Great ride, great friends and great lane splitting makes great memories!

As a great many of you know from seeing my face book posts last week, your pal Jack Shit was taking a road trip to California!  Now you guys know that I am no big fan of the place at all, but what I am a fan of are some of the people who live there.  Not only did they live up to great expectations this trip but they far exceeded them.  By the grace of God I guess, I am lucky enough to be surrounded by amazing people!  I had big plans to pack up the bike that my buddy Daryl was kind enough to loan me for the trip early and get some much needed rest.  Wake up at the crack of Diane, hit the shower and then hit the road by 8am the latest!  By doing this, I would beat most of the blazing heat and sun while crossing the desert!  Ah yes, big plans are made to be broken I guess!  As it turns out, my dear friend George the Painter rolled on up for a visit the afternoon before I was to leave.  I have not seen him in person in what seems like forever so we stayed up till 1am bullshitting.  To say I was shocked when I saw him rolling in to the driveway would be an understatement to say the very least.  I am accustomed to seeing GTP on his trusty (joke) shovel head.  Imagine my surprise when I saw him roll up on this;

You can even imagine my shock when he told me he needed to borrow the hose as the radiator needed to be filled?  Radiator, what's that?  As you may have guessed, this also means that I never loaded up the bike either.  So at 3 am when I crawled in to bed and could not fall asleep because I had become so stressed out knowing that I would never leave any where near on time!  I awoke at 5:30 after about 2 hours of sleep and really didn't feel too bad.  I set the alarm for 6 am and thought I would grab another quick 30 minutes then I'd really be ready for my trip!  When Diane said, "baby, it's 11am are you getting up", I almost stroked out!  I leaped from the bed and was instantly frantic and began doing math in my head to figure what time I would arrive in Long Beach!  To make what turned out to be a really long story short, I fired up the bike to leave at 1pm.  Oh yes, what better time to cross the BLAZING DESERT?  I jammed the 10 towards LA with all that 96 incher would muster and was doing great on time.  Well great with the exception that I was now 5 hours late, but still doing okay.  I called Big Ben before I left to tell him that I would be in town and I had given my word to him that I would never again come to California and not visit him.  He insisted that I stay at his place in Long Beach, who was I to refuse?

I found myself laying on the grass at a gas station in Palm Springs and hiding under a palm tree to get out of the sun while trying to get the massive knot between my shoulder blades to go down a bit.  I called the little woman and let her know that I was alive and sucked back a RockStar and burned a quick four of five smokes!  Within 20 minutes of pulling out of that gas station I had to slow the bike down to no more than 70 mph as the winds were hitting 50+ mph gusts and I was getting blown from lane to lane.  There were a few times that I truly thought I would get sucked under a tractor trailer!  By the time I was getting away from the miles of giant windmills, some clouds got in front of the sun and I began to get a chill.  It could only last for a few minutes right?  Wrong!  By the time I hit the 60 I had to pull over and put on a leather.  Fucking California.  Not 30 minutes earlier I was hiding from the sun and sweating like OJ in a court room and now I had to put layers on so not to freeze my balls off!  What a state!  I rolled on in to Long Beach and Big Ben's joint around 8pm.  I called about 20 miles out to let him know that I was alive and to find out if he needed me to bring anything and to find out if he had eaten yet.  "No we have not" was his response.  "We are making you dinner right now"!  First class people does not come close to describing Ben and Andrea!  The steak was one of the best that I have had in years!  The entire meal, everything they served tasted as if it were the best I have ever had!  I sure was hungry too but I'm telling you, this shit was like eating a unicorn, magical!

Ben called his job and told them that under no circumstances were they to call him that night!  That sounds cool right?  You have no idea how cool it was and I will explain why.  Big Ben works 7 days a week and does on average 15 hours per day.  He has not taken a day off since the first of January and he called in and told them that he would not be in on Saturday either!  How incredible is that?  My buddy who never takes a day off, just took off for one and a half.  He was going to show me around and come to THY WILL BE DONE with me.  I could not believe it.  I was just going to crash on his floor for one night and then get out of his hair and now we were hanging out!  I could not have asked for more.  At around 10:30 Friday night he asked "so you ready to go for a ride"?  Hell yeah!  I had just ridden 400 miles but I was ready to go again!  We went outside and rolled the bagger and his 55 pan out of the garage.  Now this 55 is a virtual exact original bike, it's not running straight pipes or anything crazy and the bagger is not either.  This guy never gets to ride much less even start the bike.  We fire them up for maybe a minute or so and out of my right mirror I see this woman running towards us waiving and screaming for him!  I thought she owed him money or vice versa.  At best I thought it was a friend who because of his hours never gets to see him.  I WAS WRONG ON ALL ACCOUNTS!  This woman needed to get laid desperately!  She was screaming like a maniac that she was not going to put up with this fucking bullshit any longer!  She was calling the police and going to the landlord to have him thrown out!  It's 11 o'clock at night and you sons o bitches are out here with these god damned motorcycles!  I thought to myself, "how loud could the bikes be if while they are running we can hear her perfectly"?  She was a maniac!  Someone needed to get down and lick that love box something fierce, she was in desperate need of a good orgasm!  We were dumbfounded as we rode away and at each traffic light stopped and laughed about what a maniac she was!  We suggested that the next time Bean're comes to town that he stay with her instead of Ben and Andrea and take one for the team!  We will have to see about that.

Saturday came and I thought I was going to have to get up way early to ride to Seal Beach for Affliction's Thy Will Be Done, Art, Car and Bike show.  As it turns out, it was like 5 miles away!  This trip was going far better than I had expected.  I had spoken to Chopper Doll about meeting up and her shortening the necklace that she made for me.  As it turns out, she lived only 5 minutes further than the show.  This shit could not get any better.  So that is where we went, off to Ms. Daisy's place.  When we arrived we saw this tweaker sitting on the ground in front of her house painting her house number and a chopper on her curb.  We dismounted the bikes and as any normal person would, Ben walked over to take a look at the "art".  Daisy came out to greet us and I gave her my necklace and lit a smoke.  When you are done, c'mon in she said.  Big Ben picked up her little dog Lola and sat down on a bench. I was still standing next to the bike about 15 feet from Tweaky Pete the painter when he turned around and started giving me shit!  Really?  If you are going to stand there I will just stop painting and leave.  I can not be creative while you are standing over my shoulder and looking down at me.  Really?  I went from Happy Jack to Angry Jack like the flip of a switch and I mother fucked him up and down.  I am 15 feet away from you, I am not anywhere near you nor have I even been anywhere near you.  If I do start walking near you, you better jump your ass up and run because I am going to kick you in your tweaker teeth!  "Oh man, don't trip", was his answer to me.  Don't trip, "fuck you" I told him!  I was pretty pissed off as I walked towards the house until I saw this.

Who could stay angry seeing a nearly 7 foot tall bad ass holding a little dog that looks like that?  I just laughed and told him what had just happened and he said, "that was me standing behind him".  Oh yeah, I can surely see the mistake since we look so much alike?  We went in to the house which was gorgeous for the record and sat on the couch and spent the next 10 minutes trying to convince the Poodle Juliet that we were not monsters.  She didn't come to me but made her way to Big Ben!  Damn Dog!  I was going to get one of these dogs to be my friend if I had to grab it and hold the damn thing down!  It didn't take long.

We put the dogs down, hard as it was and got ready to roll on out.  We were only a few minutes from the show and we had actually passed it on the way over and it looked big and bad ass!  So we got our shit ready to go and rode on out.

As you can see in these two pics, we are no where near the fucking freak show painting "his masterpiece" on Daisy's curb!  I should have ridden over his ass on the way out but I didn't want Daryl's bike to catch any thing!  What a sleaze bag!  So we took off for the show.  I was informed that we were in the June Gloom and this was typical of southern California.  When you stood still, you sweat like a pig and as soon as you moved you could feel your balls begin to shrivel up.  Well I know mine did, I didn't ask Daisy about hers, but I will.  I wrapped my head in my Al Qaeda scarf, as I have no liner in my helmet and it is hard to get those little Styrofoam balls out of my hair and we took off.  It is always bad ass riding next to antique iron and riding next to that 55 was no exception, that bike was tits!

I am rocking that Al Qaeda scarf and I would constantly forget that I had it on.  I would get where we were going and take off my helmet but the scarf would stay on.  Between the beard and dark glasses and the rag on my head, people just stood and stared at me like I was about to blow myself up.  Jack Shit a suicide bomber?  Had never really thought about that but hey, I won't rule it out!  We got to the show, parked the bikes and I looked down to my left and immediately saw this kick ass gas tank!

.... and this thing was just parked in the lot.  If this was a sign of things to come it was going to be great!

We got off the bikes and there were bikes and cars everywhere but the very first car that I saw was hands down one of the coolest things that I have ever seen!  From that moment on, this was the only car that I took a photo of.  Although there were some amazing old caddy's and hot rods, this fucker took it for me.  Check out this sick car!  I have never before seen anything like it.  Maybe you guys have, but not me!

This guy took a Chevelle and an El Camino and put them together!  It was a Chevellecamino!  Radical!

We hung around outside and checked out some of the rods and bikes and then went inside to find Lisa and Duane Ballard.  Duane was one of the featured artists in the show and it was a well deserved spot!  We walked in and there they were, damn near right up front.  It was great to see them for sure.  On the wall was a panel that Duane had made just for the show.  I can't even imagine having artistic skills like this man does, it really was a work of art.  I don't know what happened to my photo of it, but please go to his page or shiny side marketing and check out the time lapsed piece that Lisa made during the creation of the piece.  It is so cool to see.  If I had any computer skills whatsoever, I would put a link here for it, but I do not have any so I can't!  Sorry!  It is worth checking out and there should be a link on the right side of my page here for it!  My friend Qian and her friend rode down to hang with us for a bit and I finally got to meet Jon Towle.  We bullshit on face book but never got to meet before.  I saw him walking earlier in a Charlie Brown shirt and didn't realize it was him but thought, what a cool shirt!  But as cool as it was, I replaced it with a much cooler one!

You can see just how excited Qian was to see me.  For a moment I even thought she would hang up the phone.... well, she did pretend to listen to me for a second so that was almost as good!  It seems that on Plenty of Fish, there are Plenty of Fish and it was time to ride to San Pedro over the bridges and go fishing with Qian.  Hey, sounds like a good idea for a tv show, fishing with Qian... So we jumped on the bikes and began the mad dash over the river and through the woods!  My first real LANE SPLITTING experiences were about to happen.  I thought it was only allowed when traffic was stopped.  Who knew that you can do it when traffic is doing 70?  I know I didn't!  It was truly exhilarating and horrifying at the same time.  I had no idea where I was or where I was going so I just followed what ever the rider in front of me did and what they did was split lanes!  There is nothing like pulling up to a red light with 25 cars in front of you in all three lanes and you just ride right on up to the front of the line!  LANE SPLITTING ROCKS or as they call it legally in California and what else could it be called but Lane SHARING.  Because in California, everything must be shared.  It don't matter if you worked for it, you must share it with someone who has not!  In this case, I was, I guess an official Democrat for the day and was spreading the wealth!  Okay, send hate mail now!

We had survived all the lane splitting through town and over bridges and all was good, for a minute!  As we were going to a joint down by the water called Walkers for Qian to "go fishing", we came upon a hard, uphill right hand banked turn with a traffic light at the top.  We slowed down and as the light changed, we all hit the throttle and that is when the shit hit the fan.  It seems that the brandy new rebuild on that gorgeous 55 had some troubles.  It was leaking oil a bit when we left but now was leaking like a mother fucker.  The back wheel was soaked with oil and when Big Ben let out the clutch, the throttle hung up a bit and at about 20 mph, the bike just went buck wild like a Brahma bull!  He held on while the bike did 360's on it's side and much like bull riding he nearly made the full 8 seconds.  Also much like bull riding, he only made it 7.8 seconds so the ride didn't count.  I have seen lots of people wipe out on bikes but never before seen a good friend do it right in front of me and it was horrible to watch!  That bike spun around faster and faster until it finally just flung him off, yet he never let go of the bars.  When both the bike and Ben came to a stop, he jumped up, picked up the bike and we rolled it out of the way of traffic.  We were afraid that some of those people who we passed splitting lanes would now get pay back and ride right over his ass!  He took only a few minutes to re compose himself, kicked the bike to life and said, "let's get the fuck out of here before the cops get here"!  That is just what we did.  Only one problem, we still had to get over that very same hill and through that same traffic light.  WE MADE IT!  We rolled up to Walker's and I got off the bike and just gave him a great big hug, asked about injuries and then took a good look at the bike.

 There that beautiful 55 sits after having a wild crash.  Thank God for front and rear crash bars.  Now I know what they are there for.  A few scratches and the tip of the clutch lever broken off and that was all the damage.   All the damage to the bike that is.  The rider seemed to fair just as well.

 A few holes in the hands, shirt and side of the rib cage was all Brother Ben suffered.  I knew that there had to be more injuries but I can only assume that his adrenalin was so high that he couldn't feel it!  The next day there was a little bit more soreness in the shoulders and back but for the most part, thankfully, he was ok!

We returned home, told his girl what had happened and then my buddy who had to get up at 6 am for work went to his room for a moment.  That moment lasted about 4 hours.  He sat on that bed and passed out!  I guess the thrill had subsided and he just crashed.  I sat on the couch trying not to make a sound and be a good house guest.  I didn't want to wake him up.  This is what he gets for taking off his first day since January.  I sat on the couch, turned on the lap top and once again began to write this story.  I just could not seem to get the words flowing.  A moment later a face book post popped up.  Hey Jack, if you are still in town, we are going to be at a bar called Ashley's (I think that is what it was) come on down.  I googled it and sure as shit it was only like 10 blocks away.  How could I not go?  So I got my shit together as quietly as possible so not to wake up Ben and then I had to take the bike out without waking up the psychotic neighbor.  I was in no mood to get yelled at again tonight.  I rode on down, met up with some friends, had a drink and figured I would head back to the house and get a good nights sleep.  Well you know how that goes for me.  Soon I found myself running like a mad man trying to keep up with these lunatics through the streets of Long Beach!  Who knew that Street Glides did such kick ass wheelies and while doing 40 mph?  I know that I didn't!

When we arrived at the next bar, we parked the scoots.  My friends parked in front of the door and I parked about 20 feet away.  I could hear the bouncer explaining to them that some of them could come in but others were more or less banned for life!  Oh well!  As it turns out, a little bit of sweet talking and a bit of ass kissing and life isn't really for "life".  We hung out for a bit, had a few drinks and just laughed our asses off.  These fine folks were kind enough to pick up some Shit shirts and we sort of made a spectacle of ourselves!

In the end, I was glad that I went out that night and didn't just go to sleep at 8 pm.  These fine folks of southern California can not be judged by where they live!  They were fantastic!  I look forward to riding with them again.  Now all I had to do was find my way back to Long Beach and all would be fine.  The only trouble was that I had no idea where I was at or where I was going!  I punched the address in to my phone and jammed the phone in between my head and my helmet.  It was really uncomfortable and I expected it to come flying out at anytime and go crashing to the ground.  Hell, it is my piece of shit droid, I half hoped that it would!  I made it back to a familiar spot, grabbed a dozen doughnuts for my hosts breakfast and headed back to Ben and Andrea's place where I was welcomed like family.  I got in to the house without waking everyone up thank God.  I was a bit wired out from my red bull vodkas so I turned on the lap top and checked out where I would be going for RIP's Bad Ride the next day.  I figured out the route and spoke briefly with my new friend Emilio Rivera from Sons of Anarchy and made plans to meet up the next day.

The ride there was awesome and the event turned out to be filled with excellent people doing good things.  I will tell you guys all about that another time!  Hope everyone has a great weekend, ride safe and live life because you just never know what tomorrow will bring you!

Until we see each other on the road,

Keep the wind in your face,

Tits in your back

and The Man off your ass!

Your friend,

Jack Shit