We got here last night, tomorrow is Al’s service. I hate the circumstances but I love being with my whole family. It had been almost six years since I was up here and maybe fourteen years since we were all together…
The more new things I learn about Al, the more I realize what a loss it was that we were never close. Every “surprising” fact and story fits right in with what I thought I knew of him. We would have made great friends.
Albert didn’t make it through the day. All weekend, all that I could think about was how awful this must be for my three other cousins. Last weekend they laid their father to rest and next weekend they’ll be doing the same for their elder brother. I can’t begin to imagine their pain and I cry for their loss.
My dad called just as I was about to make a stop on my way home from work.
“Your Aunt’s ex-husband died about a week and a half ago.”
No surprise that I’m getting that news a little late. I never knew him and he wasn’t well loved by the family he left behind. His funeral notice failed to mention that he was survived by my aunt and their children.
“And the really bad news is that at the funeral your cousin Albert collapsed from a double aneurism.”
We weren’t close — I’ve spent nearly my entire life at least 1,000 miles away and he was about 14 years my senior — but he was family and I liked him. He was my gay New Yorker author cousin. I was a bit surprised that he went to the funeral, so far as I knew they’d never reconciled after he came out and I would imagine that it was not an easy decision for him to go.
“The doctors just declared him brain dead and they are going to pull the plug over the weekend.”
Whoa.
“Please stop smoking. There’s nothing worse than having to bury your kid.”
The stop I was making on the way home was to pick up some nicotine patches. For real.
Resisted the urge to tell him that some idiot Miami driver will take me out on my motorcycle long before smoking-related cancer or my inherited health risks have the chance to get me…
Albert, I pray that you will rest in peace, hope that you had the chance to make amends with your father, and wish that we’d had the chance to know each other better.
Saturday was a busy day for putting stuff on the motorcycle. Finished mounting the new Coocase S48 topcase. Went to Walmart to hunt for wiring supplies and lucked into finding a Slime Power Sport Smart Spair kit. This is much smaller than the kit I had been carrying — the compressor will actually fit under my seat — and it came with a bunch of SAE adapters, an SAE cable, and an SAE terminal.
Installed the SAE terminal. Ran the SAE cable under the gas tank to the under-seat area. Then I sacrificed an SAE adapter to use its connector to power a Fuseblock, which I then wired up to the Coocase to power the alarm / keyless entry / brake light.
May not sound like much but that consumed most of the daylight hours.
Tonight I installed the electrification kit in my new Bags-Connection Daypack II tankbag. Bags-Connection has a really slick line of bags that use a quick-release system that mounts to the ring around the gas cap and keeps the bag off the tank itself, and provides power for electronics within the bag through the mount. I’d already had the mount on my bike from a previous bag that was too big for my bike so this was just installing the corresponding parts on the new bag.
Before I go for my Sunday morning ride I’ll add a 12v cigarette socket to the bag. This will only take a moment thanks to Posi-Lock connectors, which I now believe to be just about the best thing ever.
The bike is now about 75% prepped for my April road trip. I’ve got new 90-degree valve stems on the way so that checking / adjusting the tire pressure isn’t such a pain, I’ll be ordering new tires within the next couple of weeks, and I still have to figure out a better way of powering my GPS and radar detector…
The new jacket arrived just in time for the first cold front to hit us. I rode with it on all of the coldest days and it feels like it should be good down to around 40F or so. Snow in the northeast delayed the rest of my motorcycle parts but they finally arrived on Monday. Got the old topcase and rack removed, and the new rack installed. Tuesday night I’ll work on the new topcase and tankbag.
My Lenovo U150 shipped out on Monday. Can’t wait for it to get here! From the outside it looks like any other netbook, but with the SU7300 and 4GB of DDR3 it ought to be capable of doing some real work. I will probably end up using it at home and work to replace my Windows 7 virtual machines, which are damned slow under VMware Fusion.
I’ve got my hotel booked for the weekend in Helen. Have begun to firm up my plans for the following week. It’s all coming together, soon I will have nothing left to do but wait…
In the great “iPad vs Netbook / Ultra-portable” debate, I’m siding with the Lenovo U150 — Intel SU7300 version. I’m not anti-iPad. Well, except for the ridiculous name. I just can’t think of a reason why I should buy one instead of a netbook.
I already have an iPhone. I love it for the things that it does and when I’m on the road it is usually my primary computing device. Aside from offloading photos from my camera, the iPad hasn’t promised to do anything new that I care about. It is just… bigger. Possibly too big. Since I don’t own a man purse the iPad is no more convenient to carry around than an ultra-portable.
I do have a need for another device. Something that doesn’t take up much room on my motorcycle, costs less than my personal Macbook Pro, and can run a few programs that will never exist for the iPhone OS — like the Garmin program for planning routes and downloading them to my GPS. I wish that Apple offered such a device running OS X on an Intel chip, but they don’t, so Lenovo gets my Apple Tablet money and soon I will be using Windows for more than just syncing my Zune HD.
Back in September, I picked up three sets of $25 boxer briefs to help stay comfortable in the Florida heat while riding my motorcycle. They’ve proven themselves to be perfectly suited to that purpose, plus I’ve survived two trips to Disney World with zero chaffing, and they just plain feel great.
I ordered five more pairs tonight. No more cotton underwear.
