Frenchy's Rant

The Show that Never Ends is in Chicago today, at the Allstate Arena. One of the best features of this arena is the TV trucks park outside. Another of the best features of this arena is it is located a quarter of a mile from the end of one of the busiest runways at the busiest airport in the world.

Makes for a nice, peaceful day at work, with a huge jet roaring overhead every three minutes or so coming in for a landing.

I stood outside for fifteen minutes, and in that fifteen minutes, I took these pictures:

And finally:

These pictures were taken last Friday on Deals Gap by famed photographer Killboy. There are at least three places on The Dragon where pro photographers stand and shoot pictures of motorcycles (and sometimes women passengers flashing) all day long, which can then be purchased for around $6 each. I’m a fan of supporting the arts, so I purchased a few of Killboy’s pictures.

Of us, not the flashers.

Me and Fiona on Rain Cloud Follows

Jason Tames The Dragon on his BMW Montauk

Abi, Color Coordinated To Match His New Concours

Away We Go!

My epic motorcycle journey continues, this time stopping in Norfolk to visit my brother for a few days. Visiting Virginia is always fun, because I get to channel my ‘inner redneck.’ Of course, my brother, an avid gun lover always seems to help with this channeling.

The Huntin’ Club

Before blowing the crap out of defenseless inanimate objects, we stopped by to visit with the beagles in the hunt club kennel. On slow days at the club, hunters use these beagles for target practice. No, seriously, hunters send the beagles out into the woods to flush out deer on certain hunting days.

After saying goodbye to the puppies, it was time to drive the adventure truck to the secret spot to kill pigeons. Clay pigeons of course.

Eric brought along 125 clay pigeons, 150 shotgun shells, and a few sets of earplugs.

We spent a few hours throwing and shooting clay pigeons. Well, Eric was shooting the clay pigeons, I missed most of them. I also spent a lot of time shooting leaves off the trees, and somehow ending up with empty shells stuck in the shotgun chamber.

Before long, we were out of shells, but that didn’t mean the day was over. Eric, the consummate redneck ambassador brought an entire arsenal of toys to play with.

Oh yeah! This little peashooter is an AR-15, the civilian version of the M-16. It holds gigantic bullets in a clip, and produces an incredibly satisfying BOOM! when the trigger is pulled.

Note the very satisfying dust cloud behind the target.

Oh yeah! Redneck fun at it’s finest!

The rest of the day was spent firing many different caliber handguns, from a 9mm all the way up to a .45.

Having never fired a pistol before, I was surprised at the amount of kickback from these little hand held weapons.

I was also surprised at how hard it was to hit the target, though Eric had no problem in that department.

Then, for the grand finale, my brother took out the big gun. A literally big gun. A Ruger Super Redhawk 44 Magnum with a nine inch barrel and sighting scope. Real manly, ‘Go ahead, make my day, punk.’ stuff. This thing looked like a movie prop, but it was all business, as Eric proved to a poor, defenseless Coke bottle.

Yes, bro, I’ll get the picture of the bottle exploding, don’t worry!

Wow.

Virginia may be for lovers, but it’s also a great place to be a redneck. Rednecks certainly know how to have a good time, and I am glad my brother has become one!

Back in May I went on a day-long, death-defying adventure in Colorado with my friend Mike. The whole story can be found here. Here is the Reader’s Digest version; we took Mike’s old Jeep out in the woods and pretty much destroyed it. Along the way, we met some guys driving these really cool rock crawler buggies, which I couldn’t help but shoot pictures of.

Ben,the guy driving the rock crawler in the above picture asked me if I could shoot some pictures of his truck, especially the tires, as he was trying to get a sponsorship from Pitbull Tires. Hey, why not? The only thing I asked Ben for in return was a ride in his rock crawler, which he was all too happy to provide.

I sent the pictures to Ben, then pretty much forgot all about it.

Yesterday, Ben emailed me, and lo and behold, one of the pictures I took of his truck made it into a magazine ad! Right there on page 65 of the September issue of Petersen’s 4 Wheel and Offroad magazine was my picture of Ben’s rock crawler!

Yes, the picture is a bit small, but it’s definitely my picture. The girl in pink, who I did not take a picture of agrees.

The original shot:

I’m happy to see a picture I took in a magazine, it’s pretty cool. I’ll be even happier if Ben got some free tires out of the deal, because this will mean I ‘ll be able to get another ride, and maybe even DRIVE that awesome rock crawler next time I make it to Denver.

Here are a few pictures of Ben racing the Number 36 Rock Buggy, affectionately known as The Raisin:

Maybe next year I’ll go to one of the races and shoot some pictures like these….