I have traveled across the country about once every other year since 2004. My next trip will be for thee and a half weeks in May and June 2010.

Michael graduates from high school in early June. Instead of flying (because I pretty well don’t), I’ve decided to ride there and back.

Seattle and Miami are farther away than any other major cities in the US. I’ll take eleven days to get there and ten days to return. The remaining days will be spent in Florida with my parents and Michael.

Like with Scoot 66, there is a lot of planning that must be done. But, thanks to Scoot 66, I’m sort of an old pro at this. I’ll have to reteach myself some stuff, and have learned much from the mistakes of my last trip.

For one, this trip will be at a faster pace. It has to be. I am not in between jobs, but am taking a “leave of absence” from my current job (if it is approved, which I expect it to be). If I could, I’d take two months to do this, but that’s simply not possible this time around.

Because of the faster pace, I’ll have to cover 400+ miles each day. Scoot 66 averaged around 250 miles per day. Now, Scoot 66 was about exploring Route 66 (and other roads). This trip isn’t about that. It’s simply about riding. In that light, 400 miles a day isn’t such a huge big deal.

My plans for the last trip including me camping almost every night. Of course, those plans changed due to weather and my laziness. This trip, due to the desire and need to do it cheaply, I’ll actually have to camp every night. I’m planning on blogging each day, so I’ll have to find campgrounds that have WiFi. That’s pretty easy to do at this point. State Parks, however, are almost always no-go.

The wind from 2008 destroyed my tent, especially the fiberglass poles. I’ll need a new one. My rain gear from the last trip was also torn to shreds. Also, my boots will need to be reshod.

Since last trip, I’ve learned more about the maintenance of the modern Vespa, so I’ll be able to do most of the work myself. The only thing I won’t be able to do on the road is the tire change (there should be just one if I get the right kind of tire and am as lucky as I was in 2008).

Now, what of the routes? While I have a fairly rough idea where I’ll be, I’m still working on them. As a general outline, I’ll first be heading south (so as to avoid the chilly northern air). I’m trying my best to avoid roads that I’ve traveled before – with the exception of US 50 through Nevada. It was tempting to take large chunks of Route 66, but I’d like to see other roads (and honestly, 66 would slow me down because I’d want to see everything).

The route back will take me a bit more northerly, but still not into the northern tier states. I’ll have a better idea of the “exact” route in a few days.

One more thing I’ll need to do is name this trip. Since it’s a very diagonal trip from Seattle to Miami, I’ll probably focus on that. Slanting Across America or something. Who knows. I’ll figure it out.

Working on this engine really is a trial and error affair. It’s not that I have no idea what I’m doing and it’s not like I don’t have decent guidance. But reading about it online or in a book, even if there are great pictures, and actually getting your hands dirty are two completely different things.

Surprisingly, I feel like I’m really getting it.

That said, “getting it” isn’t the same thing as fixing it. And while I’m getting it and really understanding how the engine works, I’m not quite there on the fixing it end.

I started by putting the new gears into the gearbox, which went well – easy enough. Same with the cruciform and plunger.

I put the gasket on the cases and was able to get the two halves of the engine back together.

So the engine was – is – back together. But there was a problem. I had tightened two of the outer case bolts too tightly, stripping them.

Not a huge big deal, though I did have to grind one of them off. Again, not a huge deal, but a bit of a set back.

Another issue I had (aside from the original gears problem) was the clutch. At first, I was thinking that it was the clutch itself, which didn’t really make a lot of sense. So I looked at the clutch cover. What I found there was that the “lever” that actuates the plunger broke. Crazy, huh?

It’s a $4 part. I’ll buy two. The case bolts are $1.40 each. Cheap parts, but must wait a bit for them to arrive.

So until that happens, there’s not much I can do.

Here’s something I have a hard time wrapping my little head around. Ok. There’s a website called YouDriveWhat.com. It’s pictures of strange/odd/silly looking modes of transportation – from garden tractors to big rigs. Some are broken down and some are all pimped out.

I guess donk cars are cars with huge rims and tricked out doors, etc. Fine, it’s a bit more macho than something I’d go for, but I get it.

What I don’t get is the super manly “ghetto” cars with Skittles or Lucky Charms art all over them. It’s almost like they’re saying, “I’ma kick your ass and then go play some pinball.” And hey, maybe that is what they’re saying.

Still, I don’t really get it.

Keep in mind, these rolling advertisements aren’t company cars. The candy companies aren’t paying people to do this. [Edit - it appears that some might be doing just that!] The owners shell out thousands of dollars to tell everyone how much they like Nerds or Cheetos or even John Deere. It’s really weird.

I’ve never once seen a car like this on the streets of Seattle, but I have seen Skittles and Lucky Charms jackets.

And again, the folks wearing this stuff (and, I assume, driving this stuff) are often really tough looking individuals. Maybe it’s an “I’m so bad, I can wear a stupid looking jacket, drive a stupid looking car and you still can’t make fun of me” kind of thing.

Or maybe it’s just genuine. Maybe the guy who drives the Fruity Pebbles car loves Fruity Pebbles. A lot. More than anyone else in the world. Maybe the guy who owns the Cheetos car eats nothing but Cheetos. Ever. I guess I’m ok with that.

And I guess I’m ok with whatever people want to drive and for whatever reason they want to drive it.

Well, almost. Sometimes.

Ok, basically, if you could kick my ass, you can drive or ride whatever you want. Taste the rainbow!

I’ve really had nothing of value to say here for a long, long time. And now isn’t really any different. But maybe a little update is ok.

Spring has come to Seattle. It’s the middle of February and it’s spring. The cherry blossoms are out, the sky is (pretty much) clear and it gets to 60 degrees on most days. Sure, the nights sometimes dip into the low 30s, but it’s spring, that happens.

Springtime has never been my favorite season. The flowers are nice, but the trees are still barren and the night still comes too quickly. Summer is perfect.

Last summer was spent in a cast and in pain due to the surgery on my finger. This summer will hopefully be much more fun than that.

Though I’ve been able to ride all winter, spring means that I am a bit warmer on the rides to and from work. It also means that longer day-trips and a possibility (though being city-locked makes them a tremendous bother.

Spring also means change. I could go for some about now. We’re thinking about some new furniture and maybe moving a room or two around. Maybe that will satisfy me. Probably not. I would like some real change. I’m feeling restless and caged in.

Sometime this week I’ll be putting the P200 engine back together. I’m fairly confident I can do it. When I do, you’ll hear about it here.

And if I come up with anything, you’ll hear about that too.

You’ll take almost any advice when you’re sick. It all comes down to “well, you never know… might work.”

After trying the almost-meth Sudafed and having it completely do zero to help me out, I turned to other things.

When I was a kid, Vicks Vaporub was pretty much the beginning and end of the cold treatment. Colds sucked, Vicks helped them suck a little less, you got a few days off from school and then you were better.

That’s not how it works now. Colds still suck, but the empty promises of countless drugs to make it suck not at all actually makes them suck even more. And instead of getting a few days off from school, you could call off work, but you know that wouldn’t end well and there would more than likely be retaliation somewhere – either on next week’s schedule or generally being crapped upon by your managers.

My big problem a couple of days ago was a nose so clogged it could not be unclogged. I’d blow my nose and literally two seconds later, it would be filled again. How? How is my body suddenly making that much snot? It was amazing. Sort of. A few hours later, I wasn’t even able to blow my nose. Nothing. Was I that clogged up?

Something had to be done. I could not breath through my nose. Yes, I was a mouth-breather, just like the little brat on Little House on the Prairie.

So after a bit more searching around, I found this somewhere on the internet…

I braced myself against the bathroom sink, this time with a bottle of Sinex aimed at my inner nostril and squeezed my left nostril till I was blue in the face and out of breath. After several tries, my sinus immediately opened up and a mass of infected mucous rose up and down my throat and out of my mouth into the sink. The mass was as big as the palm of my hand.

That is nasty. So incredibly nasty. Is that what was going on up there? I had no idea. But maybe Sinex would help.

After looking into it a bit I found that Sinex can be fairly addictive. Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not totally for or totally against western, modern medicine. If it works without doing harm, I’m all for it. So Sinex was out. Afrin, another nasal spray, was even more addicting, as it almost immediately makes your body think that it needs Afrin to function properly.

No thanks.

So thinking back to my youth, even though I couldn’t take a sick day (without school-age repercussions), I might want to try Vicks Vaporub. I put a spoonful of it into boiling water, inhaled the steam for a few minutes and suddenly my left nostril was clear! Amazing!

The right one, however, was not so easily convinced. I then did what pretty well came naturally: I shoved a bit of it up my nose and waiting exactly five seconds. Clear!

I had to repeat both steps later that night, but since then, I’ve been fine.

My problem today, however, is coughing. I’m now coughing so much that my head has exploded several times over. And does a cough suppressant work? No, certainly it does not. So because a cough is fairly necessary and natural, though annoying, I’ll let it pass.

Though last night, I read that if you rub Vicks Vaporub on your feet prior to going to bed, you will no longer have a night cough. I tried it last night, as my cough was starting, and I didn’t cough at all through the night. Strange. Not sure how or why or even if it worked. I’ll try it again tonight and see what happens.

It looks like the illness is going away, though slowly. My voice seems to be slowly going away as well. I guess we’ll have to see which leaves first.

I pretty much never get sick. Maybe once a year. Last year I got it really bad. The year before that too. But nothing in between. These past few days, however, I’ve been pretty sick.

It’s your common cold or flu or something. I know they’re different, but I can’t really tell them apart. Sunday night it started with some really amazing post-nasal dripping. Sore throat big time. Then I got all achy and felt like an old man. I could barely move.

Thankfully, by the end of the night, the aches were gone and I seemed to be on the mend. I woke up Monday morning feeling alright, but not perfect. As the day wore on, I felt worse and worse. Around 4pm, I was completely stuffed up and my head felt like it was going to explode.

Monday night, I slept as well as I could, but mostly because I was wiped out from being sick.

Then on Tuesday (yesterday), I woke up with a super-stuffy nose that required blowing every few seconds. I have no idea how I’m producing this much snot. It’s kind of amazing, but mostly just puzzlingly gross. Works was dumb and the more I was there, the more useless I became. I was really out of it. Then I started to feel bad about all of the people that I was more than likely infecting.

Halfway through the day, I checked out of work with my head full of nastiness and my brain completely frazzled and cloudy.

Let me talk a little bit about medicine. I’m not someone who is die hard for or against natural medicine. If it works, I’m cool with it. I realize that western medicine only treats the symptoms, but sometimes I’m pretty ok with that. Today was one of those times.

I’ve attempted to treat the symptoms with (the generic of) Tylenol Severe Cold. It did nothing. Nothing at all. I was impressed. It’s got some pretty famous stuff in it like Phenylephrine. That’s a wussy version of Pseudoephedrine. I then tried a bit more “natural” idea and boiled water containing tea tree oil and sniffed in the steam. Not bad, really. It cleared me up, but only for 10 minutes. I then tried the same this with Tiger Balm (Camphor and Menthol). That worked pretty well too. Again, only for 10 minutes.

I then decided that I needed the big guns. Like any good son, I called my mom to ask her what to use. She suggested Sudafed with pseudoephedrine. That’s what they use to make meth. Thanks mom!

So Smartz took me to the store and while we were in the aisle picking out the little card to take up to the pharmacist (because they don’t have it out on the shelves anymore), she decided it would be a good idea to loudly ask some very important questions. “Is this what they use to make meth? How much would you need?” I gave her a “use your inside voice” glare, but she then asked how to use Sudafed to make meth. Maybe this wasn’t the best time or place to be asking meth questions, hm?

I wasn’t super thrilled (granted, I was a little grumpy), so I took the card to the counter where the pharmacist asked for my ID and then asked how much I wanted, “You can get it in a pack of 18 or 90. We’ve got thousands! Let’s make meth!”

Well… alright then. As we were walking out of the store, I apologized to Smartz. If the pharmacist can joke about meth at the pharmacy, I guess we can too.

So that’s where I am.

Oh, did the Sudafed work? Nah. Of course not. I took the recommended dose (60mg) and it didn’t even touch it. I’ll try it again today, but I’m not expecting miracles here. It should be moving into my chest next. That’ll be fun.

Words? Who needs words when the music is this good? Here are 19 songs that would have been ruined by words.

It would have been easy to fill a CD with instrumental jazz or late 50s surf music. True, I’ve got Bud Shank (mid-50s jazz surf music before there was surf music), Link Wray and Dick Dale, but there’s so much more.

We start off with a band I heard in a used record store in Morgantown, West Virginia circa 1995, Hoven Droven. I immediately fell in love with their Iceburn meets Scandinavian folk music. Oven more obscure is Pink Floyd with an early B-side take on the not-yet-classic “Careful With That Axe, Eugene.” Speaking of B-sides, how about Simple Mind’s 7″ B-side “Theme for Great Cities.”

I didn’t want to only be obscure, of course. I wanted some classics. That’s where Link Wray and the Ventures come in. But also They Might Be Giants treat us to a fairly straight rendition of “Jessica” while Zappa goes a bit crazy with “Bolero.” Speaking of crazy, check out Scott Walker’s “Part 2.” Eno and Byrne’s song as well.

Dissent’s “Stress” was the last thing they ever recorded and it’s really a shame. They started out as a basic hardcore punk band and began to evolve into something much more complex. Rush is complex. If you’re cool, you’ll know the song. If you’re not so cool, you’ll recognize the song from the start of Primus’s Frizzle Fry LP. I was of the latter group.

When I was a kid and rap was just started to gain some attention, they’d play Herbie Hancock’s “Rock It” video as an example of what rap was (they’d also play Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”). Pretty lame, really.

And lastly, if I ever made a movie, I’d want the Dead Milkmen’s “Vince Lombardi Service Station” to play over the end credits. Let’s try to make that happen, ok?

1. Hoven Droven – Kjellingen
2. Link Wray – Jack the Ripper
3. They Might Be Giants – Jessica
4. Scott Walker – Part 2
5. Dissent – Stress
6. Pink Floyd – Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up
7. Bud Shank – Going My Wave
8. Mogwai – May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door
9. Dick Dale – Miserlou
10. Frank Zappa – Bolero
11. Weird Al – Fun Zone
12. Simple Minds – Theme For Great Cities
13. Herbie Hancock – Rock It
14. Camper Van Beethoven – Interstellar Overdrive
15. Brian Eno and David Byrne – Two Against Three
16. Ventures – Walk Don’t Run
17. Anthrax – Across The River
18. Rush – YYZ
19. Dead Milkmen – Vince Lombardi Service Center

The cover is a b&w of a photo I took in 2004 of friends Ashley and Nikki on a beach in California. I think it was when we went to Bodega Bay. That’s where Hitchcock filmed The Birds. Interesting, no? The back cover is (obviously) just a little remix of the reversion.

This year, the mixes will mostly feature reversions of photos that I took. I have all these pics, so why not?

So here you go. February’s mix is a mix full of instrumentals. I hope you enjoy such things. Feel free to let me know what you think.

Just click on the link and save the zip file to your desktop. Then open the zip file with WinZip (or whatever program you use to open zip files). Add to your MP3 library or burn it to a CD-R. Easy as pie!

Here are some samples…

Hoven Droven – Kjellingen

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Frank Zappa – Bolero

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Camper Van Beethoven – Interstellar Overdrive

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The Ventures – Walk Don’t Run

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