Memorial day walk...partie deux

Few more pics....

Memorial day walk....

Had a nice walk this morning around the neighborhood lake. Here are a few pics....

The Outback

Today I rode the Guzzi north with a couple of workmates. We went to lunch at the Outback Crab Shack, west of St. Augustine. Andrew on his '07 Triumph Tiger and Bob on his '06 Harley Davidson Heritage Softail. Great fellas to ride with.

Micanopy

Yesterday I rode my Moto Guzzi Breva 1100 from Deland, FL to Micanopy, FL. Micanopy is Florida's oldest inland settlement. St. Augustine being the oldest, but it is on the coast.

It was pretty hot outside, getting up to 91 degrees according to the temp readout on my bike. Micanopy was not much to write home about, a real small town made up of antique shops mostly, but it was a fun ride. On my way there I stopped to see my friend/co-worker Steve at the Motocross track. He rides a pretty neat Kawasaki 450. It was about 180 miles round trip and my rump was sore when I got home. Need to get used to riding longer distances on the new bike I guess.

The ride itself was mostly uneventful...however, on highway 40, which cuts through the Ocala National forest, it is mostly a double-yellow line no passing road. In a couple spots however, there is a 2 mile or so long extra passing lane. Well, as luck would have it I was stuck behind a semi-trailer and several cars, putting along at 50 mph or thereabouts. So, I see a sign for "passing zone-2 miles" and get geared up to blow past as many as possible when my opportunity presents itself. I eye up the traffic ahead of me as the passing zone approaches and then behind me and suddenly what appears to be two rather large cruisers rapidly appear in my rear views. They seem to be in a hurry. Looks like white half helmets...hmmm, could be police? No, these guys both just have t-shirts on.

Okay, good to go, the passing lane appears and I scoot into it and blast on the throttle and before I know it I have attained about 90 mph and am well past traffic and having left the big cruisers way back in my rear-view.....so I drop my speed to about 70 mph and these big cruisers come barreling up behind me very rapidly then get to the right of me to pass me on the right(we are back down to one lane now) so being courteous, I get into the leftmost part of the lane and allow then to get by me....WELLLL.......as they are passing me the first one turns his head left and stares me down for a second or two...then scoots zooms ahead of me with his riding buddy. Both t-shirts said "Volusia County Sheriff"!!! Yup, these were police Harleys. I thought for sure I was going to get pulled over, but either they were off duty or had something better to do or maybe did not have jurisdiction (I was in a different county by this time).

Anyway, I had myself a good, relieved laugh after that....got lucky this time!

Saturday night live....

I picked up my old work pal Jim last night and we went down to Orlando Brewing Company for the first time. It is Orlando's only brewery, well other than the crappy chain Hops, and is located in an old warehouse area near downtown Orlando. Kind of a big metal building which used to be a sheet-metal plant I guess.

So anyway it was very plain on the outside and maybe 15-20 cars in the lot. We went inside and basically they converted one big chunk of the warehouse into a separate room with a bar and a stage and some tables/chairs. It was pretty plain, but I liked it. There were maybe 20 or so people there when we arrived at 7:30. They had nine of their own Orlando brews on tap and maybe 10 others. I tried a sampler of four of them and then settled on a couple I really liked, the Pale Ale and the India Pale Ale (IPA). Around 8 or so the live music started. Some guy playing acoustic guitar along with a drummer. He was really good. There were two more bands after that...just little 2-3 man bands. It was a fun time just jabbering with Jim and listening to music.

As the night went on the place got pretty crowded and people really seemed to be liking the music. Really good folks there too. Kind of a younger crowd...maybe upper 20's and 30's mostly. Not a pick up joint kind of place with women all made-up and dressed up or guys trying to pick them up....just a cool place to drink a beer and listen to music. Really neat.

Anyway, I got home prolly around 11....oh yeah, I almost forgot, this place does not have a kitchen but you can order food from local places and have it delivered there so we ordered a couple chicken samiches from some place called Johnny's Fillin Station. That took forever to arrive (like 70 minutes) but it was pretty good.

So, it was a fun night. I am glad I got out and did something.

http://www.orlandobrewing.com/

http://www.johnnysfillinstation.com/

Tired today.....

Had a hard time getting out of bed.....stopped at the grocery store and bought some ground coffee and a Starbucks white mocha. That was good...maybe will help me to get into gear. Prolly will be a long day...not too much to do. I do have one design spec to review for a coupla hours this a.m. At lunch I am gonna go with Tom from work whose last day here is today. Another one of the many who have been leaving for the competition of late. Looking forward to a nice walk tonight and a nice motorcycle ride down to Palm Bay (Melbourne) tomorrow. Weather is supposed to be nice all weekend. It has been really nce lately...upper 70's and sunny and not humid. Just about perfect. I did not want to stop walking last night. I have been falling asleep at night lately listening to a talk show host named Mark Levin. Kind of a conservative politically, but he is also very funny in a sarcastic way. Makes me laugh sometimes. It's good to laugh. Makes me feel better, at least for the moment.

I like Mexico so much, here are a few more pics!

Wanna go with me?...