where my daughter has gotten used to me being gone, where my wife starts sending me shots of milk that will still be good when I make it back, when I start figuring out who else I want to see before I bug the fuck out. It's that part where I add up how much better I have it than anybody else and then recognize how much this sucks and then stare into the abyss of how much everyone else's life is filled with hardship and suffering that they don't fucking deserve, goddamn it. Because I lead a charmed life. I truly do. I was looking at tax returns today (self-reported income! increase your credit limit on the card! No credit report pulled!) and I make now about what I made five years out of college. About what I made at my last real jobby-job. About what I made 12 years ago. But I make it in about 4 months. Those four months are killer, though. It's about 80dB in here from the air conditioning and I'm 8800 miles on a bicycle. Semi-drunk girl approached me a few weeks ago - "you ride that? On the bike path? Down by the river? Isn't it dangerous?" I've only been hit by a car three times, the guy with the pool cue swung and missed, and I don't think the kids with the taser were serious. I've ridden past a dead body and two shootings but the only crimes I've seen in progress were drug deals and taggings. Roommate spilled detergent all over the laundry room floor because there was a spider - you know spiders? He looked at me. I told him once you've had a rat claw his way into your shorts you don't care so much about spiders. But that's a choice. I could get an apartment closer to work. Apparently it would only cost me $3k a month. I could buy a place - that'd only be between 500 and 800k. Pretend I could buy it outright. The property taxes and HOA fees would be more than my mortgage up north. People live like this. Had a Lyft driver last week. Full pension Navy. Built Stealth Bombers for Northrup. Drives Lyft to pay off his daughter's student loans. Had a Lyft driver this week. Full pension Marines. Panama, Kosovo, Iraq twice. Guarded Rumsfeld's Folly. Apparently seeing pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills disappear into the Iraqi desert will fuck you up - dude lost 1 1/2 legs and what he was most focused on was the money. No idea why he was driving. It didn't come up. I think what's fucking me up is I figured out my imaginary friends are dicks. See, I play Destiny to get away because it's prettier than this shithole and I don't like golf. Shooting imaginary aliens takes some of the edge off. But it's time for new DLC so there's lots of scrambling for bullshit. So I'm trying for bullshit. And some of the bullshit requires you to kill other players in a very particular way over and over and over again and I don't suck at PVP? But I'm not great. And it's so.fucking.sweaty in there right now. If I were to pull off this feat, on top of the 20hrs of bullshit I've already done, I get magic armor. Except I don't. I have to repeat the whole affair to get magic armor. Except I don't. I have to repeat it again to get magic armor. If you do this three times - once for every character you can play - you get a magic space ship. You can't fly it, of course. It's a load screen. That's it. The only people who will ever see it are the people you go play PVP with. And in my pursuit of trying to get my first run of not-so-magic armor I've run across guys with the magic space ship dozens of times. I'm playing against people who have done what I'm trying to do nine times over. Where do they find the time? I mean, obviously. It's summer and they're 14. But I guess goddamn. At least I built models. Of course it gets easier if you play a lot of PVP because then you get a magic gun that makes it easier to kill normies in PVP. And I've been dying a lot to that gun. And it kind of makes my chosen neighborhood - that place that I hang out that isn't here - a hostile shithole. Much like the place I actually live. Is it worth 8 months off if four of them are like this? I mean, duh. Of course it is. But is it? I mean, I got a pension. But will I? There's one outfit insuring all the pensions. And if they have to do it you get 50 cents on the dollar. And there's 20 years for the 'boomers to suck this shit dry and if the rescue fund is dead then what and fuckin' hell if I were to bet on anything. And that's pensions. How 'bout social security? How 'bout the 80% of Americans that don't have enough saved? Guess what, kids, the oldsters that are supposed to retire so you can have their jobs? They're gonna fuckin' die in their cubicles. Hope you enjoy being a Loss Retention Analyst 1 for the next 30 years. Or until the computers can do it better. Lyft is hiring except in New York. I saw Roofdog tonight. Roofdog lives across the street. He comes out onto the roof of the not-quite-garage and barks at you (the house is built perilously on a hill, like most half the fucking houses in this ghetto-ass neighborhood). Roofdog pleases me, more than Morning Rooster, more than Shitcat. I think it's because Roofdog is a totem for the third-world bullshit I'm living with my first-world problems, first class flights and ratburn, burnouts and Bentleys. They rounded up all the homeless. Because of course they did. They won't tell you that, though. Didn't make the news. Anaheim cleared their homeless out and faced no blowback so LA did it on the DL. No hotels needed. Prolly a public vagrancy/public trespass bust, followed by some Greyhound therapy. And nobody's come at me with a pool cue since but it don't sit right. Driving Lyft 50 hours a week to pay his daughter's student loans. The rich fuckers talk of a "Great Reset" where we turn all the debt to zero and start all over again. That's where everything we owe we suddenly don't owe anymore. That's where everything we're owed we suddenly don't get anymore. What a selfish fucking concept. It's hard being me. Sometimes I can barely pull it off. But its so much harder being someone else. And there are so many someone elses and they're working so hard and they're getting nowhere and $3k a month for a 1200sqft 2br where it gets to 108 degrees in summer and my neighbor manages a grocery store and when September comes he doesn't get to leave. He doesn't get to go back where the trees are. He stays here with Roofdog and he's fuckin' winning. Greyhound therapy. Some of those guys had been there fifteen years. Fifteen years.
So good or bad? I think most people in my neighborhood would be ecstatic if that happened.They rounded up all the homeless. Because of course they did. They won't tell you that, though. Didn't make the news. Anaheim cleared their homeless out and faced no blowback so LA did it on the DL. No hotels needed. Prolly a public vagrancy/public trespass bust, followed by some Greyhound therapy. And nobody's come at me with a pool cue since but it don't sit right.
For purely selfish reasons? F'n great. Mostly. There are still short-term homeless up in there but they're fail whale homeless. The junkies too burned out to get their shit out of the street. The ones who shit on the sidewalk. But they only last a week tops before the cops clean 'em out. For deeper philosophical reasons? F'n sucks. It was a community in there of living, breathing, thinking, struggling people and holy fuckin' hell they had problems and I wouldn't wanna be them but I mean, I waved to some of 'em. They knew me, I knew them. They were just trying to live their lives. And if you're homeless and addicted to something or hearing voices or whatever, you can do a lot worse than living on the river. And now they're uprooted and alienated and still on the street and still someone else's problem.
Hubski must be some kind of good luck, made a late post in last weeks Pubski complaining about my inability to find a bike. Within 30 minutes of complaining here I had set a deal up to pick one up the next day. Behold..... My first shitty motorcycle. Definitely needs a tune up and some style but I'm content to tear it apart and have fun with it, for 1500 I have no guilt or reservations doing whatever I want to to it. I'm gonna take off the highway bars and other stuff I consider frivolous this weekend and move the foot controls forward. Excited for the slow couple weeks of winter to come at work so I can be at home more than 1-2 days a week and start working on proper fab for the bike. First project will probably be building a pipe bender then making some handlebars, after that a Dick Allen style springer. Been slacking heavily on my hobbies recently, been bouncing between 50-60 hour weeks the past month and shitty sleep. It's made it hard to not be a lay about when in my free time. Just a momentary break though, I'll use this post to make me accountable and am going to work on drawing lessons once it is done. Enjoy your Wednesday Hubskiteers.
Nice bike to modify... a good, solid standard, with lots of parts available! One thing about moving the foot controls... you need to be careful about the pivot point. Simply elongating the shift lever (for example) can result in the throw getting way off, and making it hard to shift. So, for example, if you have to tap it 1" up to shift now, if you elongate the shifter that can quickly become a 3" lift to shift, resulting in poor shift performance, and having to take your foot off the peg just to lift up far enough to shift. If you move the pivot point, then you need a bracket, because you can't just drill a new mount point into the engine casing. And the bracket is going to push the shifter out away from the bike a bit, and even 1/2" difference can make the footing and control very different. Not to discourage you at all! But just make sure to keep all the parts you remove, and prototype the replacement and how well it works, before cutting anything down or making other irreparable changes. (On this era Honda, one of the great things to do is take off the side covers, remove the airbox, and put air filters directly on the back of the carbs. This opens up the space under the seat, and lets the frame breathe... makes the bike looked stripped down, and sleeker!)
I will definitely keep that in mind! Thank you for the tip. In regards to the air filters I've seen that done on cb's before but wasn't quite sure how it was done looking at mine haha. So thanks for running through that, I will probably grab trumpets, If I was going more cafe I'd go for the air filters though! Excited that there's a lot of builds I can do in the future for it. It sounds like you're got a bike, or an interest at least?
Avid rider, and have been for more than 40 years. Currently have two old-man bikes in the garage: 1991 Honda ST1100, and 2015 Suzuki C90T. Sportbikes I have had: Katanas, 600/750/1100, Honda CB1, FJ1200 Standards: Yamaha XS 400/600/750/1100, Honda Nighthawk, Kawasaki 440LTD, Suzuki GS500, and a couple others I can't remember right now. My airheads: BMW r-bikes, 75s, 80, 90s, 90/6, 100, 100s, and probably one or two others. So yeah. I ride. :-)
Sounds like you got more experience on different bikes than some journalists I've read hahaha. I will try to keep my "build" update in these pubski threads and would love to hear your opinion, especially mechanically. On the note of beginner questions, do you reccomend a helmet? I have few opportunities to try them on in person. I'm prepared to spend a bit of money for comfort, seems pointless to buy a helmet if I never want to wear it.
First off, you are never going to find the right helmet unless you go somewhere that has a wide selection, and try a bunch of them on. People's heads and faces are all different shapes, and each helmet manufacturer fits differently. To find your correct size, and the right one for your head and face shape, you are going to have to try on a bunch of different brands. That'll help you decide which brand helmet fits your particular head. I'm a Shoei guy, for example. I have tried two different Arai helmets, and neither of them worked out for me. They never "fit right". Second thing to consider is what type of riding do you do? When I rode every single day, rain or shine, on the freeway, in commuter traffic, for more an hour each way, I spent $1000 on a fantastic helmet. If I was gonna crash, it was going to be fast, in traffic, and with many things flying at my head. Nowadays, I mostly run quick errands on my bike. I may do a couple hour leisurely ride on back roads once a month, or so. But mostly I am running down to the hardware store for something, doing some light shopping, or cruising around and sightseeing around town. So I still have my hardcore full-face, high tech helmet, for the long rides. (Last year I rode from Seattle to San Francisco for my 30th high school reunion. Wore the "serious" helmet for that trip.) But most days I wear my 3/4 helmet. Like this one. Integrated flip-down sun visor. Face shield flips up and exposes my face and mouth so I can talk to the cashier at the hardware store. It's more noisy than my full-face helmet, and can buffet pretty badly at freeway speeds, but it's great for around-town riding. Any helmet less than $250 is as effective as wearing a KFC bucket on your head. Anything over $750 is overkill unless you ride professionally, or do 20k miles in a year. Buy your helmet too tight. They stretch after a month or so of wear, and you want this thing to last 5 years. If it makes you look like chipmunk-cheeks for a month, but keeps you safe for 5+ years, that's a completely reasonable tradeoff. Feel free to look at Revzilla and send me links. Ask about helmets. I have Opinions. :-)
My boyfriend has a motorcycle and I feel like a helmet is great for comfort. Besides the whole possible not dying aspect, I feel glasses are not that great on the highway. And without anything you get super watery eyes. And then a bug hits you in the face at 70 mph and it huuurts. A great helmet with a transparent screen in front ofyour eyes is awesome.
Yeah i get that, I'm looking more for a recommendation on something with proper ventilation/padding to remain comfortable for long periods of time. A lot of my friends went cheap on helmets and find them too hot or uncomfortable to wear for more than an hour or so.
Thinking to the next few years and want I want to do. There are a few bigger trails/some circumnavigation of mountains/volcanoes and thru-hikes I'd like to start considering, multi-pitch and alpine climbing, and am in this state of transforming who I was a year and a half ago into who I am today. A lot of that involves becoming a part of, and building/integrating myself into, my own little portion of the running and outdoors community. Because that's what it is out here, a community. It raises a relationship question, though, that's one of the core issues of all my relationships over the past year or so: Would I rather be in a relationship with somebody who's beside me, or with somebody who's with me. How do you know what works beyond trial and error. Sigh. I'd say I would go on a run to think about this, but the smoke is much too bad for that. Edit: A less self-centered approach would be to determine how to make time to be with someone that doesn't involve what I'm doing. Really, those are the options. Find someone who's doing similar things, or re-arrange my schedule to make the time and figure out what that looks that to a partner.
Hi Hubbies I’m on a train to the airport (YYZ). Then three nights in Vancouver, then we’re off across the country in a van w/ a canoe on top. I hope to post periodically. I have some “pushing back the dark” hubski stickers to strew across the country. I wish I had some “Hubski: What can be learned?” stickers.
I signed up for a half marathon in 6 months, along with 3 aunts, 2 uncles, and several cousins and siblings. I am a little surprised this became as much as it has for the family, but it's the first time for me and several others. I'm not too scared about the training, I was running regularly in the spring without trouble (2 or 4 miles), but if there is anyone likely to have imbalances or tightness from sitting too much it's me. I am going to try the exercises from the thread last week. We've also visited my parents, in-laws, my grandma, and her grandparents in the last week, so I'm ready for some quiet time.
Came back from Greece last week. It was great fun - I went there with longtime friends from college and after exploring Athens we relaxed, hiked, partied and had even more great Greek food in Crete. Rooftop pools are amazing. This weekend I visited my family, because the Giants of Royal De Luxe descended in my ol hometown. The atmosphere was great, and I have never seen the city I grew up in in such a good state. This week's been pretty darn busy and it's foreboding of the next month or two. I have at least a dozen projects coming my way. Most of them are great, but I hope I don't have to miss out on cool stuff because I'm already at capacity.
My landlord has decided he no longer wants to be a landlord and gave us 30 days on Monday. Technically, I'm not on a lease because he promised me he would get the final version to me 'just next week' about 3-4 months ago. I'm not sure what that all means legally, but we have verbal agreements in email that I have been told amount to some amount of resident protection. Really, I just want out ASAP, things are working their way towards hostile. I now have 28-ish days to find a new place to live in the busiest season in one of the busiest college towns in America. The RPS starts class September 5th and we have to leave for 3 days the week after that for my brothers graduation from Marine boot camp. Since Monday I've looked at probably 8-10 properties and put in one application for a house out in the boondocks and a second one is in process. If I get the house I just applied for, we will start the move in probably this weekend. If I have to wait for my second choice, we will be flying back into DTW at 23:55 on the 14th and beginning our move at 06:00 on the 15th. I would call that sub optimal. I have no idea what to do with my time at the moment. Some of the stuff that can be packed up is packed up. I suppose I could put more stuff in boxes to sit in the living room for another ~20 days. I have what feels like the beginning of a stress induced gout flare which means that my efforts to get my fluid content lower have to be put on hold so that my blood doesn't fill up with uric acid crystals. Despite all my kvetching, I'm actually not in a terrible mood. Stressed sure, but mostly it's physical, not mental. I have crossed a bridge with regard to mental health and I refuse to allow someone else's bad vibes to infect me. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Onward, ever onward. Cheers.
Trump is well aware of how spineless both parties are. If he's going to pull this shit, he's going to pull it asap, because he doesn't want the Dems to take the House and Senate. He can shut down the Russian investigation, then control the messaging up to the elections with trade wars or real ones.
If he does, what do we do? I was one person in the 100,000 people marches when Scott Walker busted the teacher unions. It's eight blocks around the Capitol, three traffic lanes and wide sidewalks on each side. The biggest one wasn't so much a march as it was standing still as the crowd was so large it prevented any meaningful movement. The unions were still busted.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-is-more-worried-about-michael-cohen-than-robert-mueller-2018-4 Look at it this way: Russia is "did the Trump campaign talk to the Russians." Yes, obviously. Trump is quite fuzzy on what that means to him, and the country in general is, too. From a foreign influence standpoint it's a big fuckin' deal but from a Trump standpoint it's not like he's Boris and Melania is Natasha. Although that's an awesome image. The Cohen investigation, however, is "Trump's personal fixer for ten years has flipped to Federal and State investigators." This is a president whose tax returns are... ugly. We don't know how ugly, we don't know why, but we know he's been fronting for Russian oligarchs for a long, long time. We're more interested in Russia. From Trump's personal standpoint, Cohen provides a lot more personal jeopardy.
Yeah, that's how I see it. Cohen was privy to a lot of Trump sausage-making over the last several years. That's why I expect Trump to do something desperate soon. At that moment, the GOP are going to be put in a serious quandary. Trump's desperation is going to signal that he's trying to hide some serious shit. At that moment they have to fold or raise.
Mueller has Trump in a fork: he can either sacrifice his rook and throw his full weight at dealing with whatever revelations Cohen has about Trump's finances, or he can sacrifice his queen and throw his full weight at the Russia investigation. He can't divide and conquer: it's clear that the Trump administration is already over capacity with bimbo eruptions and the dike now has two big holes in it. It's starting to look like encirclement. I hope I'm right.
spent all day sitting at my computer looking for things to do. new user here, but this place looks nicer than most. but knowing me and my inability to do things means this place will disappear to me in maybe a week. also start classes next week, assuming gov aid goes through. if it doesn't, well goodbye college. probably will just go to a trade school and hope to start working sooner.
Hi there. Sounds like you might be going through a bit of a rough time. Here are a few things I'd like to share, regarding my experience of rough times. Take whatever is of value to you and discard the rest. Making absolute, declarative, negative statements about oneself will never result in anything good or positive in any net way. When we are experiencing a rough patch our brain is very good at collecting every painful, awkward or embarrassing memory it can and creating a Frankensteinian monster out of them. Whether they are relevant or not to whatever is directly causing distress, a depressed perspective tends to put the worst possible spin on every experience and memory. The only thing I have found that is any sort of counter to this is deep, slow breathing combined with an important reframing of our thoughts. Our feelings are very powerful. There is nothing bad or wrong with experiencing the feeling of depression, sadness or even hopelessness. It's not comfortable, or desirable, but having those feelings is not bad or evil in and of itself. These feelings become bad and dangerous when we make them into permanent, unchanging aspects of our character. Feel however you feel. Feel it deeply and completely, accept that the feeling is there and just observe it. Watch what your mind does when you aren't forcing judgement and absolutes through it. To go all Buzzfeed, the answer may shock you!!! As a direct example from your post, you said 'Knowing me and my inability to do things' and that's what really sparked my interest and this whole response. Maybe a more helpful and less painful thing to say and think would be 'I feel as though I won't stay active on Hubski.' That's a perfectly valid way to feel. I disappear from here for weeks on end sometimes and I have been around for a few years. There are other users who were once frequent and who now only pop back up once in a great while. As a personal example of this reframing technique, I destroyed my tablet today. I was getting gas and thought I would take that valuable minute and a half to read about a new rental property I was looking at. Without thinking, I left it on top of my car to close the gas cap and watched it smash to little tiny bits on the road in my rear-view mirror only a few seconds later. The reaction that I work to manage and eventually overcome manifests as something like 'How could you be so stupid and forgetful to leave that there! That's just like you!' Now, there's nothing objectively false about that statement. I am human, I make mistakes. I often leave my wallet, keys, phone, etc at friend's houses, on coffee tables or kitchen counters. But I do it maybe a little bit less often now than I used to, and make a conscious effort to be mindful about where my stuff is. So instead of allowing myself to continue the abuse and negativity, I consciously, with great effort, pick a different, more compassionate framework. 'I made a mistake, and it feels pretty awful. I will allow myself to feel the loss, the embarrassment, so that I remember to be more conscientious with my stuff, especially expensive electronics.' Is it a perfect solution? Nope. Is it a cure-all? Nope. Does it help a little? Yup. Does it take time and practice? Yup. I hope your student aid goes through. It sounds like you do want to go to college and simultaneously you are cognizant of the comparative value of an education in a trade. Both of these are good things. The desire to better your career, yourself is good! If you haven't been in recent communication with your school's financial aid department, I suggest calling them or visiting in person to double check that they have every piece of relevant information when they are putting together your finaid package. Take care of yourself friend. I don't know you at all, but that doesn't stop me from wanting the best possible life for you. Invest in yourself, in your future. Invest time and effort into caring for your body and mind, so that they support each other as you go on. Maybe I'm totally off-base and this is all just nonsensical preaching. A few years ago, some really awesome folks around here decided to give me a hand up when I had stumbled and fallen into a pretty dark spot. If you find yourself in need of a hand, I'd like to be there to help if I could. Cheers blackbear. Don't be a stranger.
I'm not the person you responded to, but this was pretty uplifting to read. I don't have friends in real life who would be so sympathetic, and here you are spending so much time giving encouragement to a stranger (online!) Gives me hope. And makes me want to stick around Hubski (I am also new)
Is it Wednesday again already? I've been sick the last few days and I need to get stuff done this week, but I'm basically useless. I also gave my first bass lesson this last week, which was actually a lot of fun. I'm gonna try to pick up another student or two and see how it goes. I'm thinking this is something I'll actually want to do more of though.
Fantastic! Spread the gospel of the EADG! I took "lessons" from Juano of Sky Cries Mary. I was already an accomplished bass player at the time, and my "lessons" were just us jamming together for an hour or two, and riffing off each other and the loop/drum tracks he had programmed. It really stretched my skills, and got me playing outside of my rut. Rejuvenated my playing. So sometimes, it's not about teaching a player new skills... sometimes it is being a sounding board that throws new ideas into the mix, too.