TheLostChinese.org

Being pulled behind a bike on a skateboard is apparently more challenging than previously thought. I did it fine, but others had issues. Overall, a good night.

Too bad not enough people showed up for Capture the flag.. but we found stuff to do. We messed around with skateboards and bikes… found an unlocked door to a business… chatted with a friendly police officer. We ended up biking and running past his car to see how fast we could get on his radar. Eddie got 13 mph on the bike, Craig got 18 on the bike, and somehow Craig also got 20 mph sprinting…

So I sat down this morning, expecting to make headway into Pash’s book, Junebug, and what do I find? The copy I got off of Amazon’s Kindle store only has one chapter in it! LAME! But other than that, It’s been a pleasant experience so far… especially considering it’s a fairly girly book.

Is trick out cars all day.  And stuff like that.

It’d be great to find a job doing custom car mods.  Or even in-venue audio stuff.  I’ve pretty much decided that A/V is what I really want to do.  It’s pretty much the only thing I can do day after day after day and not get sick and tired of it.  I don’t even mind waking up early if it means I’m going to go get ready for a gig.

I said that thing about cars, though, because I really want to get something like a Camaro and trick it all out.  New exhaust, new paint, tinted windows, underbody lights, a few engine mods, and most importantly: a new sound system.  Theres all this stuff in my head that would just make it a kick-ass car and I want to do it… I just need to find the day job to finance it.

So the other day, my friend Byron and I drove 15 miles to the middle of no where to get a set of RockBand drums. You know, the game controller. Well, there was a Walmart out in the middle of no where that actually had them in stock. So we drove to get them. We had planned to spend $29.95 for a set.

When we actually got there, they were on clearance since RockBand 2 was just coming out!  At $9.95 each, we got two sets.

Once we got back, we soon discovered that his computer was no where near fast enough to handle the software at any decent rate.  At church, we found some computers to cannibalize and ended up with a Dell Inspiron 4500 with a 2.4 GHz Processor and 1GB of RAM.  After we got everything set up, it turned out to work really well

I’ll insert the how-to link here when I get done writing it up.

So that’s what Wes and I went to on Saturday night.  We got there a little late and ended up sitting in the balcony.  All in all it was pretty good.  Parts of it were a bit corny… like their renditions of It Don’t Mean A Thing and When the Saints Go Marching.

The only real criticism I have is that the chorus was very square.  One might say they don’t mean a thing cause they ain’t go that swing.

Dick Goodwin and his band did a great job and were a true treat to listen to.  It was definitely worth what we paid to get in and then some… Even though we missed the beignets and coffee.

So last night was interesting to say the least.

In order to ride motorcycles, Wes is going to have to know when to shift.  After realizing this, we decided it would probably be a good idea to learn how to drive a car that has a manual transmission.  A very bumpy ride entailed.

First I had him go through the gears a few times with the engine off, just to get a feel of where they are. After that, I told him to put it in first gear and go without using using the accelerator.  To my surprise he did quite well.  It was only once he started using the gas pedal and starting on hills that he made the truck buck and kick like a bull.  He soon declared driving like that was barbaric, impossible, and required to much finesse.  Still, after an hour or so of driving around the Saxe Gotha parking lot, he seemed to figure it out pretty good.

I think he’s more or less got the hang of it down. Needless to say, we will be practicing for the few nights at least, but he’s got the basic process down pretty well.  I just hope he remembers how to do it tonight so I don’t have to re-teach him.

So after the latest boat incident… Wes and I have decided to put the boat idea on the back-burner for a while.  It’s expensive.  And it’s going to be expensive over and over and over again.  Wes’s boss actually told him “BOAT” stands for “Bring Out Another Thousand”.  So.. After spending $216 to rent a U-Haul to go get a boat and not come back with one, we’re taking a break from yachts.

This doesn’t in any way mean that we won’t have completely outlandish ideas that may or may not work out, or may or may not cost us thousands of dollars, or may or may not get us killed.  We bounced ideas back and forth for a while last night.

We thought about getting an old car to fix up for a while.  Then we realized that to be cool, it’d have to be a classic and that would just be expensive and probably way beyond our skill level.  We talked about building an arcade machine, but that’s too much computer for Wes.  It took us a while, but we figured it out:

Now we’re hunting motorcycles.  I like the old Harley Davidsons like the one in the picture.  They’re really expensive, though, so an older Honda or Suzuki would cure my itch, too.  I’m not entirely sure what Wes wants, but it’ll probably be something similar.  Neither of us are really in to the new sport-bikes like the Kawasaki Ninjas.  They’re not bad bikes, I just don’t see Wes or myself riding one.

Should be a fun endeavor.  I’m supposed to go down to the DMV today to take my permit test, again.  I took it before, but it expired last month, so I have to retake it.  But that way I can tell Wes what was on it and get him a DMV handbook to read through.

So.. Epic Fail.  Rened a U-Haul.  Drove to Charleston.  Waved at each other through the hull.  Decided not to get it.  On the way back now.  On the upside, I have a U-Haul til 3pm tomorrow.

Provided I can find a truck to get it home …
This is the boat Wes and I are getting.  Like I said, I need to find a truck to pull her home with.  But provided I can do that, she’s ours.  I’ll be on my way to Charleston, SC later today with Chris.

This should make for an interesting trip.  We still have yet to see the true condition she’s in.  The guy that’s getting rid of her kept stressing how much work she needs and how we better know what we’re doing.  Hopefully, we can figure out what we’re doing really fast.

I’m really hoping she doesn’t need much (or any) hull work.  Same goes for the engine.  Seems to be ideal for us though as long as we can fix her up.  We’ve already picked out the name (if I haven’t mentioned in past posts):  Money Pit.  We were especially excited to find this one because it comes with a  trailer.

Well, more pictures will be up once we get her home and get a good look at it.  I think we still need to find somewhere to put her though….

So our original road trip to the land of Canadia had to be canceled due to funding… on my part .  But, alas, good news is here!  Wes and I have found our Free Yacht and plan to go pick it up this Tuesday provided the guy follows through.

I somehow managed to work it out so my friend Chris can come along.  This will be a HUGE help since my poor little Dodge Ram won’t be able to pull such a large boat.  He, apparently, has a truck perfectly capable of doing so.

Wes and I do have a few worries about the boat though.  The guy seems to stress that it needs A LOT of work… I wonder what that entails.  He said he doesn’t know the condition of the engine.  Hopefully that means it ran and he just hasn’t put it in the water to start it and it’ll start right up for us.  As unlikely as that is, it would be wonderful.  I really hope the hull is fine.  Between me and Wes, the hull would be the only part we can really think of that neither of us have ANY idea what to do with.

Ideally, it would be in overall condition and just need a new interior.  I know that’s not going to happen, but I can dream.  We’ll find out Tuesday just how much work we think it’ll take .. and then probably plan on doubling that because we’ll find stuff wrong as we go along.