I don’t hunt other than with my camera; I’m strictly into recreational target shooting. I’ve shot more this year already than the past couple of years combined, and plan to do a lot more. Thankfully my accuracy with a handgun doesn’t appear to have suffered. There’s no replacement for practice, however…I am getting plenty of that!
When asked if a resolution in the state legislature along the lines of the Mathern/Kretschmar Pacifism Resolution was being considered, Van Possum indicated, “…that’s certainly a possibility. What better way to demonstrate support for our citizens than to get them out of harm’s way? Staying in North Dakota will not work and is not worth the price.”
Van Possum continued: “The list of atrocities committed in North Dakota include: an asphyxiated newborn in December, the high profile killings of two college coeds in Minot and Valley City, the beating to death of a man in Grand Forks in October, and the April slaying of a Sykeston couple in which their home was burned to the ground in an effort to conceal the crime. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Even now, the local news is reporting a possible kidnapping in central North Dakota. In August, someone hit a young man in the head and tried to run him over with a pickup. Obviously North Dakota is not safe for North Dakotans. We need to keep our citizens safe. We support North Dakotans, just not their mission. It’s time to bring them home…er, well, somewhere safe, anyway.”
When not busy fighting to end all fighting, many of the ND Peace folks keep busy by forming an endless array of coalitions, councils, and other “dot orgs” to champion such causes such as deviant sexual practices and preferences, pseudo-peace through capitulation to all enemies of freedom, and the worship of the Earth rather than its creator. Populating these organizations, attending the occasional protest and/or drum circle, and standing in black in front of the capitol keep many of them too busy to find a productive place in society. “But we care,” stressed Van Possum, “and that’s the important part.”
While they concede that our presence in North Dakota is unlikely to diminish any time soon, the peaceniks vow to remain resolute. “There’s no giving up on giving up,” Van Possum said. “It takes courage to stand up for running away.”
(I didn’t have time for a new April Fool’s joke, so I decided to recycle a little satire from an earlier post. It doesn’t take an intellectual giant to make these people look silly. They do 99% of the work themselves.)
There are quite a few local guys who spike up their tires and race on the ice every winter. We plowed a course on a frozen body of water, put up cones to mark the corners, and then went nuts. Every now and then the racing would stop, people would grab shovels, and we’d go groom the corners. Those spikes shred the ice in a hurry, and we’d get drifts of ice in the corners that needed to be cleared for better traction. But it had to be kept secret…why?
The particular property we were using is privately owned. We had permission from the owner to be there, it was an invite only event, and that’s the way it has to stay. The reason is to protect the gracious landowner from a lawsuit should somebody come out uninvited, injure themselves, and suddenly decide it wasn’t their fault. It’s a shame, but in these 50 United Litigious States we live in, it’s a fact of life.
It’s a lot like the off-road course east of town on the MME hill. It’s marked No Trespassing, but for certain folks it’s open for use, as long as we keep a signed waver in the filing cabinet in the trucking company office. For most of us it’s a no-brainer…we try to go as fast as we can on a particular piece of dirt or ice, and any consequences belong solely to the rider. Sadly, many people don’t think that way, and for that reason a lot of fun has to be kept within a tightly knit group of riders.
Okay, I’m back. This innocent looking street holds a real “whee” at the end, so it’s no surprise that people discovered it and treat it like an amusement ride. It’ll put your heart in your throat right quick! This street is a long upward slope, but it drops off pretty good on the other side.
The bottom of this photo has snow on the roadway, otherwise you’d see hundreds of scrapes as cars hit the dip at the end of the block. Whether it’s for drainage or speed control I don’t know; but apparently people are still hitting it with some gusto. Just as the road falling away will bring your heart into your stomach, piling into this dip will drop it back into place!
This post is kinda for the “insiders” who know where Thrill Hill is. You see, I’m not going to tell you…that would be encouraging you to try it, and quite frankly it’s dangerous. While it’s fun even at legal speeds, for some reason no mere mortal can resist going much faster. I like my readers, I’m certainly not going to send them to their doom! I need you folks.
Before I got my license, I was a passenger in a car that flew (quite literally) over this hill at speeds that would probably have cost the driver his license. Later on in life, my friend Tony and I explored it on our motorcycles and scared ourselves silly – there’s not much keeping motorcycles from going airborne, we discovered – and I haven’t done anything reckless on it in many, many years. I guess now I think like an adult, a dad, and a homeowner.
So if you want to find it, you’re on your own. If you’ve got your own Thrill Hill stories, I’d love to hear about them.
This statue is in an area of very heavy traffic, yet I had forgotten about it entirely. I stumbled upon it by accident while running errands Saturday. Can you identify it?
In the summer I take frequent trips down this road to the river bottoms, and I’m not alone. Sometimes I’ll take the truck, sometimes my dirt bike. It’s fun and there are plenty of photo opportunities down there. But when those ruts fill with snow? No way! I’m no stranger to offroading in deep, crusty snow, but this is a recipe for a chilly walk home.
The driver of the Jeep you see down the road a ways was having a grand old time, and even did something I’d never seen before: he hung a hard right and ventured off into the wilderness. I don’t know if he ever drove out of it, but to me that seemed like the craziest idea in recent off-roading memory. The fields on either side are full of fallen trees and soft, sandy soil…the perfect combination for even a big 4×4 to become hopelessly stuck. I hope they made it out okay.
Once the snow’s gone and the ground dries out I’ll be out on this road again. If you’re gutsy and have a truck, you may want to try it! But do so at your own risk.
It’s those little bits of unusual activity that make life, and work, fun. I once got paid very well by ESPN to just sit on the SportsCenter set while they aimed the lights and set the cameras, drinking free Powerade and Red Bull. Or sitting in an isolated room, trying to capture the right sound of someone’s feet being dragged. The hydraulics and air-wrench sound you hear at the end of the Northwest Tire commercials? That was in my garage. I bet I did two dozen takes of that sound!
No matter what the job, there are always cool little deviations from the routine that help break the monotony. If you ever have one of those fleeting moments where you think, “I can’t believe I’m getting paid for this!” go ahead and savor them a little. It makes up for the boring days that are bound to come along in any job.
One’s first impression of a “race tire” might be that it’s super sticky. Not at first; in fact, race tires are harder than street tires until they get hot due to high speed and extreme cornering. It’s unlikely you’ll ever see a race tire get hot enough on the street to look like this one, especially on North Dakota roads. I’ve gotten street tires close, but that’s a different matter.
The rubber balled up on the edges is also normal; it’s the balled-up gummy rubber on the edges that helps with traction at extreme lean, when I’m dragging my knee on the ground. The track surface at the edge of the racing line will typically have lots of little flung rubber balls on it.
Once these tires do get up to temperature on the track, though, they’re sticky like you wouldn’t believe. One time at Brainerd I crashed in the super tight corner nicknamed the “Bus Stop,” because that’s where everybody gets off at one time or another. While we pushed my bike through the gravel trap to transport it back to the pits, gravel rocks the size of quarters were stuck to the tire like sprinkles on a donut. Now THAT is a sticky tire!
I know this post didn’t really have a local theme to it, but I’ve really been pining for the track lately. Having a baby on the way really has me doubtful about returning to racing in the future, although I’m just about bursting with the need to turn some hard laps!
Favicon Plugin made by Alesis