Highlights from Hilton Head

Sometime this past august went to Hilton Head with brent's family. What a crazy time. i wish i had a beach house. That's pretty much the result of that trip.

Here we have ben and brent out front of Crackle Barrel. This was my first time eating at one of these joints...and it'll probably be my last.

Interested?

At the house, there were a lot of floaty things...i decided to combine them to make the ultimate floaty thing. brent helped of course and it was so amazing that we could transport people from one side of the pool to the other without them getting wet! Crazy? i know!
The fridge was acting a little funny so we would stick beers in the freezer since it wasn't actually freezing anything. After a couple days it did start to work and when brent opened a beer that had been partially frozen...sprayed all over him, priceless.
i got a lizard! Part of lydia's scavenger hunt or something..not really sure. But i saw a lizard and caught it! i'm so good at catching lizards i scare myself.
The drink of the trip must have been Vampires. i looked it up and decided i'd try it. one part chambord, one part cranberry, and one part vodka. The chambord is a little too sweet so you might want to add a little more cranberry. When its all mixed it actually looks like blood...so if you're a vampire you might like this.
i have a minor case of ocd, so i could occasionally clean the living area and stack things so that they would take up less space. i'm weird i know.
Ever have an oyster hoagie? This would actually be good if there wasn't so much crazy deep fried junx. Maybe i should make a rocky mountain oyster hoagie! Where to get some bull balls around here....hmm.
bekah introduced this cousin of hers...demon child john. This kid does not know what "stop", "no", "don't", etc. mean. He's so wild. bekah even had him calling me uncle yo yo. ??!?!? ugh, one of these days i'll get bekah back.

turtles?

In Maryland i guess, not really sure, we went to some random mexican place that brent had found on his blackberry. The benches were chained together...who steals benches from a mexican restaurant?

Can't go wrong with a quesadilla that has everything in it. Steak, chicken, shrimp, and delicious!

Brent was pretty hungry so he got a cheese burger along with his quesadilla.

The Loudest Bug Ever

Somehow this grasshopper/leaf looking bug got in the garage. It would make this crazy loud noise. i forget what it sounded like but i was really loud, like fire cracker loud.

You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog

Um yeah, have to entertain myself once and awhile when hanging out with the kids....like putting on glasses with chops attached to them.

i should totally go to vegas, what do you think?

Let's Go to the Fair!

Not really sure when this was...sometime late August just never got around to putting pictures up.

The kids sure love the TV...

Anna being cute...

We went to some crazy fair in Lansdale...it rained a little bit but not enough to keep us from having fun. anna loved all the kiddie rides. If only i could fit in them...

Jack had to go with her on some of the rides...as you can see he was having the time of his life.

Funnel cake! More like funnel crack!

They had a band playing...pretty ridiculous stuff goes down with a bad band, beer, and people that drink too much beer.

anna stole jack's bear.

The Windshield

Prior to the motorcycle trip, i wanted to spice up my windshield. Its so boring the way it is and i wanted to put a little blue in it. i did some research and found on gadget's page that someone had used a Krylon stained glass color spray can to do the trick. A nice 15 bone fix.

Tapped off the parts of the windshield i didn't want painted and started adding coats...had to do about three to get what i was looking for.

Woot! Turned out better than i thought it would! i even got a little crazy and faded it towards the top!

Of course now that i'm home i have the windshield off because it just doesn't feel like i'm riding if i don't have the wind and bugs in my face...

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

After two days rest at floyd's it was time to do the final stretch home to wrap up this super long motorcycle trip. Of course my dad isn't gangsta enough to make the trip home in one day so we planned on staying in Pittsburgh for one night. In the morning i had some venison gravy junx that my aunt eileen made...soooo good. i love that stuff. Didn't even taste like deer...could have told me it was beef and i'd would believe you. Sure it was a little salty but its always salty, and delicious.

My dad wanted to meet someone in Michigan before going home...just adding to the travel time. We bet jim at a diner...i don't know why, we just ate! i wasn't going to get anything because i was full...but then he offered to pay for breakfast and i didn't want to be rude so i ordered the gyro meat with eggs. Boy do i regret that. i was so full i thought my eyes were going to pop out..(was that too gross?)

We arrived at Pittsburgh around 5pm and before going to the hotel we got dinner at our favorite church The Brew Works. For starters i ordered the 'untraditional' pierogies. They had something crazy in them like brauwurst and sauerkraut. Eh, should have gotten regular pierogies because there wasn't anything special about these and i was missing my potato.

Main course was chicken...delicious chicken which was one of their specials for Oktoberfest.

After dinner we went to our hotel east side of pitt and passed out. In the morning we were greeted by 48 degrees of cold and rain...awesome. i put on every layer i could, under armor long sleeve, long sleeve shirt, tshirt, wind breaker, and riding jacket. For my legs i was wearing underarmor bottoms, jeans, rain pants, and riding pants. The trick is to keep dry and block the wind...if you can do that you'll probably stay warm. i even broke out my snowboarding gloves...probably not very safe since i can't barely operate any of the buttons with them on but at least my hands are warm and dry?
We gunned it home. Never going below 70 mph. i don't care if it says 55 mph in the construction areas....there was no construction and i wanted to go home. Took us about 5 hours to get hom at around 3pm. First thing i did at home was get out of my millions of layers i was in and eat a sandwich..i was starving. Next thing...my bed. Oh did i miss my california king bed. i didn't care if the sun was still up and i wasn't tired...i laid in my bed regardless.

That Toddling Town

Spent two days in Chicago but i'm just going to sum it up in one post since i didn't take any pictures coming in. First of all the traffic coming in was horrible. Well, i guess it wasn't that bad but i was pretty tired and the "stop 'n go" junx just isn't my thing especially when i'm tired.

While coming in on 'Route 66' we were going about 65 mph and accelerating. All of sudden traffic just stops and of course i wasn't paying attention and had to jump on the brakes as hard as i could and as a result my tires started screeching and almost lost control of my bike. i tried letting go of the rear brake to straighten out but i must have been too tired to lift my foot off since my bike practically going sideways down the road....but i lived and no damage was done. i was sure awake after that.

i tried meeting up with my friend jenn since she is in chi-town but she was busy with class so there was a chance we would miss each other. For dinner we went to a couples house north of chicago. They use to be our neighbors in PA and when they heard we were coming into town they wanted us over for dinner.

It was kind of awkward since the husband has a french/arabic accent (don't ask) and his wife has a pretty strong vietnamese accent....this combined with the fact that my dad is hard of hearing is just a equation for awkward. They would ask my dad a question and he would just knod and pretend he heard them.

i needed out so i bounced on the next train back downtown hoping i'd find something to do. i texted jenn but she had already gone back home and i was left wandering the streets of chi-town by myself. i was so bummed out...i traveled to 17 states trying to contact everyone i could, tyler in utah, john in san fran, sagar and mike in los angeles, billy in springfield...pretty sure none of them wanted to see me.

Right on the verge of severe depression things turned around when i got a text from Ashley! Holla! Finally someone wanted to see me! i checked out her crib and town and it was pretty much the best time of the trip. Too bad it didn't last longer than it did.

It was also great to see the cat, Cloe! Apparently she likes me because she kept laying on my lap. Sometimes i wish i was a cat...>'.'< Then next day was all about seeing the town. We walked to the end of jackson (which is apparently route 66) just so we could say we reached the end. We walked since its pretty much impossible to park anything down there to walk around and take pictures.

After a few pictures, our next stop was the bean. Apparently its called the 'cloud' or something but if you ask me its definitely a bean...and massive shiny relective bean.
Good thing i was with my dad and uncle when visiting the bean...i probably would have never left if i was by myself. i could look at it forever..

After the bean we checked out the crazy water towers. These things are were pretty sweet...they're like screens with water coming down them. The first images were of waterfalls...and the next images...were people's faces! And they move! Then after awhile they spit water out of their mouths! That's not all, you can get your face up there if you go to the art center or whatever...and they tape your face and put it up! Personally i wouldn't want to do that since i'm kind of fugly...but if you're remotely ridicilously good looking you should totally do it.
Our next stop was Lou Mitchell's. A diner that is extremely old and apparently a hot spot during the days of route 66. Snapped a picture of the river while walking there..
This was a real diner...tiny and cramped. When you walk in the guys get free donut holes! Women kind of get shafted with the milk duds...

Jenn also had lunch with us. Apparently she doesn't go west of the river...and doesn't know where anything is in her own town which is kind of ridiculous if you ask me. But it was nice seeing her. Too bad she had to sit through the ramblings of my dad and uncle.

For lunch i ordered the reuben. This reuben was awesome...i was expecting a real sandwich but they gave me this open faced sandwich junx...but it was still very good.
After lunch my dad and i hit up the sears tower. There was a movie we had to watch before going to the top. It was so painful...i couldn't even stay awake through it. Pretty good view at the top of the tower...but we didn't have a lot of time to spend up there since our time was running out at the parking garage.

Around 2pm we had jumped on our bikes and headed back to Indiana to my uncle's place. It was probably the most painful ride ever. I was so tired running on like one hour of sleep. i was drifting all over the place and the slow traffice wasn't helping. After about 30 minutes of that i finally said i had to pull off and take at least a 5 minute nap.
After about 10 minutes of rest, chugging an espresso energy drink, and splashing water on my face i was ready for the remaining 2 hours left of riding. Oh man can't wait to go back home to my own bed...