The Waiting is the Hardest Part.......

Well, here it is Wednesday evening already and I'm still trying to find time to do my weekly Sunday evening entry. I've been stressing about not being able to keep to somewhat of a schedule when I realized....Hey, I do this for the fun of it, it's not a paying job so schedules be damned.....I'll write when I can find the time to sit down for awhile and stay awake.

Ok, now that I got that off my chest......last weekend started off kinda rough. Due to the fact that I was too lazy to pull the battery out of the motorcycle last fall when I should've...I was in the market for a replacement battery Friday afternoon. I'd tried to revive the old battery several times over the last couple weeks, but it was dead within two days of a charge each time so I gave it up and headed for the Yamaha Dealer down by Holland. I figured a battery would be an easy enough purchase to make, but when I told the guy behind the counter what I wanted he was unable to produce the particular model I needed and then proceeded to tell me that there was a battery shortage and he might not have one before the end of May! Say What?!? I've got a $9,000 bike that won't go for lack of a 100 dollar part?? Sounds like one of those "For want of a nail the battle was lost" kinda deals......

So, we headed back up 31 for Grand Haven, somewhat disgusted and not really paying attention to our miles per hour reading when all of a sudden, sitting right there with the radar gun pointed in our direction was a big ole blue state police car. Damnit! I zoomed by him and knew I was screwed. It didn't take him long to catch up with us and flip on the lights. I pulled over and was busy pulling out the proof of insurance paperwork when he reached the window. He asked that age old question......"do you know how fast you were going?" to which I answered 60 / 65?.....to which he replied...."try 69". Rats, just my luck to get one actually paying attention. So he took my info and headed back to his car to fill out the paperwork while we sat in silence and waited. My wife showed a great deal of wisdom and restraint by not saying " I told you so" during the interlude. He was back by the truck window in just a couple minutes and handed me a ticket and an envelope to put my money in so I could just send the check in at my convenience. Golly, they think of everything.......I said thanks and thought for a second about cracking a joke, but young, bald guys in uniform don't generally possess much in the way of a sense of humor so I thought better of saying anything and instead fired up the truck and headed on down the road, a couple minutes older, none the wiser and 95 bucks poorer. Money management has never been one of my strong suits.

Saturday morning started early this past weekend. At 5am I was being woken up by my lovely wife....no, not for that you pervert.....get your mind out of the gutter. She was waking me up so I could join her and Rianne out in the driveway to watch the Lyrid meteor shower. Ri is currently taking an Astronomy class and attending this celestial shower was an assignment. You can't say we're not supportive of her educational needs.....We all stood out there in the early morning darkness for about 20 minutes and counted 2 meteors before clouds rolled in and gave us an excuse to throw in the towel and head inside. Now normally I'd have headed back to bed for a couple more hours but we were due to head back up to Whiskey Creek to talk with Mark about financing our retirement property ( oh oh, more money mangement) so I just stayed up and did some website stuff until it was time to go.

We got to the Creek about 9 and Mark was there waiting for us. He wanted to go right out to the lots to show us exactly where the property lines were. We discussed where we wanted to put the trailer and out buildings and eventually the cabin and then with the rain coming down we headed back to his office to fill out paperwork for the next hour. After we'd signed and dated everything necessary we shook hands and headed out the door. By now it was almost 11 and the sun had come out so we went back out to "our" lots and talked about all the possibilities. I shot a series of pics in a 360° format that I'll eventually piece together and put online somewhere around here. After a period of pipe dreaming we decided to head in the general direction of home with a couple stops along the way for that elusive critter known as a motorcycle battery. Rather than continue with the great battery search story here, I've put the rest of that diatribe in my newest blog "Rants & Raves" which should be online soon.

Anyhow, we got back home about mid-afternoon and after running a couple errands around town I plopped down into the recliner and made up for the 2+ hours of sleep I'd lost earlier in the day. Eventually I regained conciousness and decided to pull the '56 out of the garage and go down to the beach to shoot some pics of the car and the sunset.

Sunday was a stay home and get something constructive done day.......so, after making breakfast for myself and my bride I got busy downstairs in the den and spent the entire day, yes, the entire day....cleaning, organizing and reclaiming my sanctuary from the effects of house renovation. By the time it was time to call it a day I'd gotten things back to a livable state and made it safe once again to walk from my desk to the steps upstairs, in the dark, without stumbling over a stack of boxes and debris. Now it's just a matter of maintenance. Aint that life.

TC

P.S. Thanks to Tom Petty for the title for this article.