Potentially the longest thread in history...

[kmanmx]

If I had land to ride a dirt bike I would, but I refuse to ride on these streets.

I've been having a lot of "self awareness" moments the past month or so. Something as somebody not particularly young should have done a while back, at least before I bought my house. Fixing a lot of problems and mistakes. Realized a lot of errors I was making in parenting, had a loooong talk with my gf on the couch (about 4 hours) presenting our errors, the consequences of them, and how to fix the damage we've done. Bunch of stuff like that.
Few weeks ago I decided to take a full stop break from gaming. Didn't even turn my PC on for a full week. Realized I was getting extremely frustrated with anything I was doing in games, had very little to 0 interest in actually playing, and just generally only doing it because "it was the norm". Noticed myself actually relaxing more and it was nice. Instead of sitting down to watch TV while eating and quickly moving back to my PC when I'm done I'd sit there for a couple of hours lounging on the couch without thinking "I could be playing a game right now instead or fixing a PC issue". Instead of blankly staring at a screen wondering what to do for hours I was doing other stuff getting things done. That week I bought a bike and went outside. Started picking my music back up. After that week I decided it would be for the better to just set it aside and slowly drop it. Have a relationship with my children etc.

I was kind of concerned about riding on the road before I started due to other plebian ****ty drivers, but honestly it's not that bad. When you look into the reasons why motorcyclists die so often, a large part of it is the rider being at fault in the first place. Going too fast, taking a bend badly, pulling out without looking, filtering too fast, not wearing the correct gear etc etc. There is quite a lot you can do to make yourself much more likely to never crash, you just have to ride defensively all the time and soon it becomes second nature. When the light goes green, check both ways for red light runners anyway. If you have never been down a certain road before, take it real slow until you are familiar with it. Stop towards the side of cars and check your mirrors so you can scoot out of the way quickly if it looks like you're going to be rear ended.

I've not got much experience, but in the year i've been riding i've done about 7000 miles across most of the UK and I havn't had a single near death experience. I've had a small handful of times where i've had to break firmly, but nothing crazy. And once or twice which were my fault, and I took the corner too hot. I really don't feel unsafe when i'm riding, because I take a lot of care and time to ride safely and ride for the ****ty drivers around me so they can't **** me over.

Yeah sometimes **** happens and you can't do **** all about it. One day a car might come around a bend on the wrong side of the road at 50mph and go straight into me. I will probably die. But, the same thing could still happen if I was in a car and give me pretty serious life threatening injuries, and the same kind of thing could happen everyday when I am walking to the shops at work. Plenty of busy fast roads, would just take one driver not paying attention to mount the kerb and wipe me out. Selling my first bike was the worst decision I have ever made, and I am so glad I bought another one. It doesn't even have to cost you much, you can pick up a great fun safe bike for $2000, which is all I spent. For me at least riding is amazingly fun and enjoyable and so any risks are more than worth it. I guess it depends whether there is anything else in your life which gives you the same enjoyment, if there is then it's probably not worth it. But for me there isn't, it's the only thing I really really enjoy.

That's how I look at it all anyway.

 

[PP Mguire]

I was starting to get into the idea of riding after Chase was telling me about it and 2 of my coworkers were up my *** constantly (because I bitch about parking at work so much). My other coworker going to Australia almost convinced his wife to let him ride too. Then, one of those 2 guys took a massive hit and we all visited him in the hospital. That turned me away from it completely again. He has the footage from the other drivers dashcam, 100% the other drivers fault running a red light. All year round I see a ton of riders because of where I work on the highway. Some of those dudes don't even care if it's 20 degrees outside, they are still on their hogs. Every day almost I see some idiot driver almost hitting a bike rider because they aren't paying attention. Can't do it.

Edit: Friend on FB just got her bike back from being fixed and literally the day after got hit again.

 

[kmanmx]

I was starting to get into the idea of riding after Chase was telling me about it and 2 of my coworkers were up my *** constantly (because I bitch about parking at work so much). My other coworker going to Australia almost convinced his wife to let him ride too. Then, one of those 2 guys took a massive hit and we all visited him in the hospital. That turned me away from it completely again. He has the footage from the other drivers dashcam, 100% the other drivers fault running a red light. All year round I see a ton of riders because of where I work on the highway. Some of those dudes don't even care if it's 20 degrees outside, they are still on their hogs. Every day almost I see some idiot driver almost hitting a bike rider because they aren't paying attention. Can't do it.

Edit: Friend on FB just got her bike back from being fixed and literally the day after got hit again.

Fair enough. It looks like the US has a higher crash rate than the UK so maybe it's worse over there.

However on the other side of things, you have a **** load of cheap trucks in america and about a bazillion square miles of unused land. Could always buy a dirt bike, chuck it in the back of an old truck, drive 20 miles to the middle of nowhere and rag around on the dirt bike ? that would be really fun. I've always wished I could do that here, but there is basically no free/unowned land in the entirety of the UK that you can legally ride a dirt bike on. If it's not a paved public road with cars on it, then it has a gate and padlock instead 'cus some farmer 10 miles away owns it.

 

[PP Mguire]

Fair enough. It looks like the US has a higher crash rate than the UK so maybe it's worse over there.

However on the other side of things, you have a **** load of cheap trucks in america and about a bazillion square miles of unused land. Could always buy a dirt bike, chuck it in the back of an old truck, drive 20 miles to the middle of nowhere and rag around on the dirt bike ? that would be really fun. I've always wished I could do that here, but there is basically no free/unowned land in the entirety of the UK that you can legally ride a dirt bike on. If it's not a paved public road with cars on it, then it has a gate and padlock instead 'cus some farmer 10 miles away owns it.

I would have to drive pretty far out to do that. Anything remotely around DFW is guaranteed to be owned by somebody with a shotgun.

Edit: Also I think you highly underestimate the amount of *******s driving while staring at their phones here.

 

[kmanmx]

I would have to drive pretty far out to do that. Anything remotely around DFW is guaranteed to be owned by somebody with a shotgun.

Oh lol.

I ****ing hate not having anywhere in this country where you can go and just be alone for a day. Seriously you can drive 7 hours to the middle of scotland, drive down a tiny muddy rocky sideroad for 10 miles that only 4x4's can get down. Get out of your car, start walking up a mountain or hill and you are GUARANTEED to come across several other people within about 10 minutes cycling or hiking or whatever. Just too many god damn people here. Looking on Wikipedia and Texas has 40 per per square kilometer vs 400 people per square kilometer for the UK

I need to go on vacation to the US or Canada for a month in the middle of ****ing nowhere and just chillout on my own or with a friend.

 

[PP Mguire]

Oh lol.

I ****ing hate not having anywhere in this country where you can go and just be alone for a day. Seriously you can drive 7 hours to the middle of scotland, drive down a tiny muddy rocky sideroad for 10 miles that only 4x4's can get down. Get out of your car, start walking up a mountain or hill and you are GUARANTEED to come across several other people within about 10 minutes cycling or hiking or whatever. Just too many god damn people here. Looking on Wikipedia and Texas has 40 per per square kilometer vs 400 people per square kilometer for the UK

I need to go on vacation to the US or Canada for a month in the middle of ****ing nowhere and just chillout on my own or with a friend.

Well Texas is almost double the size of your whole country lol.

If you came here I know a few spots we could go. The REALLY crappy thing is my ex's family used to own a ranch about 2 hours south of me with about 300 acres of property. Had an off road rally course, deer hunting sites, swimming lake, hiking trails, ATV areas, etc. Also had a 3 car 2 story garage annex that basically had a completely separate house upstairs for guests. They sold it for 2.9 million dollars or somewhere around there. Even not being with her those of us above a certain age bracket associated with the family could go out there....at least that's what I was told. I always wanted to make a decent amount of money and go dirt biking or **** car rallying out there. It's a shame that ****head kids within the family screwed it up for everybody.

I know where you could go horseback riding too. Quite a few gun ranges around me, Turner Falls north of me, iFargle south of me with his fancy SpaceX, come during this time of the year and go Nader chasing, yup lots to do. Come around the 4th of July and could party like we're not old. Got an indoor skydiving place around me too. Drag races galore, street racing on 820, if I wasn't such a hermit I know lots of fun **** to do here in DFW alone. Oh and of course Quakecon in August. I got a spare PC you could use, Darrion would love to play Rocket League with you again.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Past few weeks I've been gaming less and less. Friends aren't too happy but I'm slowly dropping gaming and it's doing some good. Will probably start selling off things after a few months too. Think I'm going to take up another hobby like I did with PCs but not sure what I want to do yet.

Skateboarding is pretty fun and something you can do with the kids, gets you out and active. There's usually quite a few young kids at the parks when I go so might find some friends for them there too. I'm thoroughly enjoying getting better at it with my bros, also teaching my little sister and my younger bro's gf now too

edit: oh yeah, also started keeping quails recently not sure if you're allowed to where you are, but they're 1% maintenance (check water every 2nd day, shake feeder while there, check for eggs) but quite nice to have around cause they're beautifully coloured and sound like mini chickens

Oh lol.

I ****ing hate not having anywhere in this country where you can go and just be alone for a day. Seriously you can drive 7 hours to the middle of scotland, drive down a tiny muddy rocky sideroad for 10 miles that only 4x4's can get down. Get out of your car, start walking up a mountain or hill and you are GUARANTEED to come across several other people within about 10 minutes cycling or hiking or whatever. Just too many god damn people here. Looking on Wikipedia and Texas has 40 per per square kilometer vs 400 people per square kilometer for the UK

I need to go on vacation to the US or Canada for a month in the middle of ****ing nowhere and just chillout on my own or with a friend.

Australia has parties called bush doofs where everyone drives ~2 hours away from the city into the bush for a 2-3 day event and setup lasers/stages/bands/fires/etc with huge speaker arrays that you can hear pretty easy when you start getting within ~5-10km of it they're *technically* illegal, but just goes to show you can already get away with that just 2 hours from the city without getting busted. It's pretty easy to be alone here if you want

 

[PP Mguire]

Skateboarding is pretty fun and something you can do with the kids, gets you out and active. There's usually quite a few young kids at the parks when I go so might find some friends for them there too. I'm thoroughly enjoying getting better at it with my bros, also teaching my little sister and my younger bro's gf now too

edit: oh yeah, also started keeping quails recently not sure if you're allowed to where you are, but they're 1% maintenance (check water every 2nd day, shake feeder while there, check for eggs) but quite nice to have around cause they're beautifully coloured and sound like mini chickens



Australia has parties called bush doofs where everyone drives ~2 hours away from the city into the bush for a 2-3 day event and setup lasers/stages/bands/fires/etc with huge speaker arrays that you can hear pretty easy when you start getting within ~5-10km of it they're *technically* illegal, but just goes to show you can already get away with that just 2 hours from the city without getting busted. It's pretty easy to be alone here if you want

I actually picked BMXing back up a few weeks ago. But with a screwed up body not too smart to do freestyle like I used to. Unfortunately kids have been grounded the past 2 weeks so no riding.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

I did the first proper honey harvest from my hive yesterday, ended up getting ~11kg :O stoked! And we only took 5 frames (there's 2 boxes with 8 frames each as well as the brood box). Next harvest should be 1/2 each box so 8 frames total, based off this one I'm expecting a yield of 18kg+

The vid below is one frame, and there's two sides per frame.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GFK2-N7ZnYzyJePpJY5Db-sDQYUjaD5l

 

[Trotter]

I did the first proper honey harvest from my hive yesterday, ended up getting ~11kg :O stoked! And we only took 5 frames (there's 2 boxes with 8 frames each as well as the brood box). Next harvest should be 1/2 each box so 8 frames total, based off this one I'm expecting a yield of 18kg+

The vid below is one frame, and there's two sides per frame.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GFK2-N7ZnYzyJePpJY5Db-sDQYUjaD5l

Neat. I had a great-uncle who kept bees. Every time we went to visit he would give us a quart of fresh raw honey, always with a chunk of comb in it. Nothing beats honey like that.