jmwildi

Sad to see the Mossberg 500 hardly got any love in this whole discussion, never mind the fact that the 500 and the 870 are basically the same shotgun. I've owned both for home deffense, have a 500 and a severely chopped down Mossberg 1500 now but I'd also own another 870. Both good shotguns for the money.

My only problem with the weapon since I tend to collect Soviet weapons. Good luck with the sale though.

A few years ago the Army Times did a deployment study and came up with 30 or 40% (if I remember the article right) of all soldiers in the Army (active and reserves) had not deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. The rest just kept getting rotated through the Pentagon's deployment schedule.

I was at Ft Campbell, KY in the company area with about 15 other soldiers waiting for one of the trucks that was shuttling my company out to the qualification firing range. We heard it on the radio first and then we all went into the day room to watch it on tv. Within an hour the entire post was locked down and no one came on or left for about 3 days. After that only the main gate was open and the other gates all had armed infantry fireteams from my battalion stationed at them. A few months later, I was stepping off a transport plane at Kandahar Army Airfield, Afghanistan with the rest of my company to meet up with the batalion and division, ready to go find the bad guys in the caves and mountains.

Still interested but Saturdays are no good for me for the forseeable future. I work third shift so I get off work Saturday morning and I have to be back at work Saturday night, can't afford to take any days off either. If that changes I'll let you know though.

Cool, the Big Ten get's its two confrences or divisions or whatever, and the rivavlry stays in tact. Nice.

I'll be there for a bit in the afternoon / evening.

I'm not the praying kind but I'll keep them in my thoughts. I used to drive drunk alot, that's how I got so pretty in my avatar pic. That was a big wake up call and I don't do it anymore but it always gets me to see stories like this. I hope their condition improves and they have a fast and full recovery.

Agreed that this is good advice. I might have the devil's own luck but I don't want to test it any more than I already do. For the forseeable future Mondays always work for me so maybe we could set something up for this comming Monday or the following. This saturday's no good, going shooting with a friend I havn't seen in a while. Sounds like a fun ride though, sorry to miss it.

Huh, right on. I don't know if a Bonneville is considered a cruiser but it's deffinatly not a sport bike and I don't try to ride it like one. I'm a big fan of riding within your limits. These assholes just sound stupid. I think I went over the line in a turn once or twice when I was first learning to ride. After that I backed off and prcticed until I gradually expanded my limits to a level of riding that I'm comfortable and safe with. To each their own with riding styles and bikes but you need to know what the hell you're doing no matter what you ride. +1 to you sir for your anger

Awesome, I'd be down for a little road trip sometime next week. Maybe sunday if I don't make it over to the rodeo at Jimbo's down in the hocking hills or monday. I'll drop you a pm later this week when I figure out what I'm doing for the weekend.

I never said a helmet would cause me to veg out, I think a helmet would keep me alive but paralized in some crashes. Becomming a carrot doesn't worry me because in that case, I'll never know what happened anyway. It's being concious and aware and having bits and pieces of my life or my body taken away that I can't or won't accept or deal with. I could always be afraid that the worst will happen and not ride my bike but it's silly to live in fear of things that may or may not happen. That'd be like refusing to walk down to the corrner store because a bus might jump the curb and kill me. Unlike the riders that say, "well I just just don't fall off or lay my bike down," I know and accept the possible outcomes and concequences of not wearing a helmet when I ride. I have no illusions that I might crash due to my own mistake or someone elses mistake or negligence and that's okay with me. If it kills me at least I had some measure input as to how I went out. We should all be lucky enough to meet our end on our own terms. Besides, what's life without free choice?

I just had Hooters wings again after a long time without and I have to say they're just as good as I remember them and better than most of the pizza places I've gotten wings from. If it says anything, the last time I had Hooters wings the only flavors they had were mild, medium, and hot. I also so found a place called Buffalo Wings and Rings that has amazing wings, a good selection of sauces and you can choose how hot you want each sauce. I deffinatly recomend checking them out.

Nope, I got your point very clearly but I think you may have missed mine. Allow me to reiterate. It's my head so what are you, or anyone else, worried about? (read "head" as "life") I've come within a breath of dying several times now both in the sates and durring deployments overseas. Everyone has to go sometime and I look at it as an all or nothing kind of deal. I think Aerik summed it up nicely with this. Some people call it stupid, I call it free choice. If I'm not bothering or infringing on someone else's rights and freedoms, then why should anyone else care what I do? Provided what I'm doing is inside the bounds of the law.

Wow, where you riding today?

Taken care of with a living will, if I'm in a coma or become a carrot - unplug the machines and nature take it's course. Thankfully my rather small family feels the same about being a vegtable so they'll gladly do me that forvor should it ever come to pass, just as I would or them.

I'm out for tomorrow too, I was helping a friend move today and on the way home my bike's rear tire went flat thanks to a screw someone kindly left in a parking lot. Instead of riding tomorrow I get to sit at Iron Pony and wait for a new tire.

First, loud pipes: I like my bikes to have a loud, throaty growl to the exhaust however there is such a thing as too loud. If people two blocks away can hear your bike like they're sanding next to it, that's too loud. Secnd, helmet laws: Unlike some of the people on this threat, I started riding wearing a helmet and this year I decided to stop. I still wear my jacket, gloves, jeans and boots, just no lid. Riding without a helmet isn't because I think it looks "cool" or because it's not as hot. I don't wear a helmet because I'd rather die than live in a handicapped fashion, i.e. paralyzed, loss of a limb, vegitative state, etc. In my eyes, there's more of a chance of surviving as a parapalegic because of a helmet than without one. I'm not trying to take anything away fom handicapped people who live very full and good lives, but I can not live that way. Were that tragety ever to befall me, I'm confident that I'd wash my mouth out with buckshot before enduring one more day than I had to in that state. Alot of people might call that stupid and selfish. I spent nearly a decade (including two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan) in the military protecting my, and your, freedom to do something stupid and your freedom to get on this site and say whatever you want about it and refuse to ride with me because I don't wear a helmet. So I think I've earned the right to make my own decisions reguarding my personal safety and my own life. If you don't want to ride with me because I don't wear a helmet, no problem, that's your choice. Bottom line as far as I'm concerned is, it's my head so what are you worried about? I guess it goes without saying that at a minimum I think the helmet laws that Ohio has now are fine. One last thing about scraping brains up off the road since someone brought it up. If it bothers those that do it as part of their job, they might need to find a different job. I picked chunks of people out of concertina wire in Iraq after a mortar attack and I helped clean up a friend's apartment after her boyfriend shot himself in the head with a .38. Didn't bother me a bit and I havn't lost a minute of sleep over it. It might sound harsh, but they should either buck up and deal with it or find a different line of work. Okay, I'm done ranting now.

Wow, that is some nice ink. Any idea if it was done locally?

It does look slick. Not sure about the price. I don't think I'd shell out eight grand for anything new but I'm also a poor college student. The Shadow is a good first bike for someone who wants a cruiser. I learned on a Shadow 650 and it wasn't bad. The problem with a cruiser though is size. You need something small enough to be comfortable learning on but large enough that you won't outgrow it in a year like I did with my 650.

If you're still looking for suggestions you might try something in Wayne National Forest. It's spread over three counties in south-east ohio. Lots of back country and trails.

Like I said in my post, I don't really pay attention to football so I really don't know what you mean about the coaches. As for leather helmets vs. modern helmets, that's a safety issue and it has nothing to do with tradition. Grass vs. turf, again i don't pay enough attention to football to know what all the differences are. It seems it might be nicer to play on grass although it'd certainly be more expensive due to maintenance and what not. I've heard about the OSU/Michigan rivalry for my entire life. Wether you agree with it or not, it is very important to alot of people of all ages. Tradition is one of the things that allows a certain connection to our past and where we came from. Not all traditions are good and not all are bad. Sure change can be a good thing but you can affect change without compromising tradition. Traditions remind us of who we are, where we came from, and what came before us. Maybe it's stupid and sentimental but I think if a tradition that's older than the people who are trying to change it isn't hurting anything, it should be left alone. Or at least be allowed to continue within the structure of their changes.

I may be incurring the wrath of rabid Buckeye fans here but, I don't watch football, college or pro. I don't pay attention to the Buckeyes or Michigan, or any of the other teams. Other than hockey, I'm not a big sports fan in general. However, I do think that college athletics are the soul of American sports. The kids don't play for multi-million dollar a year paychecks. They play the game mostly because they love the game. That's what makes college sports good, in my opinion; the college players often have way more heart and play alot harder than their professional counter-parts. All the being said, this messing with the OSU / Michigan game is crap, they need to have a little respect for history and tradition and leave things alone.

This reminds me of about ten years ago or so when someone petitioned their local school board to add ebonics to the high school foreign language program. I can't remember for sure what city and state it was but I want to say it was either New York or L.A. At any rate, this pisses me off more than the imigrants who move here and refuse to learn english for whatever creative reason they decide to come up with. You can't take weird slang and mix it with poor gramar and fucked up pronunciation and call it a new language or even a modified version of a real language. It's not a language, besides, I don't hear anyone saying that we need southern redneck or Martha's Vinyard yuppie interpretors.