Update

Being back to work is great, and I love my job working for the DC Metro, but it sure does take away from my time to train, ride, shoot, and dig into the many interests I have. My blogging time has all but disappeared. But I’m glad to be working. Living in the country northwest of Baltimore and working in DC creates a 50 mile commute and has me filling my jeep just about every 2 days. But I enjoy the drive and love listening to NPR all the way in and all the way home.

Since I’ve been MIA for so long, I’m going to bring things up to speed here.

Vehicles:

Well, I bought a nice Jeep. It’s a black 2006 Wrangler X, 4.0 liter, 6 cylinder, 6 speed manual transmission with 33 X 12.5 X 15 Mickey Thompson’s and I love it. My last jeep was a YJ, and had a soft top which was extremely noisy on the highway with all the flapping, so this time I went with a hard top. It’s also got an Alpine stereo, amp and 10” subwoofer in the back which bumps nicely!

Also, I bought a dirtbike. It’s a 2006 Honda CRF450X! Sadly, I already broke it. Only got to rip around on it twice before I cracked the crankcase on the right side while kick starting it. From what I’ve read online, they crack easily if you kick them too hard. The replacement crankcase half is only $111.00 online so I have a dirtbike repair project in my future. Joy. You can see a small gallery of pictures I took here.

Mountain bike Racing:

I haven’t raced in the last two weeks and have hardly been on the bike for that matter. My front wheel on the Cannondale looks like a taco from the crash I had in my last race. I haven’t had time to try and true it but my gut tells me it’s done for and I’ll have to order a new one. I believe, if you were to run your finger across the top tube of my bike you’d find dust!

Yard work:

It’s been getting quite tiring, mowing an acre and a half with a non-powered push mower. So, I finally got the riding mower going with a new battery. What a breeze it is now! Mowing time was reduced from 4 hours to 45 minutes. Also, having a yard is great, but mowing is a factor I haven’t considered in my life in the last ten years and as the week goes by, and the grass grows tall, I have to save time on the weekends to hack it down.

Guns:

I haven’t been target shooting per say, but now that I have the Sheridan sighted in, I keep it in the kitchen and will occasionally plug the Pepsi can perched on a stick in front of the wood pile out back. I’ll step out on to the back porch and shoot a few pellets into it from time to time. It’s quite red-neck… and fun. On a gun related note, I stopped home to visit my mom & dad last weekend and my father gave me a fantastic double-barrel Fox Sterlingworth 12 gauge that I can’t wait to hunt with this fall. That’s a blog post all in itself. Stay tuned for pictures. It was great to see my folks though, and I enjoyed cooking up some steaks and catching up on things.

Well, that’s all for now. Hopefully I can find some time to blog on a more regular basis.