600 + 50 = ONE

What? Anyway, I left the house at 9am this morning with $600 in my pocket and started my adventure. I had to go to GA to pick up a little Honda XR50 I got off ebay, which was a really good deal. It's a 2002. I realized several things doing that today before getting back home at 7pm:

1. When you spill chocolate milk on water proof seats (which my jeep has) it doesn't hurt the seats at all, but when your cell phone is in the seat (a very expensive pocketPC phone...) it smudges the screen and prevents the camera from spinning around and gets your ear wet when your put it up to hear for the first time after the spill. And the fact that the inside of my Jeep is Rhino-lined really worked well today too.

2. A Jeep Wrangler is not a long distance travel vehicle. It's great for off-road and around town driving, but for going 600 miles - in one day..not good. Earlier I mentioned my seats were waterproof, notice I did not mention they were super comfortable (or very comfortable for that matter ;) ) .

3. PayDay candy bars are not nearly as good as they used to be. 3 bites and mine was in the trash. I'm not sure if it has to do with me eating less sweets and not liking them as much or if it was the fact that I was craving something sweet and it was very salty. Anyway, into the trash it went and I'll not buy one again.

4. Listening to the radio really loud when it's static-filled and not exactly on the right station doesn't sound as bad in a Wrangler going 75mph as it does when it's going 50mph. No, I do not have a hard top and no, I don't always reach over to scan the stations. Sooner or later one comes in clear for a while, and since you're primarily hearing wind - it doesn't really matter anyway. But it does allow you time to think - only problem is, on a 600 mile road trip, I ran out of things to think about... ;)

5. You can never have too many ratchet straps. I took 4 with me to strap the bike onto my luggage carrier for the bike and had to use 5. The guy I bought the bike off of let me have an extra...which brings me to number 6...

6. My luggage carrier for my Jeep is really not meant for motorcycles, it's meant for luggage. I guess that's why it has the name "luggage carrier".

7. Gas is ~20 cents cheaper per gallon in GA than here. No idea why, but to make sure I got the most bang for my buck, I filled up 2x in that state - well, really 1.5 times, i just put as much in as I could the second time before I left there.

8. I'm not too big to get on a stock XR50 and ride it. Really ride it - smallest bike I've ever been on.

I think Luke is really going to like this, and Libby too for that matter. You can adjust the throttle and everything (so none of you moms have to worry too much) which takes the edge off the speed. Luke's body armor (plastic chest protector) came today and his helmet will be here monday - i think his boots will be here then too. So he'll be safe and set. I'm not going to let him ride without the helmet. So, this weekend - he'll just have to watch me show him what it can do - oh well, one of us has to use it... ;)

Lisa has been working with the ONE campaign (www.one.org) and got our city involved (she's like the local rep for it) and you can read more about it on her blog Saturday. I'm just mentioning it b/c I'm proud of her for what she's doing with it and getting stuff done with it and having other people become excited and really start to help out.

Last but not least, we are going to a closed showing of Narnia - the lion witch and wardrobe in the morning and I am super excited. We're taking Luke (he's only heard the book(s) 10 times and seen the original movies 2 or 3 times) and he's excited too. We're all hoping that the animation and SpecFX are good. I'm realy hoping they do the series and not just this one movie, there's so much potential there.

l8r