Dirt bike update

The first trip for James out to a dirt bike park ended with a call from him later that day saying he was headed to Children’s hospital.  This was quickly followed with “it isn’t me dad, it’s my friend.”  OK, my heart can resume beating.  His friend had a crash that sent him over the handlebars and then the bike landed back on him dislocating his hip and severely bruising his arm.  He spent 2 days of his spring break in Children’s hospital and he will be in a wheelchair and walker for 6 weeks.  His baseball season is ruined, not to mention his spring break.  It really makes you think about whether I should allow this to go on any further.

Later in the week we took the dirt bike to the lake and he rode around down there a lot.  I still wonder if this will continue.  We keep pointing out that we are not a dirt bike family and we don’t live in a neighborhood where we can ride and we don’t own a farm where there is tons of room to cut loose.  Baseball is kicking in full speed next week as is golf team season for him.  I don’t think the dirt bike will be out of the garage for a while.

Oh, and by the way, we did buy the little guy one too.  What the hell are we doing?

New hobby comes to the Purcells

OK, I am not sure I am or was ready for this hobby. This is going to be expensive, I can tell. Our oldest son, James, Jr., has been pushing since he was about 6 to get a dirt bike. We have been resisting up until this past week. There are numerous problems with the Purcell family getting into dirt bikes and not the least of which is the fact that we live in a neighborhood with a strict neighborhood association. He can’t ride on the neighborhood trails, he can’t legally ride on the streets, none of the neighbors are going to like the noise, and he will be perceived as a troublemaker for getting one. Of course all of that is lost on a 14 year old who is dreaming of the freedom of the open trail.

He has been looking on Craigslist and eBay and CycleTrader for years and has been somewhat saving his money. I have reiterated the fact that he is a year and a half from needing to spend that money on a car. Not to be detered, he found a good buy on a 2003 Yamaha YZ-450F.

He found the bike on Craigslist about 60 miles north of town.  He and I rode up there to look at it and talk to the owner.  He had done his homework, spoken to the owner numerous times and schemed multiple scenarios for coming home with his prize.  The owner was a very nice 17 year old and had taken meticulous care of this bike.  He explained all of its issues and history.  I couldn’t ask for a better example of a situation to get started in this hobby.  The owner said that a 450 will last him well into adulthood, but may be a little much for starting out on.  I decided that he could make the purchase and home we went with our new toy.  Notice I said “our” there.

Mom is not excited by this at all for all of the reasons above, plus the fact that we have many other hobbies.  One of which already occupies a large space in the garage, but that is another story all together.  Several heated discussions (read: fights) ensued but she has come to see the light finally (read: capitulated).  James has ridden in the neighborhood behind us with his friend who has many dirt bikes and has been safe, smart and improving.  Today he is travelling with another dirt bike friend to Clanton to ride for the day on dirt bike trails with his friends family who all ride.

So, yesterday this neighbor behind us that has been riding for a long time decides he wants to sell his old 2001 50cc Beta mini dirt bike to my youngest son who is empowered by the success of his older brother in the entry to this new hobby.  Now Mom is not happy about this at all, but the price is right and it is a very well cared for Italian dirt bike with a single speed transmission and both brakes on the handle bars.  My bet is that we will end up with this one as well.  We will see.

Interesting trip to Seattle

An interesting thing happened on the way to Seattle…

It’s funny how many jokes begin that way, but truly it is a relatively funny story.  I had an early (7:30 AM) flight out of Birmingham on United headed to change planes in Denver on my way to Seattle.  We were having a freak cold snap for October and it was below freezing on October 28th.  As we got ready to push away from the terminal the pilot came on the speaker and announced that we had ice on the wings and tail and couldn’t leave until that was gone.  The only problem was that there was only one guy who had the knowledge of how to use the de-icer gear at the airport and he hadn’t made it in to work yet.  So, the pilot said that we were going to push away from the terminal and sit in the sun and hope that would melt the ice.  So, there we were a plane full of people literally watching ice melt on the wings.

After about a 1/2 hour the 1st officer actually opened the cockpit door, opened the main hatch door, dropped the stairs and walked outside the plane and looked at the wings and the tail.  He then came back in the plane and announced on the overhead speaker that we still had ice, but they had found someone to come from the other side of the airport and spray de-icer.

Another 1/2 hour passes and then a Delta de-icer truck pulls up and sprays the plane’s wings and tail.  We then proceeded to take off with the pilot claiming that “appropriate paper work” will be filed so that never happens again.

I don’t do many wine recommendations…

The Columbia Crest, Grand Estates Shiraz 2003

This particular wine was a spectacular find.  It is between $10 and $15 dollars at the store and is now one of my all time favorites.  It is a very full bodied Shiraz with a lot of oak flavor without being overpowering.  I would put it up against wines twice its’ price.  The bottle is a beautiful amber color with a real wood cork (which seems to be more and more rare).  The color is deep and there are many fruit notes to the taste.  I am not a wine snob, but this one knocked me out.  It is from Washington’s Columbia Valley and is what is called cap-punched.  This means that during the fermenting process the wine maker pushed the floating grapes, or cap, back down into the mix to release more flavor into the wine.

Save our summers

Why is summer break getting shorter and shorter?  Is it that families with both parents working are looking for government sponsored day care?  The effect on industries and businesses that count on children being out of school and families taking vacations is never considered when these changes are made.  Here is an interesting article about the problem and a potential solution that one Alabama lawmaker is proposing.

http://www.dailyhome.com/news/2008/dh-localnews-0302-scorona-8c01w3309.htm

The website referenced in the article:

www.savealabamasummers.org

Christmas product reviews continued

One product that has been a very pleasant surprise is the Microsoft Zune 30GB generation 1 that my oldest daughter got for Christmas.  The interface is fantastic and the sound quality from the included ear buds is better than most.  The software installs fairly easily and during the install updated to the latest version automatically.  The only function that we haven’t been able to get to work is the WiFi synch on the home network.  This isn’t a major problem and frankly I haven’t tried very hard to solve the problem yet.

The software interface for the library is great.  It is more of a collection tool than anything.  I am surprised that you can’t synch the device with Windows Media Player, but the Zune software is a slicker interface.  The Zune software doesn’t actually copy your music to another collection, but seems to just store information and location about your compatible media.

The movies that you want to transfer to the Zune must be converted to a supported format.  I downloaded a trial version of (insert name here) that seems to do the job very well and may be worth the purchase.  I have been converting from what ever the current source is to WMV with great success.

With a 30GB internal HD the device can hold almost the entire collection so you can be less discriminate of which files get moved over to your player.  The interface on the player has excellent support for album covers and multiple sorting methods so finding a song to play isn’t hard even with a large library.

Christmas Product Reviews continued

Another defective product that my oldest son received for Christmas was a set of Cobra PR-3850WX 2-way radios.  They felt like a solid product, but the only function that would work is the weather radio.  No matter what we did, we could not get either radio to transmit or receive anything other than weather radio.  I called the number for Cobra support in the front of the instruction manual.  The customer service rep that I spoke with was somewhat helpful but curt as well.  He promptly diagnosed the situation as the units are not communicating with each other…duh.  He instructed me to ship them back to their Chicago address for a free repair or replacement.  I will post what the ultimate outcome turns out to be.

UPDATE:

The radios were returned about 3 weeks later in perfect working order.  They work exactly like they should have when we got them.  I was very impressed with Cobra, and their customer service.  The radios are nice and have fantastic range.  The custom signals within each of the channels filters out other users.  My son greatly enjoys them and I can’t wait to test them at the ballpark or amusement park.

Christmas product reviews

Well, Christmas has come and gone and there were more product disappointments than usual this year.  I thought I would go over some of them in hopes that others might be able to benefit from our circumstances.

First on the list was a nice bicycle made by Pacific Cycle called the Dyno Spark.  Dyno is one of Pacific’s brands that it imports from China that is sold in the BMX and Mountain biking category.  According to their website,

DYNO has historically been known as a strong sub-brand of GT in the BMX and mountain bike categories, but is a stand-alone brand today.

  The bike seems well built and the major components are better than some other brands we looked at. Now I know this is not a Cannondale or a Raleigh, but it should be great for an 11 year old.  The first issue had to do with the handle bars being installed backward.  They were facing the right direction, but the tire and front fork were facing backward.  This was easy to fix and not the fault of the manufacturer.  The second issue was the rear brakes.  This model bike has dual disc brakes.  The front brakes needed some tuning but worked flawlessly.  The back brakes, however, would not let go of the disc after they were applied.  The bike comes with a very thorough user manual and I went through it to find out how they recommend tuning the disc brakes.  It was helpful and I found out more about bikes in general than I knew before.  I ended up calling Pacific on the 1-800 number listed in the front of the user manual.  The representative was extremely polite and said without hesitation that they would send me a new disc brake assembly at no charge.  The unit arrived 3 business days later and with a quick install works perfectly.  I was extremely pleased with their response and although disappointed that a bike would go out with a faulty part, they handled it very well and I would definitely buy another of their product brands.

more to come…

Introduction

“Nothing says Christmas like roasting lima beans over an old tire “- Jim Purcell