101 Search Results for "vision"
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Daily Words 11-04-09
- From: calitobias
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Description:
Good morning.
Your vision is only as strong as your commitment to pursue it!!
God is Love - Blog post
- 2 weeks ago
- Views: 30
- Not yet rated
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The Owl and the Corrections Of
- From: greyfalcon2112
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Description:
This is one of those stories that you almost have to be in the presence of the storyteller to really appreciate, but I’ll try to give it my best shot. I have a couple good reviews on a couple of my misadventures so what the heck, this to date has been the one everyone who ever works with me tells the new people to have me recall for them. Hope you like it.
To give some background for the story I will begin by telling you about my pretty wife, her mother, and their love of gardening. My mother-in-law, God rest her soul, was never a great gardener but she loved the smell of the earth and seeing the fruit of her labors being enjoyed by her family and of course, my wife followed suit, starting as a little girl who loved mud squishing between her toes and ending up as a beautiful woman who loves mud squishing between her toes.
My wife and I would frequent her mother’s often and throughout the temperate periods of the year, we would assist her with keeping her place up, tilling the garden when needed, mowing the lawn, trimming the weeds, raking the leaves and so forth and doing so is how this whole ordeal started.
It was in the spring, warm enough outside in the day to work up an honest sweat if you tried but still cool enough in the evening to require a light jacket. My wife, Renee, and I had taken our girls to visit grandma and had been sweet-talked into helping her outside, as things needed attention as they often did. I cannot remember whether I was refueling the lawnmower or attending to the gasoline trimmer that I had brought, “just-in-case” my mother-in-law needed the trimming done, (I hated her electric weed-whacker) while Renee and her Mom were working in her vegetable garden.
I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop on what they were talking about but they were several yards apart and they were speaking loudly mind you. I could blame them for the entire thing if I tried I guess, but my own silly... I’ll get to that later. For now, it’s only necessary to say that my wife and her mother were discussing the problems of having birds stealing from the garden. My wife’s garden was always a tangle of tomato stakes with small aluminum pie pans tied to them to flash and bang and make noise to frighten the birds away, or put simply, lots of mess, little success. Her mother, however, had gone high-tech and purchased a sure-fire method of scaring birds. Propped on a stake, actually an old bent two-by-four smack in the middle of her garden, was a plastic owl.
Now I’ve seen some pretty high-tech plastic owls at home and garden centers like Lowes, Tractor Supply or Home Depot, I mean some of these things would give little kids nightmares. Actual size, big glowing yellow glass eyes, some even have their owl heads mounted so that the slightest breeze will make them turn their heads all with the purpose of scaring the crap out of smaller birds. This thing in her Mom’s garden however, was the most God’s awful thing I had ever laid eyes on and still be considered a plastic owl. It looked for the world like someone asked a five year old to draw an owl and that’s what they used to make the mold, overly fat, far to short, painted eyes, no movement what so ever, and so obviously effective that the top of its head was covered with bird shit because that’s where most birds stopped to eat their ill-gotten gain.
So there I knelt in the fresh cut grass, soaked in sweat from creating the fresh cut grass, working on a hot piece of yard equipment, listening to my mother-in-law as she was extolling the endless virtue of the plastic owl and observing my wife as she listened intently, sucking up every word. After her mother had finished, my wife announced, “I guess we’ll have to get one of those for our garden.” I shot my wife a ’when hell freezes over’ look but said nothing and she shot one right back at me. Disgusted, I wiped the sweat from my eyes and fired up the machine, happy in the ensuing white noise of domestic yard work.
Later, on the way home, the ugly little owl came back into the conversation. I don’t remember who introduced it, but it became the center of a very vicious debate. I was adamant in my condemnation of the miserable thing and my wife was its champion.
“Well I think we need one.”
“You ARE NOT putting one of those ugly-ass things in my yard.”
“It’s MY garden.”
“That is in the middle of MY yard.”
“It scares the birds.”
“Yeah, I could tell. They were so terrified of it that when they landed on it, they shit themselves.”
Grumble, grumble, grumble, bitch, bitch, bitch, went the remainder of the argument until my wife finally let out a disgusted “FINE!” and stared out the window for the rest of the ride home. Satisfied that I had asserted myself as the dominant alpha male, I smirked and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the ride home. My satisfaction was to be relatively short, although I was blissfully unaware of it at the time.
As a week or so passed, payday rolled around and it was time for my wife to do the bi-weekly grocery shopping and general running around and taking care of things that she always does. I was busily engaged with work that day and had not given the whole ordeal at, or coming home from, her mother’s a second thought until I arrived home from work at about 12:45am after a decidedly unpleasant evening at the State Penitentiary.
Now I had stopped and gathered the mail on my way home to our little place overlooking the lake, and when I stopped in the drive, shut the car off and proceeded to skim through the letters, bills and general junk mail, for some odd reason I paused and looked toward the house. Sitting on the rail of the deck, right up next to the house in the shadow created by the overhang of the roof, was the silhouette of an owl. I knew what had happened in an instant, she bought that God-damned owl. She bought the piece of shit when I told her not to! Damnit!
I got out of the car and stood beside it, trying to calm down, so I leaned against the car and lit a cigarette. This did not work as the more I looked at that miserable outline in the shadows, the more aggravated I got. Actually, aggravated isn’t the correct work for what I was. I was mad. For once in my life, the cigarette wasn’t having the calming effect and that was adding to my frustration at this damned plastic abomination gracing my deck. Right then and there I made my decision. I hope she bought it at Wal-Mart. That ugly thing’s going back tonight! Not in the morning, tonight! I don’t give one red damn if she goes in her night-gown trailing two crying upset little girls who had to be pulled out of bed, she’s going to know I mean business! I may not get laid for six months, but I’m putting my foot down! I scrubbed out the cigarette in the gravel of the drive and headed for the house.
As I closed toward the stairs and the rail where the outline set in the shadow, I began to realize that this was not a copy of the ugly thing that sat in her mother’s garden, this thing was at least twenty-two inches tall and about ten inches wide and was actually shaped like..., well, an owl. The closer I got the more I thought to my self. “Huh. That might actually scare a bird or two.” I got about four feet away when I stopped and took a hard look at it and I remember thinking, “Right shape, right size, painted to look the part, holy crap, she must‘ve spent a fortune on this thing.” and I reached out to take it and examine it better in the moonlight.
Now I’m sure that somewhere, deep, deep in the recesses of my brain, for about a millisecond, some little part of me went, “Oh oh, that’s soft.” But far before it registered with the rest of my body, the very un-plastic owl woke up and was not at all happy with the human hands around it.
Giant yellow eyes flashed open, wings at least five feet wide flew apart and the most blood-curdling scream I have ever heard in my entire life emanated from the owl at a volume I never would have thought possible. The only thing even close to the sound was me. I let out a scream that sounded like a five year old girl who just woke up to find Freddie Kruger in bed with her. I really don’t know which one of us was more scared, it or me, but I think it was me.
Now for anyone who has never seen them up close, owl’s feet are armed with claws that really, really deserve the title of talon, maybe even something more diabolical than that, and they were going everywhere. The only thing that comes close to a good physical description would be having a little Mantis Roto-Tiller held up to your face while it runs full throttle. Anyway, the owl kept screaming, I kept screaming, and I was being beat around the head and face with really wide wings while shanks were flailing at me about a hundred miles an hour and I started back pedaling, somehow not realizing that I should let go of the owl.
Somewhere in the eternity of backing up, my jacket from my corrections uniform got shredded, my badge went flying off of my shirt and I got shanked, really, really well. Damn bird tore my chest like it was tissue paper, enough for nine stitches on the outside and three more underneath. At any rate, you can’t back up forever and I ran smack into the deck rail, backward, at a full head of steam and over I went, crashing onto one of my wife’s prized rose bushes which snapped off at the ground. The only good thing was that the owl and I disjointed somewhere between the rail and the ground. I can only assume this of course, since when I hit the ground it was nowhere to be seen.
Now I was off the deck, flat of my back in the yard with an ass full of rose thorns, terrified that the damn bird would come back for a second round so I started quickly backing up, reverse crab walking, sliding through the wet grass until I crashed into the side of my car where I let out another yell simply from pure terror. About this time, my loving wife comes crashing through the door onto the deck from inside the house, .357 revolver in one hand, Mag-Light in the other hand, bathrobe flying open in the breeze, naked as a jay-bird underneath, finds me in the beam of the light with my chest slashed, my ass perforated, my clothes shredded to pieces and I’m bleeding everywhere and she yells out, “What the HELL are you doing!?”
All I could do was sit there shaking in fear with my arms out the side trying to flap as a demonstration of my now unseen tormentor and all I could say was, “Uh... Uh... Uh... Uhh Uhhh. OWL!”
All of this led up to the inevitable trip to the emergency room where of course the attending physician and nurse assumed that I was at work when I received my injuries and the doc asked me how I managed to get cut so badly, so I told him. He started laughing so hysterically that he couldn’t finish sewing me up and had a new nurse come finish since the nurse who was with him wasn‘t much good anymore either, but only after giving me orders not to tell the new nurse how I got injured. Explaining why I need a new coat, shirt and badge was a lot of fun too, let me tell you. A lot of people had a good laugh at my expense I can tell you that.
The final piece of the story has to do with the missing badge. We never found it. Not in the yard, not in the remains of the rose bush or the ground cover it was planted in, not under the deck, not on the deck, just gone. I can only vision, as a friend I work with who enjoys the story more than I do so vividly describes, “There’s a great horned owl somewhere see, strutting around his nest wearing a Corrections Officer’s badge looking at the other birds with a ‘Yeah. That’s right, mess with me again.’ look in those big yellow eyes.”
At least someday I can pass on the hard gained knowledge, “Never hug birds of prey.”
- Blog post
- 2 months ago
- Views: 46
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Things You Wish You Could Say
- From: vilchesm1958
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Description:Things You Wish You Could Say Out Loud at Work
1. I can see your point, but I still think you're full of shit.
2. I don't know what your problem is, but I'll bet it's hard to
pronounce.
3.How about never? Is never good for you?
4. I see you've set aside this special time to publicly humiliate
yourself.
5. I'm really easy to get along with once you people learn to see it my
way.
6.Who lit the fuse on your- 2 months ago
- Views: 54
- Forum: Jokes! Joke...
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2008 Victory Vision
- From: bmbrick
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Description:
- 3 months ago
- Views: 48
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Loving Uwe's Babies!
- From: manybikes
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Description:
I stopped over to Uwe's place last night and gave love to each of his precious machines. While I was there I took a gander at some of the day 1 through day 10 photos... we all are in for a TREAT when Uwe gets back and can share is hundreds of gigs of fabulous memories with us! Here's to you Uwe!
The bike are all doing great!
Kyle
- 3 months ago
- Views: 212
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Prostreet1
- Member
- Points:265
- Views: 20
- Since: 4 months ago
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Victory! The 2010 Line-up
- From: manybikes
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Description:
Check out this story from www.PowersportsBusiness.com. They have put together this neat article about the 2010 Victory Motorcycle line-up. Take a look:
Victory moves to grow its touring presence with its 2010 lineup
Powersports Business Thursday July 23, 2009 Victory Motorcycles is adding four new models for its 2010 lineup, two of which are designed specifically for the touring segment and two more to add to the brand’s lower price-point offerings.
“While we and all of our key competitors are facing huge economic headwinds right now, we clearly want to position the business — for Polaris and our Victory dealers — to regain growth in retail sales and market share, as the market stabilizes and starts to grow again,” said Mark Blackwell, Polaris Industries’ vice president of motorcycles.
Victory moved to grow its retail presence by not only expanding its touring lineup but also taking steps to make its cruisers more appealing to a wider audience and by introducing technology on its premium models that could draw the higher-end crowd.
“If you’re a classic cruiser rider, if you’re a custom cruiser rider, if you’re a performance cruiser rider, Victory now has a bike for you,” Gary Gray, Victory’s product manager, said at the unveiling.
Victory’s new models include:
- the Cross Country and Cross Roads, two cruiser baggers that feature Victory’s 106-cubic inch engine with a 6-speed transmission. The two touring bikes have frame designs that are similar to Victory’s first entry into the touring segment, its Vision.
- Victory Vision 8-Ball: This new addition allows riders to sit lower in the saddle compared to last year’s Vision and is in many ways a blacked-out, lower price point version (expected MSRP: $17,999) of Victory’s first touring bike. “There’s a lot of people out there that love the Vision,” Gray said, noting those same people don’t necessarily want all the bells and whistles of the Vision. “They don’t need things like the stereo and cruise control. They want a good base bike to start touring.”
How was the read? What do you think???
Kyle aka: manybikes
- Blog post
- 4 months ago
- Views: 298
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Cruiser Customizing 8th Year A
- From: tracers
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Description:
On July 19th 2001 Cruiser Customizing was started by Uwe. He has created an amazing company and a great community that has brought all of us bikers together. His drive, vision and passion has created one of the best online communities available on the web. It's been great to be part of CC family!!! I look forward to meeting more of the members in the future.
We should all raise our glasses to Uwe and the cruiser customizing team for a job well done!!!
Ride Safe!!!!!!
- Blog post
- 4 months ago
- Views: 260
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The Test
- From: greyfalcon2112
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Description:
I wish that I had the writing talent of my friend who wrote this... It's priceless... He rides too and he works with me in a State Prison. Really warped individual live most of us there.
The Test
When I decided to apply for a job as a Corrections Officer I had no clue what I was getting myself into. I suppose I had the vision of swaggering around in a uniform being mean to people and getting paid for it. All of my experience with prison life was limited to television, movies and books.
Applying for the job was easy enough. I just went online and found the DOC website, filled out a form and clicked the mouse. It took a week or so to receive a response with the date of the video test. I made another trip or two in the truck as I waited for the test date, trying to imagine what a video test would consist of.
The day of the test arrived and of course, I got lost trying to find the testing site. This raised my anxiety level to a fever pitch so that when I finally made it to the testing room on the second floor I was out of breath and badly in need of a cigarette. The test was actually quite interesting in that the video showed different scenarios involving CO’s and offenders and asked how you would handle each one. I almost over-thought it though, by trying to guess which answer they were looking for instead of just marking the answer as I would handle it with no training.
Apparently, though, I did well enough to be called back for the physical evaluation. This was the part that I had been dreading. I had no idea what to expect but I knew that I had sat in a truck for 25 plus years and smoked 3 to 4 packs of cigarettes a day. I was in shape alright, the shape of the Pillsbury doughboy. Anyway, at last I knew what I was up against: go up two steps, across a platform, down two steps, bend and retrieve an object under the platform , set it on the platform, run 300 yards, drag a dummy weighing 150 pounds 18 feet. No problem, until I read the part about doing it in two minutes and sixteen seconds! Have they lost their collective minds????? I am a fat old truckdriver, this is gonna kill me!!!!
300 yards works out to 3 football fields or 5.77 times around my tractor/trailer. Ok, now that isn’t so bad. Wait…5.77 times around the truck? I have to take a smoke break after walking around it once to thump the tires. This is not good. I sat down and had a cigarette.
When I finished that pack, I crawled into the car and headed to Wal-mart to buy a pair of tennis shoes since the test would take place in a gymnasium. I circled the parking lot, puffing on a Camel, waiting for one of the handicapped parking spots to open up. I drummed my fingers impatiently on the dash as an old man struggled to get his oxygen bottle on its little dolly into the car with him. I could tell he wasn’t really handicapped because he wasn’t using a wheelchair, so I honked the horn at him to get things moving. He finally backed out of the spot but before I could slide in some woman in a van took it. Those cripples get all the good parking spots. I gave up and took a spot further down the row. I wanted to kick the leg out from under her walker as I passed her near the front door.
It had been over 20 years since I had worn anything but cowboy boots so the choices in tennis shoes was simply astonishing to me. There were shoes for basketball, running, soccer, shoes with little airshocks in them, shoes with headlights and taillights and the ones that really worried me, crosstrainers. Who knew they made special shoes for transvestites. Anyway, I bought the cheapest shoes I could find and headed home.
I got home and decided, by the time I bent over far enough to tie the damned shoes, that I should have bought the ones with Velcro instead of laces. I leaned back and lit a smoke as I rested from the stretching. I had 9 days to get ready for this marathon.
The next thing I had to do was measure out 300 yards on the street in front of the house. I finished my smoke and wandered out to the truck to get my tape measure. I grabbed the 50 foot tape measure and my calculator, since the tape was in feet and I needed to convert that to yards, I knew the math would probably trip me up.
I strung out the tape behind me as I walked down the street, using pebbles to mark each 50 foot section. My back was beginning to ache from all that bending over and my hamstrings were tightening from the walking so after I got 100 feet measured out, I sat down on the curb and rested. I realized that I had left my cigarettes on the porch. Well, I needed to cut back a bit.
An hour or so later I awoke from my nap, stiff and sore from all the exercise and sleeping on the concrete curb. Thankfully it grew dark before I finished so the game was called due to darkness. I made a pledge to myself, as I shuffled back to the house, that I would do this. I would get up early the next morning and get this distance measured and I would run that 300 yards or die trying.
True to my word I arose at the crack of 11:30ish the next morning and sat on the porch in my boxers and brand new tennis shoes, smoking and drinking coffee. I was very aware, from some of my reading, that long distance running is a mental game, and that all I had to do was visualize and it would be so. I leaned back, closed my eyes and pictured myself bounding down the street, strong and determined, elbows close to my side, my sleek athletic body in perfect rhythm. I awoke when the Camel between my fingers burnt them.
I began my stretching by bending down and tying my shoes. It took a bit of time but I finally found a way to sort of lean around the belly lying in my lap to reach the laces. At last I was ready. I stood at the start line, filling my lungs with the cool, fresh Missouri air, saturating my blood with oxygen. After the coughing fit I got all that cellulite headed in the same general direction and sort of waddle/jogged my way down the track.
At the 50 foot mark I had built up a head of steam like a locomotive. Oh, it felt so good, this was it, I was on my way. Somewhere around the 55 foot mark, my belly began to outpace my feet. I lost the rhythm. I would push off with the trailing foot, but could get no really altitude because at the point my belly was on the downward stroke. Then, disaster struck. I tried to stop to get back in sync but my caboose overran the locomotive and I went down in a heap. My neighbor gave me a ride home.
I sat on the porch, smoking a cigarette and pondering the situation. I realized that I had tried to do too much too soon. After lunch and a short 2 hour nap, I was back out there, walking down the street. I made it to the halfway point before the calves of my legs began to cramp and I had to use the cellphone to call Barb and have her come get me. She helped me into the house as I wondered aloud if I could go to Wal-mart and find the old man with his oxygen bottle. I lay gasping on the couch until she left for Bingo and then I duct taped her electric mixer to the side of the bathtub and made myself a sort of mini-whirlpool to sooth my aching muscles.
As I lay back in the warm water, smoking, I bumped the mixer and it fell into the bath. The electricity shot through my body, I bounced from the tub and out the front door, screaming like a banshee, stark naked, and ran that 300 yards in 15 seconds flat. Somewhere around the 290 yard mark I had an epiphany. Motivation is the key to success. I knew now that I would pass this test.
The day of the test I arrived early, having reconnoitered the location the previous day to avoid any confusion or undue stress that might in anyway hamper my performance. I watched with the utmost patience as others huffed and puffed their way around the cones placed on the gymnasium floor. The tiny button concealed in my hand assured me that I would not, could not, fail this test.
Finally, I stood at the start line. The tester gave me the instructions, I surveyed the platform, the steps, the object to be retrieved and the dummy lying there in wait. The whistle blew and I glided the first few steps to the platform, ascended it with ease, flowed down the opposite side, bend and retrieved the object and placed it on the platform. I then turned to the cones and began my journey, blasting down the straights and slowing slightly for the turns at each end.
At the halfway mark, I felt my body begin to tire, my legs to feel like rubber, my breath was wheezing, I was dying. With grim determination I pressed the tiny button in my hand, just a quick push and release. The business end of the stockprod that was duct taped between my ass cheeks sparked and I shifted gears as though my tailfeathers were on fire.
I was bounding around the track now, strides lengthened, a high pitched scream on my lip as I pressed the button each time a foot hit the floor. The cones were a blur as I flew past. I made the final turn, slid to a stop before the dummy, grabbed the rope, leaned into it and hit the button in a long sustained burst. As the stockprod shot fire between my butt cheeks I farted. Like a well shot rocket, I slammed into the wall fifty feet from where the dummy had laid.
As I lay in a heap, sobbing, the tester walked over and said, “You passed and , ummm, your tennis shoes are smoldering”.
Curt Patterson
May, 2009
- Blog post
- 4 months ago
- Views: 178
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forestgump72
- Bronze - Neighborhood Rider
- Points:811
- Views: 263
- Since: 5 months ago
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2008 Vision Tour Premium
- From: EdSasdelli
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Description:
- 6 months ago
- Views: 101
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My America
- From: vulcman2007
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Description:
Every once in awhile, I'll get an itch to write someting and it usually comes out in poetic form. So, I thought i'd share one of my favorites. My view of our great country, from the two wheels that drive my soul.
My America
When the sun has fallen and the moon has risen, I will have traveled a thousand miles or more. Passing canvases of paint, strewn about the roadside. Each one a vision to behold and cherished. I have been granted, by birth, the freedom of this place and will take full advantage of my fore-fathers deeds. From the cold waters of the eastern ocean to the warm waters that ebb along the city of angels and from the big sky state to the delta of saints, I will explore this land called home. Routes of movie fame and rivers forged in literature carve through the landscape, becoming part of the scenery. The man made wonders that arch the westward path past the old man river to that great wall holding a sea, of life giving water. Nature, in all its glory, made apparent in a trek through the Badlands and Rockey Mountains. I am not a pioneer. I am one, of many soul searchers.
Dave
- Blog post
- 7 months ago
- Views: 83
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