T-day was spent and Grandma's and Grandpa's house this year.  While I was looking forward to seeing family, I was kind of hoping for a quite T-day dinner like last years.  Oh, Well.

Thursday morning found Uncle T and I at a gas station in Tustin waiting for Uncle S to arrive.  Oh yeah, I haven't told anyone about the great news!  I bought a new bike!

**Great News: Uncle S had bought a Honda Shadow ACE Deluxe in 1998.  Since then it had been ridden a grand total of 3600 miles.  So two weeks ago, Uncle S decides to get a new bike, a gorgeous 2006 Harley Roadking in a metallic blue.  Well this meant that suddenly the poor Honda was no longer the favored child and must be dealt with in the typically way, selling it (or them) off.

So I volunteered to love and care for the abandoned Honda (name still pending… any ideas?) and went about getting rid of my own cherished child, er um... bike.

I bought a listing in CycleTrader and shelled out $95.00 for it.  I also thought that I should take advantage of any online listings that I could think of.  So I posted on Craig's List, MySpace, and Tribe.  Two days later I had a reply to my craigslist listing.  (I had had some replies on MySpace, but they were the typical scam emails.)  This guy wanted to meet up Saturday to check out the bike.  No questions, just if the bike was still available and what time we could meet.  I suggested 12:30 and he agreeded.  So Saturday morning found me awake bright an early to detail the bike before the guy (Mark) came.  I scrubbed, polished, waxed, scraped, and shined Ms. Rhonda Alida (my bikes name) till she hurt to look at. It took almost 4 hours!  Mark arrived about ½ hour after I had finished.  He looked over the bike, asked why I was selling it, and then asked how much I wanted for it.  I told him, and he agreed!  No arguing or bargaining, just sure, sounds good.  I  pulled out the title and bill of sale and Rhonda was loaded up in his truck 10 minutes later and gone forever.

*sniff*

As soon as Mark and Rhonda were out of site I ran inside to call Uncle S about picking up the Honda.  (I needed something to replace the empty feeling.)  Uncle T road me over to S's house and I had my new bike within 3 hours of losing the old one. **

So since I had a new(er) bike, and since Uncle S had his brand new Harley, and since Uncle T already had his VTX, we decided to ride up to G & G's for T-day to break in and get use to our toys.  We arrived just in time to start snacking down on appetizers while we waited for the rest of the dinner guests to arrive.  Dinner was started promptly at 5:00, and included: Turkey (roasted in Grandpa's new turkey roaster), stuffing with, stuffing without, 10 lbs of mashed potatoes (of which there were only 2 cups left by the end of dinner) cold broccoli salad, regular salad, cranberry sauce and jello salad.  Call me weird, but my favorite combination is mashed potatoes, turkey, and red jello salad with sour cream.  Yummieee!

The rest of the weekend was uneventful.  I knitted a sock for my brother and finished off a really bad book that I felt obligated to finish because I had started it.  I arrived home on Sunday afternoon sore (damn short couches!), cold (it was only 45* coming home), and road weary.

Lesson of the trip: always find room to pack your chaps because you WILL need them.