MX

You may be a tad tubby if...

Neil Hetzel — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 08:24:00 GMT

your seven year old daughter points at your bare chest and says “Gross Dad! You look like you have a germ that we learned about in school!” And you say, “What are you talking about?” And then she reaches up and pokes you in the nipple and says “Right there!”

Great, I have poison germ nipples.

Ladies, try and contain yourselves.

I'll never be rich because I can never think of stupid crap like this.

Neil Hetzel — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 17:36:00 GMT

I'm aghast.

http://www.teddyinsthlm.se/en/index.html

Motorcycle Momma (Oh boy, somebody flog me for using that)

Neil Hetzel — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:04:00 GMT

Those of you that know me may know that I ride motocross on the weekends. Its been an enormous outlet for me during layoffs, chemo, deaths etc.

I got my bike (2003 KX250) in the spring of last year and ever since then my mom has been bugging me to ride it. You see back in her youth in England she dated a young man who rode a motorcycle. My grandfather also had a motorcycle and was very much an enthusiast. So its understandable that she has a romantic connection to motorcycles in general. They remind her of her youth. They remind her of her dad. I understand.

But she didn't want to ride it in the “let me ride on the back” sense; she wanted to ride it in the “my hand twists the throttle” sense. Every time I told her “no“ I got some lecture about how she used to ride 600cc bikes back in England. Keep in mind that my mother is a spry 50+ years old and Osteoporosis and motocross do not good bedfellows make. The first time I rode a motocross bike I popped the clutch and wheelied the bike for about 30'. I was lucky enough to land it without hurting myself. I can just see my mom popping the clutch and looping the bike out. I love my mom. I don't want to see her in traction. I don't need *more* maternal guilt. For that reason I had refused...until last Saturday.

So incessant were her requests that I finally gave in. I told her I would give her a ride up and down my street. I only have one helmet, so I strapped that on her head. I started the bike and she got on. I wish I had a picture of her on the bike. She sat there, arms wrapped around my ample middle with her legs splayed out to ether side to avoid catching in the chain etc. A comical sight if ever there was one.

My mom has observed that we are both control freaks. While I'll admit a certain tendency to be a controller, she is a full blown junkie. As we moved down the street she began giving instructions:

“Go slow. Not so fast. Slow down. Take it easy“

This from the British Easy Rider?

“Mom, I'm in first gear.“

Once we reached the end of the street and had turned around, I told her that she had better hold on. I will admit to a certain amount of demonic glee as I popped the bike through 1st and 2nd into 3rd. As the bike topped out in 3rd and we darted down the street the only thing I could hear above the wind in my ears was...

“SLOW DOWN! YOU’RE NOT WEARING A HELMET. YOOOUUUU’RRREEEE NOOOOOT WEEEEAARRRINGGG AAA HHHEELLMMEEETT!“

The bike has five gears. So much for Gillian Knievel :)

I love you mom.

-Neil

Addendum: My mom's pose bears a strong resemblence to pose my femmebots are striking. I must admit to being entirley creeped out by this.

Bad Knees

Neil Hetzel — Sun, 21 Mar 2004 00:43:00 GMT

There's no pithy point to this post. Not that my posts are normally pithy. I just felt like sharing.

A couple of weekends ago I had a rather high-speed wreck on my motorcycle. I was heading down a straight away with my buddy right behind me. I was trying to stay ahead of him all the way down the straight. There's a hard right at the end that moves into a table top jump. Typically I start to break right before the turn so I can get in position to make the turn and then the jump. Well, as we came down the straight, I tapped my front brake like normal.

I had forgotten that the track had just been watered.

My front end washed out. Imagine an invisible hand lifting the bike up, rotating it 90 degrees and then slamming it down onto the ground without the rider falling off and you get the idea. The first thing to hit the ground was my knee. Then the full weight of the bike slammed onto my thigh. Then my right elbow hit. I was dragged along the ground for about 20'. This resulted in a sore knee, a good bruise on the right thigh and nice big bloody case of road rash on my right forearm near the elbow.

After cleaning up the blood on my arm I decided to make one more go around the track and then call it a day. When I got back and got undressed, I noticed that my knee guard had given up the ghost.

I'm pretty sure that would have been a break. Man, that would have sucked. I have pretty bad knees already from all the squats in High School and the skateboarding before that. A broken knee would have pretty much ended my MX “career“.

The knee guard you see is of the Fox “blue light special” variety. Only $15.95 or something like that. The realization that MX is pretty dangerous kind of sank in so I decided to get a better knee guard. What you think?

I feel like a cross between Boba Fett and the Road Warrior. It feels like overkill, but I guess if it keeps me from breaking my leg overkill is good.

-Neil

It brings a tear to my eye.

Neil Hetzel — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 19:02:00 GMT

My son takes his first steps on the path of the geek *sniffle*.

Crazy Bubba

Neil Hetzel — Tue, 10 Feb 2004 00:33:00 GMT

I saw this today and I just had to post it. I try not to post too many “Hey look at THIS!” type of things, but this just blew my mind. Unless you know something about motocross, the following post may just look like a guy clearing a jump on his dirt bike. So, if you'd bear with me I'd like to put the jump in context.

James “Bubba” Stewart is fast becoming the legend in Motocross and he is only 18. The things that this kid can do with a motorcycle are amazing. They seem to literally defy physics.

He's not falling over there. He's about to fly out over a very large drop and he is going so fast that he needs to scrub speed by “whipping” the bike. He's doing all this before he leaves ground...most guys do it when they are already in the air.

But, I digress. Back to context.

In the video I have, you will notice several jumps. A good rider (myself excluded) could launch off the first one and land on the first shelf of the step up. A Pro rider could launch off the jump and land on top of the step-up. This would be a pretty risky maneuver and takes a incredible amount of speed. Bubba launches and clears the entire thing. I still can not believe what I am seeing when I watch this thing. Here's a diagram that might help:

I know I'm rambling a bit here, but one other thing to notice is that he carries so much speed into the jump that his front wheel never touches the ground until he hits the face of the jump. His bikes attitude is such that it is positioned for the jump before he gets to it.

Here it is.

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Here's another one for Tom who kindly let me know my post about Bubba was not working correctly. Thanks Tom!