MO Hwy 90 Loop – skip it

Tired after yesterday’s ride so I decided to do a short ride and explore some new roads. Looking at the map I decided to see how the roads were further north of here. Highway 90 in Missouri looked fun. So I setup this map.

Once you reach Gravette and turn north on 59 the road gets fun. Good pavement, nice twisty road going up and down hills. Worth another visit. Once you reach Noel, MO you’ll hang a right. There is a gas station and stuff there but I continued on. You can either go straight on to 90 or hang a left on to Missouri Highway H. I probably should have taken the left turn. Highway 90 is a sin against god. Such a huge disappointment.

To be on this twisting road that climbs up hills and then plunges down in to valley. There are segments where you immediate have to transition from the left side of your bike to the right and back. Over and over went on forever. It goes on and on like this. But the pavement would make a washboard jealous for how rough and bouncy it is. It caused a blasted CEL on my bike because it was so rough.

It seems fitting to me that the ‘end’ of 90 has a gas station that is out of business. From here I continued south. Ozark beverage is just north of the intersection with AR 340 which took me back to casa.

Chasing the Pig

We drove up to Bella Vista Thursday night for the holiday weekend. I still had some work to do on Friday. I got things taken care of for work and got a late start. My plan was to run up and down the Pig Trail, Arkansas Highway 23. Initially I had planned on running down to Fayetteville and taking Highway 16 down to 23, but I changed my mind and took Highway 12 out of Rodgers.

The route I took:

· Take 62 in Rodgers to Hwy 12 (there is a drive in Hamburger place called Susie Q’s at the intersection. · Head east on 12 for roughly 40 miles – There is a Shell gas station at the intersection of 12 and 23. · Turn right on to 23 and head South. · There are two gas stations in Huntsville (The shell is better) · Inside the Pig Trail there is Turners Bend which has gas. There isn’t that much there, but they do make an ok sandwich. · On the far side of the Pig Trail before you reach i40 is a Valero gas station. · Turn around and do it the other way

 

The road surfaces are good. Some parts are excellent having been recently repaved. There are parts where the surface is a bit cracked, but it doesn’t matter. Because I was out in the afternoon before the holiday weekend there wasn’t much traffic, but I imagine over the weekend the place will turn in to a zoo.  Overall given the scenery the slower moving traffic shouldn’t be to big a deal.  However, if you are wanting to rail through the turns either go on a week day or avoid holiday weekends.

My big concern on the ride was keeping my Duc fueled. However, it turned out to be a non-issue. First the 848 was getting around 42mpg. Next with the gas stations at the intersection of 12 and 23 and the Valero by I40 were spaced perfectly. I only had to put about 1.4 gallons in the tank. Finally, it turns out that Turner’s Bend has a gas pump even though it didn’t show up in Gas Buddy or on Google Maps.  So all in all you fuel is not a problem.

Overall this was the best ride I’ve been on. Then again I generally don’t go on street rides so I don’t have much to compare it too. Guess I’ll have to go out more and collect more data.

Open source Education

Just another little comment on education…These intertubes things are useful for stuff beyond downloading terabytes of pron you know.  Things like Khan Academy and Youtube provide huge amount of instructional material right at your finger tips.  Both of my daughters are constantly looking stuff up and learning from videos.  For instance Audrey has become somewhat of an expert at doing nails and making stuff with the sewing machine her grandmother gave her.  Natalie comes up with strange science experiments.

The reason I mention this to you parents is this: think long and hard about the future and the education of your children.  The days of the school house that we went to are over.  The days of Colleges are numbered.  What will take its place hasn’t quite been formed up but you can see the outline already.

You get what you pay for

For the past few years I’ve been watching what is going on at Universities with a bit of bewilderment.  Costs have skyrocketed while the actual delivered product has not improved.  Based on things like political correctness, focus away from education (the whole ‘college experience’ thing), and a crap job market; I would argue the product has gone down in quality.  So reading something like this “The Master’s as the New Bachelor’s” has me laughing my ass off.

Let me get this straight mom and dad: You paid how much for Skippy to go off for 4 years to earn a degree in what? And what is Skippy doing now?  The basement you say?  How do you feel about your investment now?  Why did you let him spend that gold on a degree in History?  Did you think he was going to get a real job with it?  Why not just go straight out and get a degree in education?  You know that is the only actual avenue of employment for him?  Well, that or Starbucks.  And Starbucks doesn’t really like History majors, they’d prefer somebody from Devry who can actually learn to operate the espresso maker in under a day.

I have already told my girls what I’ll pay for: science, math, engineering, business or a technical area.  Anything that has a real job at the other end.  I’d prefer the first three because the other stuff can be picked up along the way.  If they want to take the gender studies, political science, history (as a major) or other crap they can pay for it on their own dime.  I see those areas as no different than me taking motorcycle racing classes or sniper training – fun entertainment, but not serious investments.  Actually, I can argue that the military type training can actually be turned in to a job for a lot less than a humanities degree and the Motorcycle stuff….If the zombies come and I run out of ammo at least I can get away.

Just one more reason

 

It cracks me up when some of my friend and coworkers look at me cross eyed in regard to self defense.  To a degree I get it, I used to have the same attitude.  I live in a nice neighborhood, I work in expensive office buildings with security.  What could possibly go wrong and who could hurt me or my family?  And so….

Guy is gassing up his car, thug starts talking with him (it is called an interview and doesn’t always involve direct contact from the BG).  At a certain point the thug decides the guy is defenseless and begins his assault.  This is when thug no 2 shows up and help thug no 1.  The guy manages to get in to his car, but the thugs still have him and are trying to drag him back out.  The guy manages to get to his 45 and shoots one of the thugs twice in the body.  At this point the other thug breaks off and the guy closes the door to his car and drives away while calling 911.

As an aside:  The way this would turn out for too many people (friend and family) I know is: thugs beat the shit out of the guy (or gal) overpowering him and basically take charge of the situation and decide the fate of the guy (or gal).  The end result being rape, death, or other unpleasant consequences.  The results for the BG?  None really.  They might get to go to Criminal U for a few years where they’ll earn their doctorate in badassery.  Upon graduation they’ll be back in your neighborhood for their post doctorate studies.

But what is pretty funny about this story? First, everything was caught on security camera.  Here you can see the news piece on it with commentary.  Pay attention to the names.  Hmm…….Who is this dribbling pile of filth?  Seems that Bruh Bruh got a boo boo which opens up another comment:

Those holes are from a 45 at extreme close range (notice burn marks around the hole).  Pistols simply suck.  Yeah, they’ll save your life but do not think it is like the movies where the bad guy is going to go flying across the parking lot.  Your 45 is a limp wristed sissy that probably only provides 8 rounds in the magazine (not a clip).  9mm is even more limp wristed but usually provides 12-16 rounds per magazine (16 in my case).  So please do civil society a favor: Practice shooting in the face for distances less than 10ft.  You simply do not want the BG having any chance of getting up.  Shots to the face tend to discourage that.

Just one more reason

 

It cracks me up when some of my friend and coworkers look at me cross eyed in regard to self defense.  To a degree I get it, I used to have the same attitude.  I live in a nice neighborhood, I work in expensive office buildings with security.  What could possibly go wrong and who could hurt me or my family?  And so….

Guy is gassing up his car, thug starts talking with him (it is called an interview and doesn’t always involve direct contact from the BG).  At a certain point the thug decides the guy is defenseless and begins his assault.  This is when thug no 2 shows up and help thug no 1.  The guy manages to get in to his car, but the thugs still have him and are trying to drag him back out.  The guy manages to get to his 45 and shoots one of the thugs twice in the body.  At this point the other thug breaks off and the guy closes the door to his car and drives away while calling 911.

As an aside:  The way this would turn out for too many people (friend and family) I know is: thugs beat the shit out of the guy (or gal) overpowering him and basically take charge of the situation and decide the fate of the guy (or gal).  The end result being rape, death, or other unpleasant consequences.  The results for the BG?  None really.  They might get to go to Criminal U for a few years where they’ll earn their doctorate in badassery.  Upon graduation they’ll be back in your neighborhood for their post doctorate studies.

But what is pretty funny about this story? First, everything was caught on security camera.  Here you can see the news piece on it with commentary.  Pay attention to the names.  Hmm…….Who is this dibbling pile of filth?  Seems that Bruh Bruh got a boo boo which opens up another comment:

Those holes are from a 45 at extreme close range (notice burn marks around the hole).  Pistols simply suck.  Yeah, they’ll save your life but do not think it is like the movies where the bad guy is going to go flying across the parking lot.  Your 45 is a limp wristed sissy that probably only provides 8 rounds in the magazine (not a clip).  9mm is even more limp wristed but usually provides 12-16 rounds per magazine (16 in my case).  So please do civil society a favor: Practice shooting in the face for distances less than 10ft.  You simply do not want the BG having any chance of getting up.  Shots to the face tend to discourage that.

Shooting Steel at Top Gun

I ordered a ½ IPSC steel plate from LETargets.com and it got here on Thursday. It really is ½ size, but big enough to get the job done. Today, I took it out to Top Gun in Leonard to try it out.

One cool new thing at Top Gun is that there are now spinner targets at 200 yards. The plates are about 3” square. When you hit them they’ll start swinging. If you time it right and hit the spinner on its way back you can get it to go all the way around. Hence the name spinner.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with myself. I was able to nock the target over without too much trouble at the 200 yard line. Biggest problem I have is that I need to get a really good zero on my scope (was about 4” high and 4” left at 200 yard when it should have be dead on). But once I had it corrected I was able to drill the target really well. Which brought up the next problem: the legs do a pretty good job of keeping the target up, but even at 200 yards a 308 hits pretty hard. After about 10 strikes the target would be leaning back enough that it was no longer safe b/c the bullet would go up instead of down.

I tried using a 2x4 with a slot cut in it to hold the target at a 10 degree down angle. Did I mention that 308 hits pretty hard? The 2x4 was snapped after a few shots. So I guess it is time for another RNE project to see if I can’t build something that will keep the target where I want it.

I also took some paper targets. Here is my best group:

We don’t need to dwell on the others. I already know I’m not Simo Hayha. But, if I can see it I can generally hit it. I might not make pretty clover leafs on the paper but for what I was taught to do – it’s good enough.

I’ll probably go back out again in June. Right now I have a bike to get ready for the track and a new project to get going. Oh and I need to get ready to head to Italy at the end of June, so not a lot of down time right now.

UPDATE – in case you are curious about the face: Google the name.  Not quite Bin-Laden, but bad enough.  There is also theory behind training using actual faces vs. just silhouettes or bulls eyes.  People in actual self defense situations will hesitate before shooting when presented with an actual human face.  In context this is a bad thing.  But it also says something good about the true nature of humans.