Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Vacation....





Next week…

We leave for vacation to Florida. I am eagerly awaiting this as I have never been to MGM Studios. I want to go and see this at night. Illuminations: Reflections of Earth as it looks wonderful and this. The Wishes™ Nighttime Spectacular. I have always loved fireworks! Pleasure Island sounds like fun for us adults!!

All in all, it looks like we are going to have a very fun and good time!! I have been to Disney in Florida before with my High School Band (jasper) and also with my family 2 other times. This will be my first time with my family. What comes around goes around as the saying goes.

Spaceship Earth Pavilion is one of my favorite rides at Epcot in Disney. I remember it well as a child. Step into the world-renowned geosphere to witness milestones in communications vital to man's survival. Ride Spaceship Earth to the further reaches of the solar system, and then visits a post-show to see your photo on the digital branches of the Network Tree.



What is your opinion?

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Pocahontas State Park Trails.

Here is the new GPS of Lake View 1&2 that i promised you today.
We rode on these trails on Sunday morning and we did 9 miles
with 970 feet of elevation chages.



This is the old data. It is off the Qalla Road entrance.
It shows the Red, Blue, and 2xRed trails.






This is a FlickR link to us to see all the pics and stuff.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmstringer/sets/72157600393338093/




What is your opinion?

Monday, June 18, 2007

Bush Gardens Rides for Big Kids...


Griffon carries riders up 205 feet, then hurtles them 90 degrees straight down at 70 mph.It is a good ride, not up to the Hype like they say.

Experience the world's tallest, most twisted inverted roller coaster. Alpengeist reaches a height of 195 feet and a speed of 67 mph. Alpine "skiers" are launched on the most chilling ride of their lives as this snowbeast twists an innocent ski lift into six staggering inversions and a 170-foot drop. I do not think that it isw still the tallest. It was a very good ride!!

at speeds approaching 50 mph. The "Wolf" rambles through natural terrain and dense forest, suddenly dropping a sheer 99 feet to nearly skim the Rhine River below. It reminded me of XLR8 at Astro World in Houston texas. Not really that fast, and it looks dated. The big drop was nice.

The pulse-quickening journey plummets passengers a total of 825 feet. Apollo's Chariot boasts nine drops, the first of which plunges passengers down 210 feet of steel track. You will experience periods of weightlessness, or "air time," as you race up and down the camelback humps at 73 mph. Very good ride!! I was surprised. Very compareable to "Super Man" at Six Flags New England in Massachusetts.

Reaching 13 stories into the air with a 114-foot drop, this "creature" offers a spine-tingling, breathtaking ride at speeds up to 60 mph. Very good roller coaster in the classic sense and a good one to start off your day.

Bush Gardens in Williamsburg Virginia.

There are some neat 4-D rides like Corkscrew Hill and Pirates there with motion and animation to make the experience better. My only gripe about the park is that there were not enough food places to eat. In the different regions they had about 1 major restaurant with several treats & sweets places. In most other parks I gone to, they have several places to eat. The lines were very long to get food. That was the only downside that I can see.
What is your opinion?

God's Will...

This has been bothering me a lot lately. People always talk about God's Will. I know from my own life and that of 12-Setep you are supposed to submit to God's Will. How do you know what that is? Me, My Wife and Daughter have been together this coming December 5 years (married) we have been together a total of 7 this summer and have known for over 20 years. We went to the same high school.

Over the last 5 years, we have moved 5 times to different stated for her company. We always hoped that the "next" move would be the one that would bring us happiness. We moved from Houston to Austin, Then to Highlands Ranch Colorado. From there we moved to Gardner Massachusetts; she worked in Boston. From then we moved to Midlothian Virginia. We made up our minds to stay here until our daughter got out of high school. Now, with things so up in the air, we are perplexed.

We try to go to church and to follow God's Will, but it is hard. When we lived in Colorado, we were members of St Andrews United Methodist Church Were really in tune I think and we loved going to the church because of the worship and the church itself. It was very wonderful but like all things, we moved to Massachusetts and it was very hard to get back into church because of the size of the church there. We so longed for St. Andrews that we, I guess, missed out on a very small church that we could have helped bring life back into had we just given it a chance. For you see, St. Andrews set the bar very high.

Well, Midlothian in my mind has some very good churches. Some would I dare say compare to St. Andrew in my mind. They have lots to offer and have a very progressive message in tune with today. It has been hard for my wife as they are not St. Andrews. I hold no fault against her for this as I miss it also, but we have to move on.

When she accepted her promotions, was that the Will of God? We made friends in Colorado and in Massachusetts but we left them. Our lives a little better for knowing them and theirs also for knowing us. My brother whom I talk about a lot is a Man of God, a Preacher in the Methodist Church. Even though he is 10 years younger then me, I rely on his wisdom to help guide me and he is more than ready and willing to be up to the challenge when I ask. I know that I do not pray as often as I should and as for what His Will is and what we should do. It is a hard practice to get into and when you do it, if you stop it is really easy to no continue.

Are all of these trials and tribulations part of God's Will for us? And if so, what is His Will to be for us on the next leg of our journey? How do some of you deal with this subject? Or do you even think about it.


What is your opinion?

Sunday, June 17, 2007

A few more pics...


Me and Jeff all banged up!!

Mark on the trail!!

Mark in the creek crossing!

What is your opinion?

Fathers Day...

I just wanted to wish all the fathers around the world, Have a Happy Fathers Day!!



What is your opinion?

Our Ride This Morning...



So this morning we went on a bike ride to Pocahontas Park. It was Jeff, Mark and I. We had to do an early ride as I have to work tonight. We got there around 8.15am and proceeded to go to the trail. We went down some nice trails that lead us to the main trailhead. On the way, I was going fast down one of the hills and I tried to scratch my nose. Boy was that a mistake!!

My wheel turned to the left and I kept on flying down the hill. It was almost like I was sliding into home plate!! My right forearm is all scratched and my left knee is all torn up. I was bleeding and had a trail of blood all the way to my sock. The bad part about all of this is that I was not trying to do an obstacle! It was just a wide open road. I am sore, but my pride was hurt more than anything. We decided to continue with the ride as planed. I was not going to let a wreck keep me from getting my exercise and fun for the day.

Mark and Jeff both now have Clip-Ins and Egg Beaters for their bikes; so needless to say, I was not the only one that had a few accidents today. Mark was the next one and Jeff followed in wrecking. Jeff’s knee was as bad as mine. Mark did not get bumped as bad as we did, but he did take a few spills.



That is a pic of me going in a little creek that runs across the trail that we were riding today. We rode on Lake View 1 and 2. Mark and I did these before and we did about 12 miles but we got lost and had to ride over the dirt roads in the park to get back. We were a bit smarter this morning and found our way to the car.

All in all, it was a very good morning ride with us doing 9 miles and 970 feet of elevation changes. We did the ride in a total of about 2.5 hours.


This pic is me going over what would be considered a normal obstacle in the parks that we ride in. These are present in all of the parks that we ride. Some of them a re bigger than this, but most are about this size. I will post on Tuesday all the GPS data of these new trails that we rode today.



I went home and cleaned up, doctored myself and then got some much needed rest!

What is your opinion?

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Friday, June 15, 2007

Another Recovery Memory...

It was back in 2002 when I first tried to get clean. I remember going to several NA meetings and I thought that I liked them. So after a month or so, I asked a person to be my sponsor. His name was Wes or Officer Wes as he is known.

We decided to meet on the next after at a local cafe to discuss The 12 Steps and how I was going to go threw them with him. He gave me his number and told me that if I needed to talk or call him in a weak moment for me to do so no matter what time it was. That is what a sponsor is supposed to do for your information.

I thought that I was doing well and he and I proceeded to work me through the first 3 steps and we would meet regularly at his house or at the cafe. Then came that dreadful day after I had 3 months of sobriety that I had the dreaded "R" word...Relapse! For you see, that can happen if you do not totally put you whole body into the program of recovery. It happened because I still thought that I could drink and get away with it. I could not. For I thought that even though I new alcohol was not my problem, I could still drink like I was ok. For just placing one altering chemical into my body restarted the mental, physical craving that happened to me when I would ingest and use cocaine. Even though alcohol is legal, it is still a drug, plain and simple.

So if you are out there in Recovery land, do not delude yourself by think that you can drink but no do drugs. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN.

Also so as to not piss anyone off about the anonymity issue, I called him to ask if I could use his name in this blog post. He was most grateful to let me do it...


What is your opinion?

Some more FREE Music...

Several months ago i posted about an artist named VXC or if you will VXCasualty. One in the same. He has a few more new tunes for your download. His record lable is called LSDXM.

"Vxcasualty is an experimental trance project with psychedelic and ambient elements produced using Propellerhead Software's Reason" - Last.FM

New Music:
Mothra Organica is a directory with new music.
vxc&dysphor - untitl..> is also new.
http://vxc.lsdxm.com/demonology_EP_2007/
Index of /02-07/earthbound direct link to directory.

These are direct links to these tracks.
http://vxc.lsdxm.com/gateway_drug.mp3
http://vxc.lsdxm.com/brain%20floss.mp3
vxc - now, then!.mp3
vxc - friable.mp3

These are his old links:
vxc - 5-meo-wtf/
vxc - shadowcaster/
vxc - singles/
vxc - synapse/

What is your opinion?

Blog on the net...







It always seams that I am trying to generate new traffic for my Blog by singing up on new free services. You can see all the badges that I have on the left side of my blog. It is a personal thing that I like to do. I could go the route of Ad-sense from Google, but I do not want to sell out and place advertising on my site. I could also do the pay-per-click but that is not what I am about. I have had over 4300 hits since I started actively promoting my site sometimes last December. Not bad figures if you ask me. The picture is a map of where people all over the world read my blog. I just think that it is neat when someone from India leaves me a comment on my blog. The internet is a wonderful tool that all should be able to enjoy!!

I do not under any circumstances condon censorship in any way, shape, or form!!

The internet should be kept free and clear off any and all censorship because no single country owns the internet. I know that there is a lot of that going on around the world like in China where FlickR is being banned from viewing because some pics got on there of the Tiananmen Square student demonstrations of 1989 and the China government has blocked the site.

This is much like the on going issue here in the USA about Net Neutrality. I for one have signed up to help save the internet and stop censorship of the internet. If you value reading this blog in a different country, you should also want to do so as it might get banned. They could ban the whole www.blogger.com service for all we know. That would piss off a bunch of people including me. Lets all just play nice together and enjoy the internet like it is supposed to be used for, free and with no censorship.





What is your opinion?

4 New Tracks!! #Bandcamp

If you want to Purchase any of my music(s), Please go to https://djrenigade.bandcamp.com/