some-a yall

know who this is for. to those who've gone on before us...

lovers' leap run

hit a car show in my hood at the hot chicken shack at 51st n centennial, then met up at betty's grill. jack n i creepy crawled cheatham county today. up n down and through the twistys of south harpeth area, then back up through kingston springs and onto craggie hope rd and eventually on the bluffs of lovers leap rd. scrambled up a dirt path to the peak to find the remnants of some church camp and years of hillbillys refuse tossed down the bluffs. BASTIDS! totally cool chillspot other than the freakin trash. crazy churchcamp leanto/shed and a bunker with atomic veterans memorial in housepaint on side. completely weird space on these bluffs. killer view over the harpeth river into williamson county(i guess). dug it.



View Larger Map

the moment just before it all went black

aaaahhh grabbin life by the hornitos

Black Denim Trousers & Motorcycle Boots

hooky ride

View Larger Map


laid out of work today. moped around the house for long while after pushing the bike out into the sunlight to warm her. finally around noon i swung a leg over and headed out in search of a supposed 40 foot waterfall somewhere on big turnbull creek. i hung around a gas station in fairview trying to find a local who'd heard of this but no luck. i headed down the road towards where it was on the mapquest according to the coordinates given online 35° 59.22'N 87° 12.708'W  http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~dunigan/landforms/m.php?wpt=DIF001. but when i got to the confluence of the harpeth river and turnbull creek, there was some fellas off in the scrub by the side of the river doing something on some tables that seemed a little shady. but determined to find these lost falls i hollered over the river at em about it, but no luck again. also determined not to get shot over a meth lab i took their no and got the hell out. i continue northwest and got myself thoroughly lost, finally dumping out on hwy 96 by a random biker bar. after a few pulls on a beer i asked the bartender and a biker if they'd heard of these falls, and struck out. i gave up and went and chilled at one of the lakes in montgomery bell. satisfying enough...
at least i spotted a small cascade early in the ride, mission mostly accomplished. also stopped in at the crazy swollen harpeth river at the narrows on my way home. it flooded something fierce for the last couple of days during the storms.

playing hooky

had to jack this

Your dad rode a cafe racer before you did. It was rebellious, it was dangerous and with every throttle pull it was like he was waving his dick at socially accepted norms. Your mom loved his bike too. With every motor rev her loins would sing high notes of exuberance as the seat rumbled.
So hipsters , next time you’re out taking a cruise on cafe racer remember this…
Your dad was the OG of motorcycles and you’ll always ride bitch to him.


stolen from:  http://dadsaretheoriginalhipster.tumblr.com

empenada paradise

no long ride would be complete without a sunset finish at the paradise cafe, the empenada's are primo! if youre not hip to em, theyre at 60th and morrow rd, west siii.

river run

rode out hwy 70 all the way to the tennessee river to see my aunt who i keep telling i'll visit every year but never do. hell i figured 2 birds one stone right, i needed to have some kind of destination...day trip to jewel marina was in order.


View Larger Map

spotted a hot rod show in dickson on my way back to the city, a few choice cars there, was nice bonus to the ride.

rrrrrrrraaaaaaaaanchero

ghost rider

jinxed

i think i jinxed myself w/ that lightning hopkins song, cant find nobody to ride with tomorrow. fugget, kon don't nee' nobody...

View Larger Map

stir crazy

damn this weather needs to break, i got places to go

i'm just sayin'...

post show ride to grintown

 

took little marrowbone rd out to higdon, then down into valley view, and back up dry fork and the kept turning til i was completely lost up on the rim in north cheatham county til i finally hit clarksville pike. good hills...

View Larger Map

killer kills nashville

hell yes, bad ass way to start a killer day.

jerry lee, still kicking

holy shit!!!

i damn near missed it, but the weather saved my ass. postponed til tomorrow, sun apr 17th, 3rd man records has moved the jerry lee lewis concert outside into the parking lot at the mission(haha). i wrote it off b/c of the 50buck cover, but hell listening outside the gates is still free. now that they moved it outside, i'll definitely be doing some loitering round the mission sooner in life than i thought...

high noon, tomorrow

torturing myself on a rainish/coldish day

this is so much better than the actual band's video for this song

now this guy knows how to ride

tank art from easy rider dec '76

see, alcohol CAN be your friend

and i thought this big ol brain came from genetics

Can Alcohol Help the Brain Remember? Repeated Ethanol Exposure Enhances Synaptic Plasticity in Key Brain Area, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2011) — Drinking alcohol primes certain areas of our brain to learn and remember better, says a new study from the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research at The University of Texas at Austin.

---

The common view that drinking is bad for learning and memory isn't wrong, says neurobiologist Hitoshi Morikawa, but it highlights only one side of what ethanol consumption does to the brain.
"Usually, when we talk about learning and memory, we're talking about conscious memory," says Morikawa, whose results were published last month in The Journal of Neuroscience. "Alcohol diminishes our ability to hold on to pieces of information like your colleague's name, or the definition of a word, or where you parked your car this morning. But our subconscious is learning and remembering too, and alcohol may actually increase our capacity to learn, or 'conditionability,' at that level."
Morikawa's study, which found that repeated ethanol exposure enhances synaptic plasticity in a key area in the brain, is further evidence toward an emerging consensus in the neuroscience community that drug and alcohol addiction is fundamentally a learning and memory disorder.
When we drink alcohol (or shoot up heroin, or snort cocaine, or take methamphetamines), our subconscious is learning to consume more. But it doesn't stop there. We become more receptive to forming subsconscious memories and habits with respect to food, music, even people and social situations.
In an important sense, says Morikawa, alcoholics aren't addicted to the experience of pleasure or relief they get from drinking alcohol. They're addicted to the constellation of environmental, behavioral and physiological cues that are reinforced when alcohol triggers the release of dopamine in the brain.
"People commonly think of dopamine as a happy transmitter, or a pleasure transmitter, but more accurately it's a learning transmitter," says Morikawa. "It strengthens those synapses that are active when dopamine is released."
Alcohol, in this model, is the enabler. It hijacks the dopaminergic system, and it tells our brain that what we're doing at that moment is rewarding (and thus worth repeating).
Among the things we learn is that drinking alcohol is rewarding. We also learn that going to the bar, chatting with friends, eating certain foods and listening to certain kinds of music are rewarding. The more often we do these things while drinking, and the more dopamine that gets released, the more "potentiated" the various synapses become and the more we crave the set of experiences and associations that orbit around the alcohol use.
Morikawa's long-term hope is that by understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of addiction better, he can develop anti-addiction drugs that would weaken, rather than strengthen, the key synapses. And if he can do that, he would be able to erase the subconscious memory of addiction.
"We're talking about de-wiring things," says Morikawa. "It's kind of scary because it has the potential to be a mind controlling substance. Our goal, though, is to reverse the mind controlling aspects of addictive drugs."


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110412101627.htm#

just wanna scream

prepare to be sickened, AGAIN

There is no belt-tightening on the other side of the tracks. Just a free lunch that never ends.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411?print=true

wisdom from the past

bikes on sale in area

damn this gorgeous ural in birmingham is on ebay(for some outrageous reserve probably)

and this old school honda chopper is on craigslist for 3300 is right down the road

rainy days always give me the hankering to put this album on

mas mag photos

 

i like the hell outta this bike

yesteryear in cowan tn

cowan seemed like a swell town, haha. 2 gas stations had some sweet old pumps(my stepfather would've ruined the front of his jeans if he'd seen these), and there is a train museum at the old depot. ima hafta stop next time

ghost on the highway

chattanooga run

the planets were finally in the perfect alignment to portend a good run to chattown, so i jumped on the cock-a-roach and hit the highways. the signs were looking good, cause i ran into this gorgeous indian coupla counties out from the city. i kept telling the guy i hated his guts the entire time, haha

 

pretty uneventful but beautiful ride up to the edge of the cumberland plateau, then things got really fun. after a nice series of switchbacks up the mountain, i met my little brother and 2 other riders at the edge of sewanee for some grub, beer and coffee...in that order. saw a sweet rat rod in the lot there at shenanigans and then we were off, swooping down into the sequatchie valley, and back up and over three different ridges with the craziest switchbacks and curves i've ever ridden a bike on. freakin gorgeous scenery but i was so busy trying to keep up with these local boys, i had no time to enjoy it. these fellas were definitely more comfortable with the twisties than my limited experience so came real close to getting out of my league on a couple of the switchbacks, trying to keep up with them. flirted with the shoulder a couple of times, then had to back off. the solo ride on the way back today was definitely more laidback, i could wuss out in solitude haha.

my lil bro took me to this swanky low brow dive in the lobby of what was obviously a scumbag hotel at some point in its history. the wallpaper and decor killed, it was love at first site. super stiff drinks and damn good fried chicken. after meeting up with his new lady, a fun ass ginger beauty, we did a lil more bar hopping and retired back to his casa for some late night drunken madness and yelling haha. good times...

then this morn, with a swollen head that needed lots more sleep, we hit the local greasy spoon and parted ways. they were heading down the ocoee and i had to hightail my sunburned ass home(haha i had ridden the day before with my sleeves rolled up a bit and gloves on, so had sunburn gauntlets on each arm). took my sweet time on the mountain part of the return trip, tooks some photos but couldnt recall all the pleasant shots i missed the day before and missed a couple of the routes we took, but it was still a helluva a weekend...thanks bro

View Larger Map