It's been a good ride so far!

Since I was just a kid all I have ever wanted to do was to make people laugh or just smile. As a child, an educator sent a note home to my parents. It read; If your son thinks he is going to get through life making people laugh he is in for a RUDE AWAKENING! He is not living up to his potential. WELL, I'M STILL NOT! But at this site you will at least see me try. From the heart, thank you for even being interested, it means the world to me. I always say, I have not a single fan but many a friend!



Saturday, February 26, 2011

A GREAT MEMORY IS THE BEST ANTI DEPRESSANT EVER!


Some days, no matter how good things are going in your life, no matter how good your health may be, no matter what, you still feel a little bit down.  Sometime there is just no rhyme or reason as to why you feel the way you do.  For me, all can be great but if I don't see the sun shining brightly I feel shitty.  Give me a few days with no sunshine and I am like a junkie who has gone cold turkey and is desperately in need of a fix.  Today, I NEED MY FIX!  I'm in Arizona damnit!  Where the hell is the sun?   I can remember years ago, in my first home, I was laid up post surgical and really a mess.  I had to sleep on the living room floor for a few weeks as I could barely move.  I would just lay there, feeling down and in all kinds of pain and one day I rolled over and looked up at my wall.  What began as a huge blank wall with one photo in the center had grown in to a 20 foot wide collage of blown up photos from great moments captured in time.  The longer I looked at it, the better I felt.  I could stare at each photo and I was transported back to the moment that it was captured and I could feel the happiness that I was feeling that day and you know what, it eased the pain and the sadness.  I didn't look at them and think woes me, I looked at them and thought "what a day" and I can't wait to make more memories like that!  Staring up at those photos on the wall carried me through that horrible time.  I no longer have a wall of photos like that in my home now, but I do have my lap top and a few years of incredible memories captured in split seconds of time!  I take a walk down memory lane without ever even having to stand up and it makes me feel great.  So when you feel a bit blue, grab that box of old pics, you remember those right?  Take them out, remember great times and then go out and make more!  Here are a few shots from this last year that bring back great feelings and motivate me to go out and make new friends and new memories that will carry me through other rough patches, I hope you enjoy these shots!
I got to ride an amazing journey with my dearest friends!

Nothing like taking a pic of the greatest bike lifestyle photographer on earth,
 taking a pic of you at the same time.

I got to carry a war hero's fake leg and put it someplace safe.  But forgot to tell
him exactly where I put it!  Woops!

Met my first Tuba Ho in Memphis Tenn.  I still have the
dent in my head from where that tuba whacked it!

Spent Christmas with dear friends and family in my new home.

Got to see one of my oldest friends in the world after not seeing him for 20 years
rip the roof off a joint.  Black Label Society was amazing.

I got to host one of the greatest bars on earth during the
greatest bike rally on earth.  That is my knuckle logo on the banners.
They were all over Sturgis!

A great friend did one of the sickest burnouts ever on an
incredible knucklehead at The World Famous Broken Spoke Saloon
and did it for me!  Thanks Brother Teach!

One of the highlights of my life, I had a Doobie Brother tell me,
He enjoyed my performance, can you imagine?  What a classy guy he is too!

There are times in your career where you must just keep going and going
to make sure that you have done it right!  Hours and hours of this is brutal!

Salvation Mountain, Slab City, Niland California.  One of the most
amazing labors of love I have ever witnessed.  That is a hand painted mountain!

Chopper ride down to the town too tough to die to visit brothers.
Tombstone, Arizona with our family!

What can I possibly say about this?  This one speaks for itself.  You know
ladies love outlaws!

An amazing family visit and a day spent shooting in the desert.
I won't soon forget this day.

It's not often that the family actually gets to be together.

Shot in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere,
at the Slab City Riot in California

I hope you enjoyed these photos.  These were but a few of the great memories I have been able to make
over this last year.  I could have posted hundreds of pics but there was no need.  By the time I had gone through the files to find these, they did their job and I already feel better! 

So go out, live life and make memories that will last forever.  No photo that you capture is ever stupid and may one day give you the strength to pick yourself up and carry on!  Love your life, Love your friends and whatever you have to do, LOVE YOURSELF!

UNTIL WE SEE EACH OTHER ON THE ROAD;
KEEP THE WIND IN YOUR FACE,
TITS IN YOUR BACK
AND THE MAN OFF YOUR ASS!

Friday, February 25, 2011

KARMA AIN'T ALWAYS A BITCH !

As you guys know, I picked up that FXRS last week.  As you guys may also know that modern bikes aren't really my style.  The problem with runin old iron is the wear and tear that it puts on them.  Running a nice day ride and putting two hundred miles on her is a good day.  Once you get going and you begin to hit in the 3 and 4 hundred mile mark on the odometer not only does your ass begin to hurt but your brain starts drifting in to the what if scenarios?  What if running hard at 85-90 mph is just more than this old girl was really ever meant to handle?  Now that I am 250 miles out in the middle of the desert, what the hell do I do if I need parts for a 64 year old bike?  Although nearly every time my old girl makes these trips loud and proud that worrisome little bug still gnaws away in the back of my brain.  Sometimes you need to hit the miles hard and make both time and distance and doing it on a knucklehead isn't the best option. 

So I got this FXRS to take over the duty of the "road bike".  A bike that I can just hop on without any real worries and go bang out 500 miles at 100 mph and still no that not only will I not be pissing blood but maybe I can even walk when I get where I am going!  The problem is that right now this particular bike is not really set up for this type of riding.  I have always been a real fan of the FXRT and P because of the fixed fairing and the tour packs.  The funny thing is that when these bikes came out nobody wanted them because they looked too much like jap bikes.  Now, good luck finding the parts for all this shit! 

That is where the title of the post comes in to play.  As you guys know from my other writings, I am always there for others, without fail.  I have never, not once in my life, fucked anyone over and I can say that with 100 percent certainty.  My family, like a great many in America these days finds ourselves fighting the good fight to survive.  The bills are big and the income at times quite small.  Add to that the insane cost of a family dealing with illness and most months there is just not an extra penny to be had.  I often ask, when is this shit going to turn around for us?  The old saying, if it weren't for bad luck, I'd have none at all seems more and more to be more than an old saying but more like my personal motto!  We have amazing Karma, good pure Karma, when will it come back around on us?  Well it appears that it may be doing just that.  Are things swinging our way?  Seems that since getting this bike, so many people have reached out to me with part after part to try and help me get the bike set up for doing some long hard miles.  I get calls like, I got this and I got that and all you have to do is come and pick it up... When I ask what they want for the parts, they just say, I didn't offer to sell them to you, I said, COME PICK THEM UP!  Then you got a guy like Roadside Marty, check out his blog, www.flatbrokecustoms.blogspot.com and check out the amazing bikes he builds.  Who calls me now nearly each day now to tell me of another part that he has found for me.  I could go on and on with stories like this that have been happening all week.  I am blown away.  All of this just so that my friends can help get me back in the wind.  Touched and humbled doesn't come nearly close to how I am feeling about this all.

I don't know if my good Karma has finally come full circle and has worked it's way back to me so I try not to question it!  But here is the way that my sick mind has grown to work over the years.  I am that guy who has gotten so screwed over, so abused by the system that I am conditioned to just expect the worst!  So now as each of these good things begin to happen for both myself and my family, I am waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Is this a tease?  Seems that each time I take one step forward, I get pushed 3 steps back.  No matter what, I knuckle up, keep my chin down and keep on fighting, giving up is not in the cards but it does make me wonder.  Is the Universe fucking with me again.  Is it giving me a little taste of good, just so it can haul off and kick me in the balls again?  I don't know the answer to this and I guess only time will tell what it is going to be.  When I know, you will too! 

My wife asks me why I am not happy about the way things are going?  I tell her it's not that I am not happy, I am just worried that on the scale of the good that is happening to us lately, I just worry that the scale of bad that usually follows may be worse than ever!  For now, I am coming to grips with the good.  I am not a taker, I am a giver.  Nothing warms my heart more than helping  someone out or being able to give an amazing gift to someone, but to this day I find it very difficult to accept gifts and nice gestures.  For me, it is definitely better to give than receive!  But I could really get use to good things happening as long as it's not the Universe setting me up for another practical joke.....  oh well, these were just my thoughts as I sit here tonight, once again after midnight trying to figure out the meaning of life and once again finding no answers.  I guess after living through bad for so long, I am conditioned to not only expect it, but to accept it.  I believe if you don't get yourself all worked up with hope, you won't be disappointed when you don't get it!  It is nice to see things turning around, I just can't remember how to deal with good things, I am just so use to the bad!

I hope that these tough times turn around for each and every single one of us.  Keep putting up the good fight, it has to pay off in the end right?

Sunday, February 20, 2011

I am honored!


I turned on my blog a short time ago just to see how it's doing.  Once I start up on something I can get a bit obsessed.  I had been told for so long by so many to start a blog.  I was afraid to, the very same way I was before I started doing stand up.  What if I do it and nobody laughs?  With the blog all I could think of was what if I write it and nobody gives a shit?  I had a new friend who works for my favorite Cycle Rag and I got a message saying how much they enjoyed my writing and I should really do it.  That was what I needed to hear.  Someone who writes and "reads" telling me that my writings were worth enough for people to want to not only read them, but share them.  That was it, I started one and I went in Blind!

I took a look at a few friends blogs and saw how they were laid out and what a blog even was.  They had followers and posts and lots and lots of page views or "hits".  I set a goal that I would write it for a year and slowly build it up.  If I could get 20 followers and 1000 page views in that first year, I would continue it.  I began the blog, I believe in the middle of December.  In the short 3 months since I began writing and sharing on this blog the stories of my life with my friends I could not believe the responses I have received.  In just 3 months I have nearly 75 fine folks following it and I am fast approaching 10,000 page views or "hits".  I am so honored and truly humbled that you guys read it and send me the most amazing messages about it.  But I must say what truly blows my mind is when I get a message saying that someone shared it with them.  Or they saw it on a facebook page linked by someone I didn't even know liked it.  I just wanted to say thank you so very much.  You guys may never know what this means to me.  If you promise to keep reading it, I promise to keep it coming at you with 100% brutal honesty!

Yesterday I posted up on facebook info from here that I just couldn't believe.  My blog has now been viewed and shared in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, France, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Philippines, Australia, India, Portugal, Spain, Vietnam, and Denmark.  When I first started it, I had a few readers in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and even one girl in Iran.  Soon after,  my blog was banned there and turned off.  I was so proud.  Well today when I turned it on, there were five page views from Saudi Arabia!  Maybe it's back on or some folks just got real crafty in getting it!


I also saw today in those stats and info that a dear friend of mine and Cycle Source Mags, Motorcycling's Man of the Year, the shop teacher that I only dreamed of having, the founder of Chopper Class with Mr. Baas, the one and only Kevin "Teach" Baas has signed up to follow us and check in and keep up with what's going on in Jack Shit's World.  Welcome and thank you so much Brother Teach!  I am once again honored my friend that you joined us here.
That picture above was taken on one of the best days of my life.  It was my birthday and I was hosting the festivities at the one and only world famous Broken Spoke Saloon in Sturgis for the 70th anniversary.  The day was huge, we had so much going on that even Radical Randy from Florida came in to help keep the madness under control.  Not only did we have the Easy Rider Ride In Chopper Show, but we had the winners from the girls high school chopper builders, build a bike from scratch right up on the stage in one day and fire it up.  We had contests, we had playmates of the year, music all day and night, it was great.  Mike Lichter came down and spent the day with us and told Jay Allen that he wanted to shoot some burnouts.  Jay relayed this to me and I said let me see what I can do.  It's the world famous Spoke, we can't just have any ol' burnouts.  Well both Teach and Roadside Marty crushed in the Easy Rider show with stunning bikes but they then turned them loose in the burnout pit and did INSANE ALL GEAR BURNOUTS!  They each told me in the end that they did it for me, to support me at my gig there and it touched my heart.  These guys are the definition of class!

In the few years that I have gotten to know Teach and his lovely wife Amy we have gotten to spend some good quality time together and each year I look forward to them coming to see us in Arizona again.  Since the first time I have met him, I have never heard a bad word spoken of him, the man is truly a gentleman and does it all FOR THE KIDS!   They say that a man can often be judged by the company he keeps and since meeting Teach, I was lucky enough to meet and become friends with all those he surrounds himself with and they are some of the finest people I have ever had the privilege to know.

Both Roadside Marty's FLAT BROKE CUSTOMS and Teach's blogs are over there on the right side of my page and they are both phenomenal, you will love them.  If you are in to any thing bikes you will think they are cool, if you are passionate about bikes and choppers they you just may drool.  Let em know I sent ya.

Again, for each of you who has taken the time to read this blog, thank you.  For each of you who has shared this blog, thank God for you!  Let's build this up together and please, don't ever hesitate to let me know of some cool shit to share with all of our friends.  Hope the weekend was incredible for all my friends and let's knock this thing over the 10,000 hits mark and I'll send you all .............. well, nothing really but a great big thanks!