BrockLi Soup

($1 to the first person to name the reference)(Rhubarb doesn’t count)

I spent my entire evening driving. I didn’t even have time to read The Post. That’s right, I get The Post now, because I care about current events, and lingerie ads.

After work, I headed out to Sterling, which took waaay too long. My uncle’s friend gave me a bunch of furniture, and I had to pick it up out that way. Lucky for me, my uncle has a pickup truck and he offered it for the move. Even luckier, he and his friend loaded the couch, dresser, desk chair, and coffee table into it for me. I drove out there, drove back to Arlington with it - grabbing Matt on the way - and unloaded it at the apartment. Unfortunately, the coffee table was in the back seat of the truck. I have no idea how he got it in there, but we couldn’t get it back out.

We had dinner at this little diner in the plaza by me, then I dropped him off, dropped off the truck, and drove my car home - more than five hours of my day just to get some furniture, but it’s better than buying new stuff. I need to get a cover for the couch, because the cushions are in rough shape, but it fits well in the living room. I’m almost ready to entertain guests.

I found tonight that it’s hard to tell the difference between a light bar and a taxi sign (not to mention pizza guys), so I invented a game I call Cop or Cab. So far I’m winning (you lose when you get a ticket).

I also decided tonight that the Saturn definitely has to go in the spring, and I’m thinking of just buying a motorcycle instead of replacing the car. It would be so much easier to get around in the traffic on a bike, but I’m not sure I can justify the purchase. Either way, the Saturn won’t fetch me much, so it’s Drive It Like You Stole It Week here at BrockLi.com (or, taking a cue from NaNoWriMo, DriLiStoWe). I encourage you all to participate.

Just remember, the rules for Cop or Cab are always in effect.

Before I even moved down to VA, I had plans for this past Saturday night. Risa got everyone together for a Capitals game and took care of tickets and all that, because she’s totally awesome that way. A bunch of people went to the Smithsonian in the afternoon; I wanted to go, but I was waiting on a delivery and the cable guy, so I didn’t make it. I caught up with everyone in time for dinner and drinks at Fadó, an Irish pub just a couple blocks from the MCI Center.

I parked at Pentagon City and took the Metro into DC, and as I’m standing there in the train, I notice a guy with a big Army-style duffel bag. He was looking down, writing letters, but I thought, “That guy looks like Eric without any hair.” Then it occurred to me that Eric was doing Marine office’s training, and probably didn’t have any hair. And THEN it occurred to me that he was supposed to be in DC sometime soon, but I wasn’t convinced it was him till he finished writing, stood up, and said, “How’s it going, Brock?” as if he expected to find me there all along.

We ran into Michelle and wxs before we made it out of the metro station, which was lucky, since we were going the wrong way. Fadó was probably the best pub I’ve ever been in, and the food was great. The game was pretty good, though there was almost more action in the stands than on the ice - after a couple periods of drinking, them hockey fans get downright rowdy.

As we were walking from the pub to the game, I realized how much I like living in a city. Buffalo and Rochester are both pretty dead, and I didn’t spend much time downtown when I was in Pittsburgh. But I love having a lot of people around, I love being able to hop on the metro and go all over the city, and I love that we could have a few drinks and then wander merrily down the street, laughing and talking. There’s so much to do here.

That, and I’ve seen guys riding every day I’ve been down here. With such little snow, you can ride almost year-round, if you’re got the right gear. I’ve been keeping an eye on Craigslist, and it looks like I could get myself a decent cruiser in the $3-4000 range. Of course, if I had $4000, I should spend it on a newer car, but bikes get better mileage so I think I could justify it.

I spent the day at my parent’s house near Buffalo. Our family cell plan contract was up this month, and we decided to extend it since it’s cheaper than maintaining three separate plans. As such, we all got new phones - Eric and I both got a Samsung SCH-a630, and my parents are sharing an SCH-a850.

I like the phone because it’s pretty small, and I like the clamshell. However, I was so used to my old phone and knew EXACTLY how to do everything I wanted to, that adapting to this one was been rocky at best. It seems that Voice Dialing is in no way attached to the phone book - on the Motorola, you could add a voice dial to contacts in the phone book, and everything was peachy. On the Samsung, you record a voice dial, and then enter the number that goes with it, whether it’s already in the phone book or not. The ringers just plain suck, so I picked the least annoying of them. When you adjust the ringer volume, it doesn’t actually make any noise, so I have no idea how loud “Level 3″ is until someone calls me. As far as I can tell, there’s no voice note feature, which sucks because I’d often leave reminders for myself. The color screen is sort of nice, but my long-standing suspicion was correct - a simple, monochrome list is a much more usable menu than a colorful one with icons.

The text predictor isn’t as flexible as the Motorola’s - if the word isn’t in the dictionary, you have to enter it manually. On the Motorola, you could sort of fudge it - for example, I have a friend we call Cupcake. Cupcake is not in the dictionary on the Samsung (and I don’t think it’s in the Motorola). With either, you hit 2-8-7 and get “Cup.” When I hit 2 for the second ‘c,’ it suggests “Curb.” I can hit 0 to cycle through other suggestions, but none of them are right - once I’ve typed the whole word, my options are “Curable” and “Btracke.” On the Motorola, it shows a running tally of options, so it would read “Cupa,” but I could use the right arrow to get “Cupb,” “Cupc,” or “Cup2,” and go from there. It was a nice compromise between text prediction and manual entry.

In the twelve hours or so that I’ve had the thing, I haven’t been too impressed. I imagine it will grow on me, especially once I’m familiar with all the menus and such, but I wish I could have a simple, usable, sturdy phone like I did.

On the bright side, Mom took me shopping and got me some clothes for my birthday. I got to hang out with the family, and I got One Last Ride in before it’s too cold for motorcycling. Along the way, I stopped by a friend’s place and got to take my buddy’s new Harley for a spin, too, so the day wasn’t a loss by any means.

When I was little, my dad rode a 1970 Yamaha 250cc, until he wiped out pretty hard at a highway on-ramp while riding home from a bar.

The bike sat in our shed for years. Once in a while he’d trailer it out to my uncle’s “farm” (an old house on a big piece of land) and ride it around on the trails in the woods. My earliest memory of the bike was riding on the back when he dumped it in a big mud puddle - street tires aren’t best suited for off-roading.

When I was 15 or 16, the bike had been sitting for a couple years, so my brother Eric (then 14 or 15) decided to get it running. The battery was shot and mice had nested in it, chewing through some wires. Despite the kick start, it wouldn’t start without the battery, because the light needs to be on when you’re riding. Eric managed to fix it up enough, and my dad borrowed this remote car jumper thing from work to jump start it. Dad would hook it up, kick the bike over, and my brother and I would try to ride around the back yard. I stalled it a half dozen times until I learned to give it enough gas, and then I did a burnout and half a donut, ripping up 10 or 15 feet of grass in the process.

Eventually, Eric and I learned how to get it going, and Dad returned the jump pack. Every few days, we’d take the bike out and jump start it from the car, then ride up and down the street. At the time I thought it was great, because most kids don’t live on a dead-end street with forgiving, retired neighbors that didn’t mind if two kids tear around on a loud old bike a couple times a week. I didn’t realize the significance of it at the time, but learning to ride the bike helped a lot in future driving endeavors.

To begin with, only one of the two cylinders was firing for a long time. We didn’t realize this for a while, but once we did, it became a lot easier to start from a standstill. I had learned to work the clutch and gas in unison to make the thing go, and couldn’t believe how easy it was when half the engine wasn’t running the other half. The first time I drove stick, I just had to get the hang of shifting into the right place, and I had no problem starting or shifting gears.

Later on, Dad taught us how to bump-start it so we wouldn’t have to jump it from the car. We would run alongside the bike, then hop on and kick it into second long enough to roll the engine a couple times before pulling in the clutch and giving it time to warm up. On more than one occasion, I had to do a few laps up and down our street to get the cold engine running.

Tonight, I was in my car waiting for Fotios while Taber, Heewa, and BP hung around outside. Heewa asked if I could bump start, and offered to push me. BP didn’t believe I really did it, so I did it again and explained the process. They insisted on doing it again when I left to take Fotios home. I had never done it in a car, but knew exactly what to do and just kind of figured it was common knowledge.

Tooling up and down the street on that old bike, I never really thought the experience would come in handy. My brother and I both drive stick, and pretty well. We both still ride, and either of us can start his bike on the first try when his starter isn’t working and we need to bump it. I know I can get my car going if the battery goes dead. Until I realized that these weren’t things everyone could do, I never fully appreciated the fact that Dad trusted us enough to play around with that old bike.

I’m sitting in the Walden-Galleria mall by the Apple store (woo! free wireless!)

As of 9:30(ish) this morning, I am licensed by New York State to ride a motorcycle. I think my dad won $10 from mom on that one. I spent a couple hours riding around before heading out.

I’m off to Rochester in a minute here. I bought some riding gloves and glasses at Cycle Stop before heading home, but the glasses let too much wind in and the gloves keep sliding up on my hands, so I’m going to stop in and see if I can’t exchange them both. Then it’s off to the Adirondacks for a relaxing weekend.

See ya in a couple days!

Thanks to everyone who FORGOT TO REMIND ME to schedule my road test. I finally thought to put an alarm in my phone to remind me during the day, since I always thought of it late at night, or while I was at lunch, or on the crapper.

I’m more afraid of failing this test than any other test I’ve ever taken. I feel comfortable on a bike and I’m confident I can pass it, but I’m worried that I won’t because I always feel like I have far less experience than everyone else on the road. Granted, everyone I ride with has been doing it a hell of a lot longer than I have, so the concern is sort of justified.

While failing would suck for all the obvious reasons, it would be embarrassing to be the only one in my family to fail a road test, especially on a bike. My dad and brother ride, along with a few of our cousins and some of our friends. They’d all find out soon enough and give me no end of shit if I managed to screw it up.

More importantly though, I need to find someone with a bike license that can go with me at 9 on a Friday morning. I might be able to convince my brother Eric to take the morning off or something.