The Great Disappearing Act!

I've gotten a ton of messages, calls and emails from a whole bunch of you guys wondering if all was okay.  It seems that so many of you have made a place for me in your lives, that when I drift away for a while, you guys actually miss me!  YOU ALL NEED TO SEE A SHRINK, SOON!  I just want to let you know that all is well here with the Shit family.  As well as can be expected!  Every now and again, I just get burned out, pissed off, broken hearted or just flat out disgusted with things and rather than bitch and complain about it or go on meaningless online rants, I just take a step back.  Each of us these days has our own problems, life of late is no picnic for so many.  I've always meant to inspire people, open their eyes to something they may be missing or at the very least, bring a smile to their faces.  I never want to be that guy who leaves you feeling worse about yourselves or your life for having read my writing!  So I just turned off the computer, stopped emails from coming to my phone and took a break for a few days, grabbed my boot straps and pulled myself back up.  I think the thing that makes me feel so disgusted when I am in a dark place is simply that I have nothing to be in a dark place over!  I have a great life!  I share my life with a beautiful angel who would step in front of a bullet for me.  Business has been better for us than it has been in a very long time and for the most part, our health hasn't changed!  It may not be the greatest for either of us, but it has not gotten any worse.  The fact that there is so much good going on in our lives and the fact that we are surrounded by supportive people who love us makes us very lucky!  It is because of those reasons that when I feel really, truly shitty that I come down even harder on myself!  Over the years I guess I have become conditioned to the whole "one step forward, two steps back" and it seems of late we've taken a great many steps forward and I am waiting on the hammer to fall and smash the living shit out of us and "go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200"!

I awoke this morning having realized that Diane had virtually no bad reaction to her shot last night.  I was so relieved and so very grateful.  I got up and said enough is enough you fucking wimp!  So what if that hammer falls and knocks you on your ass, it's not like it hasn't happened before!  Each time that it does, you just start pushing forward again.  I decided to stop worrying about everything, or at the very least I decided to "try" to stop!  I am going to focus on what is great.  I've decided that living your life waiting for the bad shit to happen is NOT LIVING YOUR LIFE AT ALL!  Fuck it, I'm done with that shit!  I've never been the kind of person who looks forward to things for this very reason!  So just like we learned from "What About Bob", I'm going to start with baby steps!  I am going to look towards the immediate future, not down the road and not at the big picture!  So what does my immediate future hold?  What's going on in my life?  Well for one, it is now riding season in Arizona!  Diane and I have each gotten new bikes to ride, well, new to us that is!  We finally got that bike that we can load up with all we need and ride to anywhere we want to go and I am really looking forward to some great road trips together!  In the absolute immediate future, this weekend I'm not going to Vegas Bike Fest but rather taking a trip down to Tombstone, AZ and performing the wedding ceremony for two dear friends!  I'm a giver, not a taker and I can't wait to do what I do best and that is simply bring smiles to the faces of the people who mean the most to me! 

What else?  In just a few weeks, I will be back in Daytona for the first time in a very long time and I will be once again hosting the greatest Biker Bar On Earth, the WORLD FAMOUS BROKEN SPOKE SALOON for Daytona Biketoberfest!  Being from the east coast, going to Florida was a big part of my life.  I have only been there once since my father died in my arms down there.  Once I moved to AZ, it wasn't just a hop skip and a jump anymore.  There were no more "hey, ya wanna go to Florida tonight" moments!  Back in the day, you could catch a flight from Newark or Philly for $59 on special, hell, sometimes even less!  The Broken Spoke has welcomed me as part of their family and I will forever be grateful for that.  We have one hell of a Biketoberfest planned for you guys!

The Broken Spoke believes that it is about the BIKES, THE BROTHERHOOD AND PARTYING, not about who shows up with the biggest tour bus or who has the most semis full of gear!  We will continue our tradition of RESPECT towards you, our guests and for the TRADITION AND THE HISTORY of this lifestyle that we have each chosen!  If it ain't broke, we don't fix it!  In that spirit, we will continue to bring you the very best in live music, all day, every day.  We will only stop the music to move the party in another direction all together with hysterical games and contests and then bring it all right back to incredible live music again!  This is a formula that the one and only Jay Allen created and it is what you folks, our extended family love and we are sticking with it!

ONCE AGAIN, THE BROKEN SPOKE SALOON WILL BE THE HOST AND THE HOME OF THE INTERNATIONAL MASTER BIKE BUILDERS ASSOCIATION RIDE IN CUSTOM BIKE SHOW.  Yes, you read that correctly, RIDE IN, not trailer in!  This show is always an amazing display of Iron and Chrome!  You don't want to miss this.  Do you have a bike you are particularly proud of the work you've done on?  Well ride that bad ass murder sickle over to the Spoke and enter it, hey, you never know you may just become the reigning IMBBA Biketoberfest winner!

For a rally that is only a few days long, we truly do have a SHIT TON of great times, great events and great chances to make memories planned for you!  When you hear me on that mic talking about RESPECT and that you are OUR FAMILY, that is no bullshit!  We do this all for you!  It costs a bunch of money to get down to these events in these times we live in and the only thing we want you to do is leave with a big ass smile on your face and like so many others, we want you to walk out that door, shake our hands and tell us it was the best time you've ever had!  Nothing makes me happier than when I hear someone tell me that and end it with, SEE YOU NEXT TIME!

I've found that along with not putting too much pressure on yourself about what the future will hold, it is fantastic to look back on great times.  The beauty of making memories is that they are yours and no one can ever take them away from you, ever!  You can access them any time you want to or more importantly need to.  A great memory can pull you up and out from the darkest place.  That memory can bring you right back in to the very moment that you were living it, before it was ever a memory!  As a kid and in to my teens, like so many others, I was a fuck up!  Now don't get me wrong, I wasn't a total mess, I was just your everyday average kid running wild in the streets.  I've heard people use the phrase "the soundtrack of your life" many times and if you stop and think about it, we all have one!  We can't remember where we put our car keys, when the next doctors appointment is or something as important as our wedding anniversary but a song can come on the radio that you have not heard in 20 years and not only does it take you back instantly to where you were and what you were doing but you remember damn near every single word to that song!  How the hell is that even possible?  For me, there was one song that each and every single time that I was about to do something stupid, something dangerous or something truly FOOLISH and for that matter as I was doing it, the song would play in my head.  I don't mean like I'd hear the chorus, I mean THE SONG PLAYED IN MY HEAD, like cuing it up, hitting the play button and going from start to finish.  I'm sure we each have  OUR OWN THEME SONG of sorts, the one song that more than any other was "THE SONG" that inspires, that brings a smile instantly, THE ONE THAT TAKES YOU BACK!  For me, that song was Molly Hatchet's, Flirtin' With Disaster!  The great times, the broken bones and the "how the hell did I ever survive that shit" floods back instantly in tsunami like waves! 

Now you are probably thinking that your pal Jack Shit has lost it?  This post began with me being down in the dumps, to writing about pulling myself out of the dumps and then on to what the future has in store for me and then bouncing right back to the past.  What is the meaning of all of this?  Well let me share a little something with you that made me really happy and really excited. 

Yeup!  The one and only Molly Hatchet is playing the World Famous Broken Spoke Saloon for Daytona Biketoberfest!  I mean really, what the hell is a bike rally without Molly Hatchet?  So now, not only do I get to do what it is that I love more than anything, entertain people, but I get to do it on the very same stage that the performers of my very theme song will be playing on!

So I say if you have to look back, look back on only the good, never dwell on the bad!  If you have to look forward, look forward with great anticipation not with fear or concern as to what may happen!  Life is going to throw shit our way, there is no doubt about it, but if we are constantly waiting for that shit storm to hit, we miss out on so much!  So I say to hell with it!  Let the hammer swing away and try to knock us down!  I guess the key is that if it hits us, to get right back up!  Grab an ice pack, put it on the lumps and just say fuck it!  What does not kill us only makes us stronger.  I say get off your ass, get on your bike and go out and make some of those memories that we can count on later in life to carry us out of another dark place we find ourselves in!  So I guess I'll see you guys in Daytona at the Spoke!  I'll be the guy off on the side of the stage with the big ass smile on his face!

Until we see each other on the road again,

Keep the wind in your face,
Tits in your back
and The Man off your ass!

Your friend,
Jack Shit