209 Miles to Matagorda
July 3, 2008 | 11:55 am | Blog, Photo Album | Places, The Man, Two Wheels | 0
C and I have been daydreaming of a multi-state motorcycle trip. It’s something both of us have always wanted to do, and now that we have a big person’s motorcycle we’ve been taking day trips and overnight trips just for the pure pleasure of being on the machine.
Last month, in the few days between C’s return home and our trip to Florida, we managed to take a seven-hour ride down to Matagorda and the Gulf, exploring country roads as we went.
The water wasn’t any nicer than Galveston, but 521 is a great little tree-lined shady highway with a few twists and turns and plenty of tiny red farmhouses along the way.
This month we hope to ride out to the Texas Hill Country, maybe stop near the Guadalupe River for a dip in the icy waters. It’s all part of our Great Texas Tour. Incidentally, if you’re planning your own Texas Tour, might I recommend two books? Day Trips from Houston and Weird Texas.
Wow. Things sure did get boring around here for a while. Sorry about that. More adventures to come soon.
Seven Moai of Ahu Akivi
June 5, 2008 | 9:22 am | Photo Album | Places | 0
Seven Moai of Ahu Akivi, originally uploaded by anoldent.
Texas United River Rally 2008
May 19, 2008 | 9:33 am | Photo Album | Two Wheels | 0
How much fun did I have this weekend?
I’ll post a full update when I get around to it.
P.S. Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!
Baseball fan
May 14, 2008 | 4:15 pm | Photo Album | El Perro | 0
Photo taken by Keefe Borden (a.k.a. VE) at last Sunday’s hash. Click to see more of his work.
Races, wrecks and wheelies
May 13, 2008 | 12:11 pm | Photo Album, Video | 2
Friday is my birthday and I am unnaturally excited about making my way down to Gruene and New Braunfels, TX, for the recently resuscitated Texas United River Rally. There will be scooting! And tubing! I have never been to the Guadalupe River. I am entering the last two years of my 20s! I am camping alone in my tent but will be surrounded by friends old and new.
Here is a collection of silly videos from the last rally that had no place to live, so I mashed them into one great movie instead.
Sandblast II from Brittanie on Vimeo.
Art Car sadness
May 12, 2008 | 12:14 am | Photo Album | Houston | 0
Tom Jones, curator at the Houston Art Car Museum, was killed early this morning, just a few hours after the annual Art Car Parade wrapped, after he was hit by a speeding car while sitting on the curb outside the museum.
So sad. The parade is one of the things I love best about Houston. I spent all afternoon taking pictures and had an excellent time, as usual, and part of that is due to the hard work Jones lovingly put into the museum and the parade over the years. Truly a devastating loss for the Houston art community.
Above is Jones riding yesterday in a car called Swamp Mutha. Click the image for more pictures of the parade. To quote Jones: “Keep America’s roads weird — build an Art Car!”
Two-lane blacktop
April 24, 2008 | 1:07 am | Blog, Photo Album | Two Wheels | 4
Things look different on two wheels then they do from inside a car.
In Galveston, I could smell the jasmine blooming every time I drove past the state campground, and could feel the sea spray on my face as we cruised along the beach. I have been to Galveston dozens of times but rest assured I have never, ever driven my car on the seawall. Not the street named Seawall. The actual wall.
Sandblast was great fun. The weather was nice (though a little cloudy) and the rally games were some of the funniest and most entertainingly suicidal I have ever seen. The only bummer was Friday night, when my moto jacket was stolen off the front rack of my bike while it was parked with 20 other scooters in front of the fittingly-named Poop Deck. My scooter keys were in the pocket. Nothing else was stolen, but it wouldn’t be a scooter rally without something going wrong for Brittanie.
The newly revived Texas United River Rally is the weekend of my birthday. Be there or be square.
Christopher and I have been on an extended vacation this month home. Camping, scooting every day, epic purchases and even more epic schemes. I might have to quit my job in order to accomplish all the living we have planned this summer. He’s leaving again Sunday, and knowing we’ll have to spend the next month apart makes the adventures of tomorrow, today, right now, feel extra-super urgent. You want proof? Us deciding at the spur of the moment this past weekend to drive the BMW to Dallas and back in a 24-hour period. Five hundred miles, round trip.
I have gone the distance between Dallas and Houston many times on my drives to and from Oklahoma, but I have never seen dogs fighting on the highway service road, or a raptor actually catching it’s prey, and while I usually just whiz by the forest this time I was able to look around, look closely, without a layer of glass between me and the world, without a radio humming in my ears and a windshield blocking the slight dip in the air temperature as one drives through the natural shade.
It’s kind of silly the fraternity you are automatically inducted into when you buy a motorcycle and take it on the highway. Every passing cyclist gives you a nod or a wave. You are a rebel, a shunner of comfort, a vagabond. It’s absurd but I would be lying if I said I didn’t get a kick out of it.
On the way home, at a tree-covered rest stop just north of Huntsville, we met another cyclist named James, a Brit who is riding the perimeter states of the USA for charity. He is keeping a blog, which you should read.
We were only in Dallas long enough to have dinner and drinks at the recently unsealed tomb of Trader Vics. I didn’t take many pictures of the drive, because with the wind whipping you at 80+ MPH it’s not very easy to hold a camera steadily. I did take pictures of the restaurant though.
Towards the end of our ride Sunday, 30 minutes outside Dallas, the sun was setting on us. C looked down at the pavement to his right, and then patted me on the thigh so he could point to our shadow, two bodies on a motorcycle, my arms wrapped around him.
Gilda and Me
April 14, 2008 | 10:23 pm | Photo Album | Two Wheels | 7
Photo by Robert Fox, thanks for such a great shot!
This pic was taken right before I lost in the slow races. More to come soon. Sandblast is over. Sandblast forever!
Skull and bones
April 6, 2008 | 10:03 pm | Photo Album | 1
Photo by Grind Slut
The Rule household has been hashing and camping with friends in the woods of Southeast Texas all weekend. We are currently recovering from fresh thorny-vine lacerations, sunburns and a two-week-old case of poison ivy.
What have you been up to?
Four bands, two shows, one night
April 1, 2008 | 11:10 pm | Photo Album | Listening | 0
Not much to say about Saturday night except it was so awesome I didn’t go to sleep until 5 a.m.
I was miraculously able to be in two places at once. Not exactly all at once, though. And I wasn’t the only one. Long-haired dude standing next to me at The Orange Show assuaged my fears by telling me that although the show at Rudyards was supposed to start at 9 p.m., the sound guy doesn’t even get to work until 10 p.m. Thanks long-haired dude, you were right.
I’ve never been to The Orange Show before. It’s a pretty awesome place, a very intimate venue, but damn hard to find. Cool thing about the show: at least 25% of the crowd was Cambodian. After they played I chatted up two of the guys from Dengue Fever, inviting them to Rudyards (they couldn’t make it but I got a nice phone call the next day).
At Rudz, Houston band The Born Liars blew my mind by playing some awesome garage rock wholly inconsistent with their Average-Joe images.
Friends of Formika® The Ugly Beats played loud and hard and set the tone for what was to follow. Not only that but all five of them were super nice and fun to dance with when The Fleshtones (also Friends of Formika®) finally hit the stage. EXCELLENT TRANSACTION WOULD DO BUSINESS WITH AGAIN11!!! Please come back to Houston soon, guys (and girl).
Everything you need to know about The Fleshtones you can learn here. Not content to play on Rudyard’s tiny stage, the guys took the show into the crowd for almost every song, creating more much energy in that club than I’ve felt since I was 16 years old and going to shows at Music D’s. The show was so loud my ears were ringing into Sunday night (I forgot my earplugs). Afterwards we all (Ugly Beats and Fleshtones included) went back to Formika’s house for cocktails and comraderie, which explains my extra-late bedtime.
Oh look, here are pictures of Formika (on the bass drum) and one of the back of my head dancing on stage with Peter.