Oh My God, I'm Dead.

Doing a little research, though God knows why. It's long and boring, BUT, every once in awhile you come across a little gem that makes ya go....."oh my day". I didn't know that, add that to the whole bunch of other stuff I don't know to the stuff I do know that I wish I didn't know and you begin to understand the saying that "Ignorance is bliss". In fact there was I time when I swore to drink myself ignorant or die trying. Yeah, I hear ya. But the jury ain't in yet ok.

But here is what I found from: FATAL FREEDOM, Thomas Hargrove. Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal. Columbia: Mar/Apr 2007. Vol.30, Iss. 2; pg. 34, 2 pgs. Hold on to your hats when you read this ok..."We decided to create a demographic profile of the people who are dying on motorcycles using the Multiple Causes of Death File maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. (The CEXT mortality data is also available from the IRE and NICAR Database Library.) It is a magnificent database that details information from every death certificate. The most recent data available is 2003 with records of 2.4 million deaths. Of these, 3,697 were recorded to have died while riding motorcycles. (The PARS data showed 3,714 fatalities, so the CDC dataset had pretty good coverage.)

The data showed dead motorcyclists are overwhelmingly male (90 percent) and disproportionately white (87 percent.) Although teenagers and young adults are over-represented in car accidents, motorcycle accident victims are disproportionately middle-aged. Forty-six percent were in their 40s or older. Even more intriguing, the death data show that 20 percent of motorcycle victims were currently divorced at the time of their death, a rate more than twice the national average.

Helloooo!!! Divorce increases your chance of death while riding more than twice the national average??? So why the title to this drivel entitled "oh my God I'm dead". Cause I like been divorced three times and my ol lady keeps threatening to make it a fourth. So what the hell does that add up to? Is it cumulative? Does the risk increase exponentially? Do the MRO's around the country now need to lobby the legislatures to mandate that if you ride a motorcycle you ca not get divorced? Well being mathematically challenged I'm gonna have to ask Girl Geek if she could crunch them numbers for me. But until then, I'm going out and buying my ol lady some flowers and sending all my ex's (including the live-in's just to cya) sympathy cards. My God the things we have to atone for. Might be safer if you rode really "Free". rc

Last Samurai

Ok, violated post daily in the blog rule. But really folk, I get a little burnt out reading where these folk lied here and these folk lied there and these folk are attacking our rights here and there. So yesterday being American Idol night. Well ya know, ya gots to establish priorities. The kicker was though, "The last Samurai" starring Tom Cruise was on. Let me set the record straight here ok, I believe a person has the right to believe what ever they choose, right or wrong. And if you want to spend a whole heap of your bucks to climb some sort of esoteric system of levels to become a "clear" (clear what?) in able to enter the heavens of Science Fiction courtesy of L. Ron Hubbard, well hell, this is America and thats your right. Cause "Last Samurai" is kickin.

It's got like a heap of folk with bow and arrows and swords fighting folk with guns and cannons. And the cool thing is like they win a lot. The last battle scene has all these dudes dressed up in ancient Japanese battle gear on horse's and I'm thinking they kind of look like NHSTA wants us to look when we ride our motorcycles. Anyway these dudes are trying to protect their lifestyle come hell or high water and even though they know they are probably going to lose they figure they are gonna give it one hell of a fight cause why live in a world where your beliefs no longer have values? Needless to say, you don't bring a knife to a gunfight and these samurai's are falling left and right. But they be taking a whole lot of the enemy with them cause they ain't quitting. They charge out gunned over and over again at a better equipped enemy until the last person standing is of course Tom Cruise (like he was the star). My wife can get misty eyed at a commercial. These kind of flicks get me misty eyed. See it ain't about the battle scene's and the violence. It's about respect for the old ways, Honor, Commitment, taking a stand and a willingness to die for that which you believe. What gets me misty eyed is I'm a bit afraid these concepts may also be dying.............Ride Free............rc