What you need:

1. A worn out N64 controller
2. A small screwdriver to open it up
3. Some 2-part epoxy
4. A small file (metal works best)
5. Some tape
6. A place to do this (keeping in mind that epoxy is not easy to remove once dried)

First things first, open up the controller, making sure not to drop the screws and lose them. Losing 1 or 2 won’t be the end of the world though, as I learned. Notice that there are a couple really small screws in the slot where the memory card/rumble pack plugs in. Those need to be removed as well.

Once it’s open, you will notice that the joystick part is pretty much self-contained. Unplug it, remove it from the controller, open it up and remove all the parts. You will probably notice a ton of scraped up plastic inside; that’s from the stick and that inner-core wearing down from use. It’ll probably look something like below.

Notice that the little ball on the end of the stick is pretty worn down. That’s why the joystick feels loose, and that’s the part we need to fix. “But just how the hell are we going to do that” you ask? Well, there’s a reason we pulled out the ol’ 2-part epoxy!

Mix up your epoxy with some kind of “mixing stick” (I just fold up paper and make a point on one end), creating a small pool. Be sure that you mix it really well so that it dried nice and strong. Now, put some on the end of your mixing stick and dap some on the end of the stick; this works best if the epoxy is given a couple second to thicken up. Alternately, you can simply dab the stick into the pool of epoxy so that it collects on the tip. Don’t worry about over-applying, since that’s the reason we have the file. Make sure you do worry about getting the epoxy on the sides of the stick; we want to simply build up a ball of epoxy on the bottom of the stick (see the image below). Once you’re happy with it, hang it so that epoxy is facing down and let it dry. Give it a while to make sure it really is dry (I let it sit for about 6 hours).

Once it’s dry, you want to shape the epoxy ball you created. Using the small file you have, file any loose epoxy off of the flat surfaces (restoring the T shape) and around the sides of the epoxy ball. You basically want the ball to become an extension of the stick and have a round tip. Think about how the top of a tube of Carmex looks (that’s the best example I can think of). If the ball is too wide, you won’t be able to move the stick freely. I wish I took a picture of the end result, but I was just anxious to see if it all worked (and, of course, it did). Damn me and my haste. NOTE: The epoxy files off surprisingly easily. I used a metal file from a Swiss Army knife and ended up filing off too much both times I did it.

Note that you probably won’t get it the first try, especially if the joystick was really loose (like both mine were). When you think it looks good, put the joystick part back together (screws and all) and see how it feels. Don’t waste your time mounting it back in the controller though, it’s not really needed. Just move the stick around in a 360-degree motion and make sure it feels free and doesn’t stick. If there is a restriction in movement, simply take it back apart and file that part down a little more. If you file down too much, or the stick is still really loose, put some more epoxy on it, let it dry, and try again. NOTE: As a time saver, you may not want to file it down on the first time you do it; simply put it together once it dries and see how loose it seems; if it’s still loose, put more epoxy on right away.

As an added suggestion, you may want to think about putting a VERY small amount of oil or graphite or something in that little white core that the stick rubs against. This will prevent it from wearing down as fast and make the joystick last longer. However, keep in mind that there IS a circuit board in there, and that graphite conducts electricity. I ended up using olive oil (yeah, you read that right) since it was all I had at the time. It was like 4am and I just wanted to get it all back together; once again, damn my haste!

That’s pretty much it. If you play your cards right and take the time to do this well, your controllers will feel like brand new and work great. One of mine was still a little loose, but it was a ton better that it was when I bought it! Hope you can get your controllers working again. Don’t forget to pick up a copy of Super Smash Brothers (if you can find it), you won’t be sorry!

I already switched over to using ING Direct’s checking account for all of my ATM and check sending needs and they are AMAZING! I freakin’ LOVE ING!! I have free ATMs in places I never imagined I ever would with them, AND they pay me interest on my checking account! But, I needed a convenient way to cash physical checks. Enter Chase.

I wouldn’t have gone with Chase, but they run the show down in the Phoenix area here. In addition, they sent me a coupon good for $100 if I open an account with $100 or more. I just got a $57 reward check from Citi card so I thought I’d deposit that, some ING checking cash (thanks to the seemingly endless supply of ATMs at my disposal) and cash in on that reward. Seemed like a solid plan to me, and in the end it was. But it had its hassles.

As I was signing everything and feeding the teller all of my info to get the account going, she asked me if I wanted to sign up for a rewards debit card. I asked what the rewards were, and she explained that for every dollar I would get 4 points. When I asked how the points translated to cash, she said that 2500 points is $5. OK, so $1 is 500 points. And I would get a bonus of 2500 points. And I would also have a chance to get whatever I was buying for free; a promotion they do on a random account every 5 minutes. Sounded OK with me.

Then she mentioned there was a fee. “How much does this cost?” I asked. “$25 a year” she replied. I couldn’t think of the exact translation at the time, but I had a feeling that it wasn’t worth the entry fee. I asked “can I get a normal debit card for free?” She gave me this stunned look and explained the rewards again. “Look,” I said, “there’s no way I’ll recoup that $25 fee, so it makes absolutely no sense to do this.” She tried to explain that I would because I would be using the card all the time.

So let’s look at the numbers a second. $1 is 500 points. The annual fee is $25, so I would need 12,500 points just to cover the fee. I get 4 points for every $1 I spend, so I would need to spend $3,125 a year just to cover the entry fee. And after that, I would have to spend $125 to get $1 back, which means I would be getting 0.8% cash back….. AFTER I spent $3,125. So, in practice, I would be earning far less than that already pathetic 0.8%. And on top of that, they only pay out their rewards in $100 increments. Best case scenario, if I spent $15,625 on my debit card in 1 year, I would make $100 back. Every year I DON’T spend that much, I have to again recoup the $25 fee, which would further reduce my payout. Translation: I would NEVER earn the rewards.

In contrast, I get 3% cash back on all gas purchases and 1% back on everything else with my Discover card, who pays me in $20 increments. I’ve already claimed $60 in rewards this year alone with them, it’s great! I get 5% back on drugstore and grocery purchases and 1% cash back on everything else with my Citi card, which pays out in $50 increments. This is my backup card and that $50 mark is a little tough to hit, so I almost never use the card. Either way, both of these cards have MUCH better rewards, and neither charges a single fee for use as long as I don’t carry a balance, which I never do.

TO summarize, if I spent $15,625 in one year on the Chase debit card, I would get $100 back. If I did the same with my Discover card at 1%, I would get $156.25 back, $140 of which I could claim. That’s assuming I buy no gas for 1 year too, which is pretty unlikely. My reward with Discover would probably be closer to $200, or twice what Chase would give me. And all without a fee. No thank you, Chase!

As icing on the cake, after I finally made her give me the basic, free debit card, I was told I would still get 1 point for every $1 I spent, which is ridiculously low, but it’s better than nothing, and since I don’t use the debit card, I don’t care either. But the best part was when she told me that the free purchase reward they do every 5 minutes, a detail she kept using to sell me on the “reward” card, was also given to me on the free debit card! So, there was absolutely no reason to ever get a Chase reward debit card!

She also tried to sell me on the savings account, in which I had to keep a minimum of $300. I told her I just wanted a checking account, and she gave me a very concerned warning about over-drafting the checking account. I smiled and said it wouldn’t be a problem. And it won’t, I have no intention of using the checking account for anything but cashing checks. Why would I use it for anything else when I get so much more through ING Direct?!

The lesson here: if you open a Chase checking account, or any account for that matter, be well aware of anything they are charging you to use. Chances are pretty high that you’re being ripped off.

When Money and I originally planned the trip down, we decided that we would try to stop in at least a couple cool places to make the trip more entertaining. Of course, that was when we had planned to leave Saturday morning, which was even later revised to late Friday night. Instead, we didn’t leave until Saturday afternoon, which offered much less stopping time. We weren’t exactly on a schedule, but we had to get there by Wednesday, and once we started driving, we just kind of wanted to keep going. Plus, we could maximize the time he had to hang out in Arizona before having to hike the Grand Canyon. So instead of stopping in any specific locations, we just drove as long as we could every day and tried to take pictures of random stuff along the way.

Since we were so far behind and it was already so late in the day, we knew we wouldn’t get too far on Friday and decided that St. Louis would make a great first stop. One of the things we really thought we needed to get a picture of was the St. Louis Arch, which I had never seen it before and Money had actually been inside. Once we got close enough to it, I pulled off the expressway so we could stop and try to get a decent shot of it. This seemed like a good enough idea, except for one tiny little problem; I got off in East St. Louis.

Now, those of you who had never been to East St. Louis may not realize what a big problem this was. There’s this common conception that Detroit is the worst city in America, which I think is a pretty fair thing to say, but they are not without their competition for the title. East St. Louis is a very, very close second. We stopped for all of 10 second to grab some failed shots of the Arch and the city of St. Louis before we decided to get the hell out of there. The problem was, there was no simple way back on to the expressway, so we were left driving blindly around to try and get back on. We had maps and a GPS to go off, but, surprisingly, that didn’t help much. We found some really seedy strip club in the middle of nowhere (where someone yelled something about our lights, more on that later) and drove for a few minutes before we found a better place to turn around. We did manage to get back on the road and grab some shots of the Arch on the way past, which turned out much better.

Money’s Dad was nice enough to give us a ton of AAA maps and information to help us along the trip so we were able to call ahead and reserve some low-priced hotel rooms. This saved us some time looking it all up and saved me a ton of money on hotel rooms. We actually made it about an hour past St. Louis to St. Clair, which was good enough for the first night and managed to find a pretty decent hotel room for under $40 a night. It even had free Wifi Internet and a continental breakfast.

One interesting thing to note was that we were in the Bible Belt at this point. I really didn’t even realize it (even with all the St. cities) until I saw a billboard across the street from our hotel that read “Pornography Destroys”, found an open Bible in our room with some kind of religious-toned note welcoming to the hotel framed and hanging on the wall. Being an Atheist, I was fairly amused with all of this. It was just after midnight and After moving all of my possessions into the truck and trailer and again into a large box truck and running around getting everything sorted out, we were pretty exhausted and both passed out right away.

In the morning we got our breakfast, iced up the cooler and hit the road. We decided we should stop and grab some drinks and food for on the road before we set in for a whole day of driving so we stopped at a Walmart off the expressway. This wasn’t an ordinary Walmart though, it was instead the smallest Walmart ever. It was seriously smaller than some of the CVS or Walgreens stores I’ve been in. We picked up some soda, juice, sunflower seeds, bandaids and Neosporin. Why the medical stuff? Well, during all of the moving I managed to rip the skin around my fingernails up since I wasn’t wearing any gloves and I was in a lot of pain. The ointment and protection really helped out with that, but it was still really hard to use my fingers for much. Sadly, I have no pictures of that, but they didn’t stop hurting for a couple days. Anyway, once we had what we needed, we just kept driving.

Just like the day before, I started the driving and cruised through it all until I was too tired and let Money take over. Our next stop was Amarillo, TX, so we had a lot of hours ahead of us but it really only took us through the rest of Missouri and Oklahoma. Oklahoma had nothing to see, but they did have toll roads in the form of turnpikes. Much like Illinois, their toll roads were some of the worst paved roads I’ve ever driven on. The roads around the major cities weren’t any good either; very poorly paved, huge potholes all over and they didn’t seem to have any idea how to smoothly connect pavement to bridges.

Of course, before we even made it to the toll roads I needed to get gas, but I kept holding out for a place to get lunch as well before the border. I managed to pass up the last gas station before the turnpike since the roads were really poorly marked. The problem was, we really only had small amount of gas left and there was no indication where the next gas station was. We ended up getting off the toll road at the first stop we could (about 20 miles in) and driving some 2 miles away to the gas station at the exit. We were unbelievably close to running out of gas, and while we did make it, it was a really bad introduction to the state.

We gassed up, grabbed some gas station food there and ate in the truck. There was a farmer selling apples across the street so we picked up some Red and Golden Delicious apples and hit the road again. Oklahoma really only had 2 things mentioning, besides the fast that the state is really boring and I don’t ever want to go back. For one, their dirt is red….. I mean REALLY red. It’s like looking at dirt on Mars, which makes their farm land look absolutely alien. In addition to that, they have a ton of wind farms. Really massive wind farms with really massive windmills on them. It’s a pretty cool sign to see mile after mile full of these lazily spinning blades generating power. We even managed to see a few of their parts being trucked around the area.

Texas wasn’t that much more exciting than Oklahoma, but their roads were paved much better and they didn’t charge us to use them. We ran in to some rain the night we left Oklahoma and made it in to Texas. The hotel we found wasn’t anything special, but they again had Internet and a free breakfast and the room was cheap. Again, after a long day of driving, we both passed out pretty quickly. We would have checked out the area a little, but it was raining and pretty ugly outside so we just went to sleep.

In the morning, the sore throat Money had been nursing for the past couple of days was feeling really bad, and since he was going to be hiking the Grand Canyon in less than a week he decided to have it checked out. He found an Urgent Care up the road and had a doctor check him out. He ended up having some kind of infection for which he got some meds. The overall plan for the day was to make it to Flagstaff, AZ and fill the prescription in Santa Fe, NM. The day started out a little rainy and dreary still, but by the time we crossed the border into New Mexico it warmed up, the sky was clear and it turned out to be a beautiful day.

New Mexico was also where I started to get really excited for the move. This was where the terrain started looking like Arizona; flat desert with huge mountains in the distance. We even started seeing cacti. I love this type of landscape and for the first time during the entire trip, it started to sink in that I was finally moving to where I wanted to be.

Sante Fe was a pretty cool little town, buried in the middle of the mountains. It was here that we stopped to fill Money’s prescription and grab some lunch. We decided to eat at a chinese buffet that was listed in the AAA guide book. Of course, where we got there, we discovered that they moved to the other side of town. No matter though, we still made it, just got to see more of Sante Fe that we wanted to. We filled the prescription and headed on, enjoying the terrain the whole way through.

When we made it to Flagstaff, it was 32 degrees outside. Of course, neither one of us really packed anything for such cold weather, thinking we were home free in the south here. When we got to town, we looked up places to get dinner and found the Beaver Street Brewery. I felt like relaxing with a beer so the place sounded perfect. We found a hotel pretty close and planned to make the trip over by foot. I wore a hoodie and my motorcycle jacket since they were both accessible, money just wore a couple of fleeces. We were both pretty cold. It was worth the walk though; both the food and the beer were pretty great. Money got pretty drunk on two beers too, which he still blames on the altitude.

The next day we saw the worst of the mountains on the trip as we descended into the Phoenix area. It wasn’t that bad though, and we were in town by early afternoon. We met up with Michelle, Klye’s girlfriend, at a local Whole Foods to pick up the key to my new place. Klye went and picked it up the previous week since I was unsure when we were getting into town and didn’t want to show up and find out that I couldn’t pick my key up; he was always available. We had some lunch, thanked her for helping out and headed to the new place!

Money and I spent a few hours unpacking everything from the truck. Everything, that is, but the motorcycle. Much like I had to ride it up in to the truck I knew I was going to have to ride it back down. I originally thought I could walk it down backwards, but once I measured up the ramp and the width of my stance, it was clear that it wasn’t going to happen. In order to ride it down the ramp, I needed to turn the thing around inside the back of the truck, and of course, the bike was several inches longer than the truck was wide. I ended up taking the whole rear fender off and it still just BARELY fit!

I will say that the bike looked pretty cool without the back fender on it. If I ever get around to building up a custom bike or even giving this one a facelift, that’s definitely the look I will most likely go with.

The next few days I was running around the area in this giant 16 foot box truck. Running to Walmart to pick up things for the apartment, hitting the thrift store to find a replacement handle for a pot lid (and I found an EXACT match too, which was awesome), grabbing dinner in the tiny lot of Los Dos Molinos (best Mexican in the state), driving way out to Mesa to meet Money’s Aunt and Dad at Oregano’s for the best pizza in the state, we did it all in the bigass Penske truck. The day I was going to return it, some punk kid tagged the side of it with a magic marker, but when I returned it, the guy said it was no problem.

So, I guess that wraps up the story of the trip. I’ve been down here for a little over 3 months now and I am still very happy I moved out here. I’ve met a lot of new people through other people I knew out here and I’m joining some organizations and such to try and meet some more too. Next month I’m going camping and hunting some Javelina with some friends out in Safford and in the coming months I’ll be riding down to Tombstone with some of my other friends. And come March, I’m sure I’ll see some other faces from back home down here for spring training. As a bonus, it’s been below freezing and snowing pretty consistently since the holidays back home, and it’s been absolutely enjoyable down here; sunny and in the 70s and 80s during the day. Needless to say, I’m happy I made it!

So, there we were, Money and I both frantically calling around to all the rental truck places we could find in the phone book and on the net. U-Haul was the obvious choice, and they allowed you to tow your own trailer, which was great. The problem was, as I mentioned last time, they only offered a 2 inch receiver ball. Money called their main office to discuss it further as recommended by one of the local rental places. They were saying that they could install a 2-5/8 inch ball for $15, but they had no idea what class hitch they had on the trucks. Despite who we talked to, none of them had a clue was we were talking about. Great.

Then my Dad called me and said he talked to Penske and they had 16 foot trucks available for about $1,200, which was a few hundred less than U-Haul wanted anyway. I wasn’t sure if 16 feet would be enough, considering we had filled a 14 foot trailer and a full-sized truck completely, but I had little choice; we had to leave today! So, I called the local Penske place and they quoted me just over $1,000 with the insurance. On top of that, the truck was still fairly new, so it was unlikely we would have problems with it. That settled it, I was renting a 16 foot Penske truck.

We went to go check it out and sign the papers and I was stuck on the idea that 16 feet just wasn’t enough. The guy that ran the rental place pointed out that U-Haul counts the 2 foot section above the truck in their overall length, so a 16 foot truck is really only 14 feet, where this truck was truly 16 feet, which was nice. Still, the whole ride back to my house I kept thinking 2 things….. I hope they didn’t tow my trailer yet (we had to leave it unattended) and how much it would suck to have to ride my motorcycle down the whole way if everything didn’t fit. But, I had to do whatever had to be done. I called my parents on the way back to let them know what we decided to do and they said they were coming back down with my sister to help me pack everything up again. I told them they didn’t have to, but I’m really glad that they did.

Before they showed up, Money and I grabbed all of the boxes and bins that I had and stacked them all up in one row near the front of the truck. The plan was to stack them all the way up, slap the mattress and box spring against them and tie it all down so nothing would move. This was Money’s idea, and a brilliant idea it was! We managed to do all that before my parents even made it back down from Milwaukee, and after seeing it all in there and what seemingly little was left, I was a little move confident that it would all fit.

We finished up just as my parents showed up. The next thing that we decided to put in the truck was the motorcycle. Before we did that, we had to get it back out of the trailer, and before I talk about that, I should explain how we first got it in the trailer. See, I didn’t have a ramp or anything to get the bike up the foot or so into the trailer, and with a dry weight of 700 pounds, there wasn’t much chance of us lifting it. What we ended up doing was nailing a couple of long 2×4′s together, supporting the middle with a jack stand and walking the bike up it. It was really difficult and the ramp kicked out as soon as we got it in. Looking back, it was a pretty sketchy idea, but it worked.

So, logically, we thought we could do the same to get it back out. That proved to be easier said than done since the ramp kept simply getting pushed off the trailer as I backed the bike up to it. My Dad kept insisting that we could do it, but as I explained to him, my motorcycle was the single nicest and most expensive thing I own and I wasn’t willing to simply risk it when I could run up to Harbor Freight and buy a proper ramp for less than $100. It seemed like a good investment to keep from jacking up my $8,000 bike, and he agreed.

After a little hassle at the Harbor Freight (messed up stock numbers and buried stock led them to believe they were out of stock, luckily my sister happened to notice that there was one buried in some other ramps), we safely backed the bike off the trailer and onto the pavement. Now, we just had to get it in to the back of the Penske truck. The trailer was about a foot off the ground, which was difficult enough, but the truck was closer to 3 feet off the ground. Granted it had a proper ramp up to it, but anyone who’s seen ramp on a moving truck knows, it’s only about 2 feet wide and it’s not an extremely gradual incline. And the only way we were getting it on the truck was for me to ride it up. Pretty freaky to say the least!

My Mom disappeared into the house because she didn’t want to witness this happen, but nobody else thought this was going to be difficult at all. Then again, they weren’t the ones riding it up, I was. I decided that it would be a good idea to put on my leather jacket and helmet in case something went wrong, they seemed to at least agree with that. So there I was, decked out in my leather jacket, helmet and gloves and staring down the ramp in front of me anticipating the Evil Knievel type shit I was about to pull off. And, thankfully, I did pull it off!

In order to secure the bike (which we parked right next to the big “no motor vehicles” sign in the box of course), we decided to drill a hole in the floor of the truck and sink an eyelet into it. I figured I could always claim that the truck was like that when I got it since the guy didn’t inspect it at all before giving it to me. Unfortunately, we snapped the head off the bolt because the wood was too hard and the hole was too small. In the end, we took out one of the bolts that held the bed in place and sunk the eyelet into that hole, which worked out pretty well. The other side of the bike we just tied to the lower tie-down rail on the side of the box. I was pretty worried that it wouldn’t hold with all the stopping, but nobody shared my concern so I figured I would just go with it.

We packed everything else in the truck and even managed to fit more than we originally put in the trailer and truck that I bought for the move. So much for my concerns about not having enough room. What’s funny is that the trailer was rated to move a 2 bedroom apartment, and I had all of these things packed mostly into 1 upstairs bedroom at my old place. Apparently I have way too many things.

So, that’s the excitement of the move day. So exciting, in fact, it had to be broken into 2 parts! To review, the original plan was to leave that Friday night and stop in Peoria. That was revised to leaving early Saturday morning and still stopping in Peoria for a little while. In the end, after we packed and re-packed everything and took some quick showers, we hit the road at 4:00pm. So much for Peoria. Sadly, I was too busy freaking out about everything and packing everything up to grab any pictures.

I started out the trip behind the wheel and I want to point something out about that. I’m not a complete novice to driving a large truck, but it’s another thing entirely to drive a large truck around knowing that everything you own, and I mean EVERYTHING, is in the box of that truck. One spot of bad luck, one mistake, one stupid driver and I stood to lose it all! Needless to say, it took me a lot of hours behind the wheel before I was somewhat comfortable with it. And I never quite got comfortable when Money was driving at all. Every turn felt too fast, no matter how slow he was driving it always felt like he was driving way too fast and I was just always on edge. Luckily enough, we made it down without any major problems.

I’ll pick up the third and final part with our first hours actually on the road. The trip down went pretty smooth overall so I don’t have much to hook you for the next part. I guess I’ll just have to hope you tune in. And you’ll have to hope it’s not another 2 weeks before I write it. I’ll leave you with some shots I took the next day of everything in the truck.

So, I sold my car, and bought both a truck and a trailer, and on Friday, I put all my stuff in both. Actually, that’s a bit of a simplification. More correctly, my parents, my sister and the friend of mine was planning to drive down with, Money, helped me pack all of my possessions in both the truck and the trailer. This was about a 4 hour ordeal, because as much as I thought I had all of my things packed up, there was still a lot of stuff that wasn’t packed. On top of that, the more we packed up, the more it became apparent that I had a LOT more than I thought I did.

Another part of the plan was to ride my motorcycle through a good chunk of the trip down. Of course, the more of my things we packed in to the trailer, the clearer it because that that wasn’t going to happen. In the end, we got everything in (a feat we were all sure wasn’t going to happen) with only a handful of extra stuff left behind.

It felt good to finally have everything packed up, but we still weren’t ready to go. Because I spent so much of my time leading up to my departure spending time with friends and saying goodbye, I didn’t get a chance to hook up the brakes on the trailer. I was originally thinking about just winging it, but it was pretty clear that we had a significant amount of weight and I didn’t want to just take any chances since I was literally hauling everything I own.

My family left since it was pretty late and the packing wasn’t originally part of the plan anyway, so Money and I started hooking up the brake system. We got nearly everything wired up by about 2:00am and realized we didn’t have some connectors and other small things to finish the job. Of course, nothing around me was open 24 hours so we could grab the parts and be on our way, so we were forced to put the trip off until morning. The plan was to grab a few hours of sleep, hit Walmart when they open, wire it all up in the parking lot and hit the road. So, I locked up the trailer and we called it a night.

One part of the whole truck and trailer plan I left out up until now was that I had planned to keep the trailer in the lot of our place. Unfortunately, less than 24 hours after having it in our lot our asshole maintenance guy put a tow notice on the thing. In the end, I kept in storage for a couple months, which was pretty cheap but really annoying. I mention this because in the time we went to sleep, 2:00am, to the time we got up, 7:00am, I got another tow notice. Like I said, the guy is an asshole.

No problem though, we were ready to hitch up the trailer and roll. I back the truck up to it with Money’s help and proceeded to lower the trailer on to the hitch. Before I even started, I noticed that the truck was significantly lower already having been jam packed with my stuff, but I didn’t really think much of it. I lower the trailer all the way on the hitch and the crank stops…… but there was one, tiny little problem; the trailer wasn’t off the ground yet. You read that right. The suspension on the truck was completely bottomed out, the trailer was still not off the ground, and I was freaking out.

Our options, as we saw them, were 1) see about beefing up the suspension on the truck, 2) buying a truck that could actually haul the trailer, 3) renting a truck that could actually haul the trailer. I called my Dad to see if he had any ideas for how we could fix this, but he was as stumped as we were and offered the same ideas. So, we hit the phones. First, I had to make sure the trailer wasn’t going to get towed with all of my stuff in it. I called the Sheriff’s department, who informed me that I would have 24 hours before they would tow the thing. The only problem was that it wasn’t them that issued the notice, it was the condo association, and anything goes for them. Great…..

On the the bigger problem; moving my stuff. I thought briefly about just buying a half-ton truck and having that while I was in Arizona since my credit was good and I could probably sell it, but I dismissed that idea pretty quickly. The risk would be completely on my end and I really, REALLY didn’t want to have to deal with another car payment.

We called all the rental truck places around and found out that only a few places will allow you to tow a trailer with their trucks. Of those that would, some would only let you tow THEIR trailers, which didn’t help us. Even better, those that would let you town any trailer only offered a 2-inch receiver ball and had no idea what class of hitch they used. I knew I needed at least a class 3 hitch and a 2 and 5/8-inch receiver. This was looking more and more like a dead end the more we researched it.

So, we started looking at a truck and trailer rental combo. The truck would be enough for all my stuff and the trailer would handle the bike. U-Haul was really the only company that had a motorcycle trailer for rent, but they didn’t offer one-way rentals on them. Another dead-end. Two options left, rent a truck big enough to handle both my stuff and my bike, or pack up all my things in a smaller truck and ride the bike all the way down. But I guess that’s my cliffhanger for part 2!

A friend of mine tried to commit suicide a few days ago after dealing with a bunch of life problems. She drank a bunch of alcohol and swallowed a bunch of pills in a decided attempt to end her life. After doing so, she, luckily, realized it was a bad idea and told her parents, who were luckily at home, what she had done. She was taken to the hospital to have her stomach pumped and is still under supervision and awaiting a doctor’s release.

I’m writing this because I just got back from visiting her. It was also the first time I met her parents, which was a little awkward. Thankfully, she’s doing well and seems to have accepted what she tried to do and stated that she has no plans to try it again. Still, she needs to be released by the doctor before she can leave, something she’s not too happy about, but understands.

Strangely, I feel kind of guilty about the whole thing, like I could have played a role in preventing it. The night she did this we had made plans to hang out, but she didn’t want to come over to my place and I couldn’t go over to hers since my truck was in the shop and I just got a ticket for having expired plates on my bike. So, we decided to do something over the weekend…. plans that weren’t fulfilled of course. I feel like if I had just gone over there this whole thing could have been avoided, but at the same time, I’m torn because I feel like it may have just delayed the inevitable. As a result of everything, she seems to have accepted that she wasn’t dealing with any of the things that were bothering her at all. She is now planning to get professional help, which is good.

I’m really glad that she’s thinking this way and that she’s OK after everything, but I’m a little shaken by all of this too. She’s an amazing person but she’s one of these people that, no matter how often you tell her that, she refuses to accept it. The thought that someone like her would choose to end their own life is just something I can’t come to terms with and I’m really bothered by the whole thing. I feel kind of nauseous, guilty and really depressed right now. She seems to be taking it all in stride though, which I guess is good.

As for the experience itself, it was pretty strange. The patients there are moved around 2 at a time, they are not allowed to have anything that might harm them (spiral notebooks for example), and they all wear slippers. I did notice a guy wearing shoes without laces, so I think perhaps they are not allowed to have shoelaces. It makes it pretty easy to tell who is a patient and who is not though. One of the other girls there had her wrists all bandaged up, which is a very sobering sight.

Well, I really don’t have a point to this post other than wanting to get my thoughts out. Sadly, I think I’ve done a pretty bad job of that. This whole thing is weird and I’m just having a little problem dealing with it. Maybe having this here will help.

EDIT: She’s long since been released from the hospital and is doing extremely well. To some extent, she’s like a completely different person which I’m really happy about. I can’t really explain why…. it’s not because she’s changed really, she just seems to be handling life much better than she was, if that makes sense. Anyway, I’m really happy that she’s OK!

See, I’m partial to the self-checkout lanes. They are faster because I don’t have to deal with the banter of the cashier, if someone is taking longer than someone else, I can easy just jump over behind the faster person and they are win-win because they require less staff to work them. At one point, the Jewel I went to installed these absolutely retarded new self-checkout machines that had conveyor belts. Why is this retarded? Well, the beauty of the normal lanes are you scan something, toss it in a bag on the scale and then scan the next thing. It’s faster, and when you are done, all your stuff is bagged and ready to go. The conveyor eliminates the bagging part and saves it for the end…. dumb. It adds a step to the process (bagging at the end) and slows things down further because you have to wait for the last person to finish bagging their stuff before you can start sending yours down. On top of that, it takes extra time for the belt to weigh the products! It’s absolutely the biggest step backwards ever. Thankfully, they kept 4 of the old, non-retarded machines there so I could use those. However, this also meant that other people were reduced to these 4 machines too (since everyone else seemed to also think the new ones were retarded), instead of the 8 they used to have. So I found myself waiting more often. But, the poor decision by the management wasn’t the only thing that did them in.

One day, I was buying some tuna and they had a couple in the isle where you got one free if you bought three. No problem, it’s non-perishable and I’ll eat them eventually, plus they were already on sale, so I had nothing to lose. I go to check out (at the non-retarded machine of course), scan all the stuff I’m buying and scan the coupon. The machine takes the coupon and informs me that someone needs to type in the price by which to reduce my purchase. Odd, you’d think it would be pre-programmed into the system. No matter, that’s what the attendant is for, right? So, I look over by the station, and….. nothing. I stand there for a couple of seconds trying to make eye contact with one of the workers to come over and type in the price, no luck. I walk over to the machine myself thinking I can just type in the number, no go. Look around again, nothing. Nothing annoys me more than when I try to pay for something and the retailer won’t let me! It was then that I realized what was going on. They installed these retarded machines and they kept the place drastically understaffed for one reason; they obviously don’t want my business. So, I left all of my groceries at the machine, went over to Dominick’s and vowed not to go back to Jewel. It’s clearly what they wanted.

Dominick’s is said to be a little more expensive, though I don’t actually watch what I spend so I can’t confirm or deny that. I can say that they are EXTREMELY more customer-oriented than any other big-box grocery store I’ve ever been to. There is pretty much always someone around to help you out, the employees are very friendly and they always ask you if you need help taking things to your car. I applaud their efforts, but they lack one thing that I really miss; the self-checkout lane. I’m back to dealing with the cashier, and while they are always very nice, it slows down the process which means more waiting and more wasted time. I’m not there to chat, I’m there to buy what I need and get out ASAP. I hate shopping. For anything. Even groceries.

But, the express lanes aren’t too bad, so I can deal with them. All is good in the world of Dominick’s…. or at least it was until recently. The last couple of times I went in there, there was an employee sitting at a desk directly inside the entrance asking people if they’d like to donate to help fight Muscular Sclerosis. Now, I have no problem with charity, and finding a cure for MS would be great, but setting up directly at the entrance for weeks (I go about once a week, and I saw this guy twice) and asking every single person if they’d like to donate is pretty extreme, not to mention annoying. Sure the guy was nice about it when I said “no, I wouldn’t,” but still, trying to guilt people into donating is pretty weak, and this is coming directly from the store themselves!

So, today I decided if the guy is there again, I’m walking out and vowing never to shop at Dominick’s again either. That doesn’t really leave me any convenient places to shop, but whatever, I’ll figure something out. To my surprise, he’s not there. Awesome, now I can keep shopping there! On the way in, I even saw a guy who welcomed me to the place and called me “Sir” while he was going out to fetch carts. Damn they’re friendly!

So, I do my shopping, get to the register and the cashier is especially peppy today, cracking some jokes but not being chatty, which I can deal with. The guy in front of me happened to buy 5 boxes of cereal so the cashier says “Wow, must be some good cereal,” to which the guy replies “The sign says if I buy 5 I save $5, so it’s like getting a box for free.” Now, I saw the same sign, and in fact was buying the same cereal, just not 5 boxes. You see, the cereal was $1 off per box, which means if you buy 5, you are saving $5. The sign could have said “Buy 20, save $20″ and I bet he would have rolled up with a cart full of nothing but 20 cereal boxes. He was also way over the 15 item limit, which doesn’t really annoy me too much, I just say it to emphasize the class of the guy he was. In fact, I’ve been running into a lot of these people lately. Salt of the earth, for sure.

Anyway, it’s my turn to check out and everything is going pretty smoothly. Aside from being asked 5 times if I needed help out to my car, with my 3 bags and a total of 15 items mind you. I was a little irked by that, but, I realize they are just trying to help, and it’s their job, so whatever. Then as he gives me my total, he asks if I would like to donate to help fight MS. Really? Every customer at every register now?! For fuck’s sake, I came here to buy groceries! Sure the guy was cool about be saying no, but seriously, if I wanted to donate, there are plenty of opportunities to do so outside of the grocery store.

On top of all this, their produce has been getting pretty poor as of late, so I’m pretty sure I’m done with Dominick’s now too. Seriously, why is it so hard to exchange money for food and be done with it?! Maybe I’m being too picky, maybe the idiot ahead of me just set me up to be annoyed, I don’t know. Either way, I need to find some other places to shop. I hope things are smoother once I move…

I’ve switched to Zen Photo and I couldn’t be happier. Even on our admittedly slow server, it runs like a champ, and uploading images is as simple as copying files into the directory. Genious!

Without further adieu, The Gallery!

I’m now pretty stable at 160 pounds, which was my target weight. Along with all of the fat, I lost a lot of muscle mass too. To help with this, purchased and now regularly use a set of Pushup Pros, an Ironman Double Ab Wheel and an SPRI medium strength resistance band. I’ve managed to get some muscles back in my arms and chest (more than I had before, in fact), but I really need to focus on my stomach now. I’m much thinner, but I’m still pretty flabby around the mid section. Hopefully I can get into some crunches/ab wheel/yoga routine, but we’ll see; the running should help once I start that back up too.

And that brings us to the title of the post. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve had to buy all new clothes. This is fine, and it’s something I pretty much needed to do anyway, my clothes were old and I needed freshen up the wardrobe. Unfortunately, this also means that my kickass leather jacket no longer fits. Officially, the jacket was a size 46, which Fox Creek Leather says should fit people with about a 46 inch chest. It was little big on me before, but not too crazy. Now, my chest measures in at 39 inches, and the jacket is so big on me as to be uncomfortable to wear. It looks like I’m going to fall into the thing and never come back out. This makes it bad for a motorcycle jacket.

I contacted Fox Creek Leather to see if they offered any kind of buy-back program so I could exchange it for credit towards a new one, but it’s not something they do anymore. Shame since the jacket is not even a year old and still looks brand new (and thanks to a fresh coat of conditioner, smells that way too). So now I’ve got to hit up some other people I know who ride and see if they are interested in the jacket and if it will even fit them. If that fails, I’m going to hit Craigslist and, if I have to, eBay. I might also see if I can drum up some interest in some motorcycle forums, but that might look odd as a first post from me.

Anyway, I’ve ordered a new jacket in a size 40. It’s the same Vented Reflector that I had before, just in the right size. I asked a bunch of people I knew which of their jackets looked the best, and nearly everyone came back with that one, and I’m inclined to agree. In the end, I expect the exchange to cost be between $100 and $150, making it the most expensive single piece of clothing I had to replace, but I think all in all it’s worth it. I look a lot better, have more energy and in general feel a lot better now.

Saturday I plan to get the bike back out and on the road for the first time this season; very exciting! I’ll also get to check out Jay’s brand new (as I purchased today) Audi A4.

Anyway, I’ll be getting a ton of pictures up in a while. For now, it’ vacation time brothers, vacation time brothers, vacation! Go Cubs!