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Winter Battle Update

Feb 222010

We did in fact make it to Buttonwillow back in November. It was a Saturday and Sunday event. Mark ran the track clockwise on Saturday and anti-clockwise on Sunday. Weather wasn’t too bad, a little bit cold but at least we stayed dry and the sun made it out both days.

I’ve always loved riding Buttonwillow. Love how the track flows, it has a nice balance of slow and fast turns and a little bit of elevation changes throughout the track. I wish it was a little bit closer to home. It generally takes us about 3.5 hours to get there. Only worth going when we do multiple days. It’s way too much for a day trip.

I spent most of Saturday sorting some jettings, getting back into the groove of riding and regaining a rhythm of the track. I struggled with my suspension a little bit but I rode through Saturday without an incident. I wished I could have another day running the track clockwise and get a little bit more practicing time. I guess I’ll just have to come back another day.

That night, a group of us had dinner at Mama Tita’s, a popular Mexican restaurant among racers and track day goers. They’ve expanded quite a bit since we were last there. They now have a few different locations, one of which was next door to the motel we stayed at.

We met a few people at dinner. Among them was Lex, a fast kickass young rider one day going to be a pro racer and his dad, Phil. Lex was riding his new TZ250 earlier in the day but unfortunately he crashed at the end of the day. I was once young and without fear too, but time has changed. I’m now wise.

Sunday was a whole new day. The track was ran backward. Ed and I ran this configuration once and thought it was pretty interesting. It was like a brand new track. I spent a couple sessions getting familiar with the new layout and rest of the day working with Ed on suspension settings.

I went out with different settings for every session, a couple of clicks at the time. Every time I went out, it would only felt better. In fact, the bike had never felt so good ever. I was able to control the bike better, riding smoother and faster. It must have been my lucky day.

My Longest Saturday

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Feb 102010

Friday, December 4th 2009, was my last day on Franklin Templeton job and possibly my last working day this year. It was a nice and easy day with not too much pressure on my shoulder. I was looking forward to a 3-day Ntropic holiday party in Cabo. We were to leave on Sunday morning and come back Tuesday afternoon.

Later on that afternoon, I started feeling a little bit of pain in my tooth. No big deal, it would go away by Saturday, I thought. The pain progressed as it got later and later. I popped an Advil toward the end of the day, continued working and went home at a decent time.

By night time, the little pain had turned into bigger pain. I popped two Advils before I went to sleep, woke up the next late morning with the same intense and constant throbbing pain. More Advils were taken. I had been through a similar situation where Advil took care of me for a few days before I could get to a dentist. This time, for some reason, Advil didn’t seem to last.

We, then, started googling, yahooing and yelping for a Saturday dentist. That was how we found Dr. Terry. We got an appointment later that afternoon at 2:30. We were asked to come a little early to fill out some paper works. Ed had left to help a friend to mount a plasma screen and he was going to bring home some lunch takeouts before my appointment.

In the meantime, I started packing for our Cabo trip. Popped a couple more Advils in between. Ed got home with some dim sum from Koi’s Palace. Tempting, but I was in such pain that I was going to wait to eat after the dentist check me out. Plus we didn’t have that much time before we had to leave for my appointment.

Just a few minutes after Ed got all the dim sum lined up on the table, the doorbell rang. Refer to Ed’s blog for detail of this story.

So we got to Dr. Terry. She was a nice, friendly and gentle dentist. Got some xrays taken. She poked and explored around a bit. “You need a root canal” she said. She gave me some prescription to vicodine and antibiotics and sent me home. I was set! Advil and vicodine, what else would I need.

We went to eat dinner at Ed’s dad’s that night. Picked up my prescriptions on our way home. Finished up packing, cleaned all our lenses and camera sensors while consuming more and more Advils. I resisted the vicodine, since I planned to have a few drinks in Cabo for the next few days.

Finally, it was time for bed. Jesse was scheduled to pick us up between 8:00-8:15 to take us to the airport. We had to be checked in by 8:30 am to catch the 10:30 am flight. An hour went by, I could not sleep and the pain would not stop. In desperation, I decided to take the vicodine. Tried to sleep again. Unfortunately, it didn’t help.

It was now 3:00 am. I laid helplessly in bed, could not get any rest. All I could think about was if I were ever going to survive being in Cabo in this pain. I thought not. I woke Ed and told him I wasn’t going to make it like this. We could either get help in the morning and leave on a later flight or we could still try to leave as is and if anything, we could just go for the day.

Having so much faith in Yelp, Ed started yelping once again and called a few numbers, only two of which had real people talking on the other line at 3 in the morning. One of them was 1-800-DENTIST. They had listings of practicing Endodontist, but none was available until after the weekend. Monday was a maybe, but the operator would not know until then. The other was Dr. Livingood’s emergency answering service. We explained our situation to the operator and he was going to try to get a hold of this Dr. Livingood. He was now our only hope. Made me think of the scene in Starwars where Princess Leia sent a message through R2-D2’s holographic imaging. “Obiwan Kenobi, you’re our only hope”.

We checked to see if we could get on a later flight. Alaska Airlines could not make it harder for us, the flight we were going to be in was the last flight that day. Apparently, they only fly to San Jose Del Cabo twice a day. One at 8:30 am and another 10:30 am. Our options are narrowed down some more.

Came 4:30 am, Ed’s phone rang. Dr. Livingood himself had called us back. He said he could help and be ready by 8:00 am. Ed shamelessly but nicely asked to see if he would be able to do it earlier due to our flight. He needed an assistant for the procedure and said he would try to find one available and/or awake and would call us back.

After asking if he could help now, we didn’t think we’d ever hear back from him ever. Great! Now what? I guess we’ve tried all options, we could only wait and hope now. To our surprise, Dr. Livingood called back. He had found an assistant and he was going to help us. We were to meet him at his office at 5:30 am, he hoped to be done by 8:00 am, which would work out great. We rushed to get our luggages into the car, just in case we had to go straight to the airport, instead of having Jesse picked us up as planned.

This whole procedure was going to set us back $alot + $400 for the emergency fee. Dr. Livingood also mentioned that I might need more than just one visit. He wouldn’t know until later, but he promised to at least relief the pain. Fine! I was desperate and Mexico would be so awful in pain.

So, here we were at the Dr.’s office at 5:30 am. The office was going through some remodeling but we didn’t care as long as we could make our trip. I walked in to the room and there was an assistant of Dr. Livingood. “This is my wife, Julie” he said. My mind was made, we were going to go through with this even if Ed had to assist. Though, we found out later that she was a practicing general dentist. It would’ve been a funnier story if she wasn’t. We got started right away. There was no time to waste.

During the process, we stumbled upon a couple of problems. One was that one of the roots took a sharp turn and made it a little bit harder to work on. Another one was a bigger problem. Normally, there should be 3 canals in a molar, but the Dr. couldn’t find the third one in mine. Apparently, some time they are either really small or merged into one.

7:45 am, Dr. Livingood started wrapping up. He put some medicine into the tooth and patched it up temporarily. It was for sure that I would need to come back to find the third canal when we get back from Mexico.

It was time for us to take care the bill. Due to the construction that was going on in the office, they’ve unplugged the credit card machine and on top of that the Dr. Livingood didn’t know how to operate it. Luckily Ed had some retail experience and knew exactly how.

By 8:00, we were in the car ready to go home. We made it home early enough to do final checking to make sure we had everything we needed for Mexico. Ed even had some time to take care of some business. J

Jesse arrived at 8:15 to pick us up then off we went to the airport.

And so that was my longest Saturday…

I fought the law and the law lost

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Dec 152009

My luck with law enforcement with the exception of my friends have been anything but stellar and I will tell you why.

So I was driving home on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and was stuck behind the ultimate cell phone driver, the kind that talks on the phone with one hand while the other hand makes gestures. Of course this means that the driver (princess cupcake) can’t actually drive or maneuver the vehicle until her sentence is finished. So there I sat stuck in back of her while not paying attention to anything but her hair and her friend on the phone, not even paying attention to the lack of traffic ahead nor the green light in front of her.

I honked my wonderful horn proceeded by the scream of “green light, bitch!!!” then I saw the signature princess cupcake middle finger of divine love rise up from the iron curtain while simultaneously going into the slow motion look back ensuring her butter face would clearly be shown for all the world to see. By that time I was out of options because clearly she meant business on the phone but was unlikely to be a descent human being and pulled over but her very stimulation conversation was too great for her not to share.

Now were at a stop sign and from what I could tell the conversation must have been so titillating that she came to a complete ten second stop. I could just hear the “oh my god!!!” straight from the movie Valley Girls shrieking through the glass. Right then and there I decided to make the move……..yes…. pass this bitch but I would not have been a descent person without giving the fully erect internationally known middle finger bird call!

I proceeded to pick up food from my local Dim Sum restaurant, Koi Palace. Great food but lousy service, price is fair but if you want more details go to Yelp.com. Well, after my pit stop I arrived home with two bags of pure enjoyment.

But as the infomercials always say “NO, wait! there’s more!” Not more than two minutes have elapsed do I hear the sweet Ebay doorbell I bought ring. Low and behold it was the…… fuzz, cops, Johnny Law, Officer Bob, Sheriff Taylor, the man or some may just say…… piggy! So I saw this young, well ironed shirt of a cop who asked me if I were the owner of the White Range Rover clearly parked in my own driveway. Why yes it is occifer bob……..you must be very observant on this beautiful Saturday afternoon!!

This was where the fun began. So Mr. Man said “this vehicle has been in a hit and run accident so I must investigate” Unfortunately for me a Sanitation Truck hit poor little Rover a few months back (please read My Poor Rover for more details) so I told him what happened and I could not have caused this type of damage to another vehicle without some repercussion so he began to examine the vehicle and like a virgin getting fucked for the first time he screamed “I found something!!!”

As like a premature ejaculation it was white paint he found from the garage where I parked my car. It was a travesty as he was not buying the fact my vehicle innocent. This cop was after blood after all and I was the donor. So I asked this man of the law was it right for him to presume I was guilty first?? or actually do some police work and collect data first, then make an assessment. “He looked like the kind of guy who squeaked by police academy but I digress”

The cop was mad now because I questioned his manhood and was on a rampage, now asking the supposed victim to drive directly to my home, which was not very ethical nor correct for an officer of the law to do no doubt. Privacy Act: he may want to read it but his fourth grade brain does not have the capacity for such nonsense so I suggested for us to face each other at a neutral meeting place.

Well Johnny Law brought back up but unbeknown to office bob he was about to get his ass handed to him by his partner because as sure as day with all his investigative skills and fortitude the vehicle in question of the victim who turned out to be no other than princess cupcakes was……… silver! His partner took about three seconds and looked at my five thousand pound vehicle with heavy damage on the front with no visible marking decided to leave it alone.

Officer Bob then made the intelligent statement of his law enforcement career thus far “I don’t think this white paint is from her silver car” I nearly pissed myself because I could actually see the hamster turning the wheel in his head!!!

So princess cupcake was devastated by the outcome claiming malicious anal penetration of the fourth degree with multiple ejaculations to the face and outer regions but was not awarded an arrest but herself might face an infraction for admitting to the officer she was talking on her phone illegally.

In closing, this goes out to Johnny Law………..the new song is “I fought the law and the law lost”

My Poor Rover

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Nov 012009

Now more than tens years and 100k miles later, my beloved Rover is showing her signs of age. She has lived a great life with not a single accident till this year and it wasn’t even her fault. Darn garbage truck backed into her while parked in an alleyway. Since then, I have felt this little trooper loose her luster so I gave her a wash today. It felt great to shine her up and vacuum the inside.
Many times I have felt she needed a new home but after each wash, I sit in the driveway and then the thoughts disappear.

Preparing for Winter Battle

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Nov 012009

In 2 weeks time, if weather allows, we’ll be attending The Track Club event at Buttonwillow Raceway. Pretty exciting stuff for me, considering that it’s one of my favorite tracks and I haven’t been there for at least 2 years. It’s very likely that this will be it for the year as it’s going to start raining and get really cold.

Time to get to work, it’s time to put the bike back together.

Today is mostly just cleaning and inspecting.

I may have ran the bike leaner than usual. Let’s see what Master Yoda has to say.

A few distractions along the way…

The Hunt for Belgian Waffle

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Oct 292009

I first discovered about Belgian Waffle through a Rachel Ray’s Foodnetwork show, “$40 a Day”. Prior to the show, I’ve always thought that they were the same as “Eggo” or ones in any breakfast vendors, which consist of pancake batter cooked in between two wafer plates.

To satisfy my craving and curiosity, I decided to hunt down a local place that sold true Belgian Waffle. So, I started yahooing, googling and yelping. One search result that got my attention was “Waffle Mania Truck”. Unfortunately, this truck was only around on Wednesdays at the Civic Center Farmer’s Market and it was only Saturday.

Wednesday came, I went to look for this truck. When I got there, I could smell the waffles before I even found the truck. Having so much faith on these waffles and knowing that I wouldn’t be able to get more until the next wednesday, I bought 6 of them. They come plain or with powdered sugar.