Blog Vacation Over

I've neglected to write anything recently due to my indulgence in a new relationship, but I've decided to take the opportunity during the work week to recap some things that are currently sticking out in my mind. If you can make it past the first lame story, I promise a nice little set of videos at the end of the second.
Okay, so a month or two ago I managed to kill the offspring of my old friend Steve. This is Steve (or a close relative):

Not long after my brother and I moved into my house, we met Steve. I'd like to think of Steve as a plumber at heart b/c he managed to always be discovered in the bathtub drain of both the bathrooms. Anyway, it is believed that Steve met his untimely end the weekend my parents left their cat at our house while they vacationed in Ireland. Luckily, Steve managed to get his gecko groove on with some lady lizard and a few months later Steve Jr's started showing up.
Unlike their father, the Steve Jr's did not take after their father and stick to the bathrooms. This adventurous spirit turns out to have not worked in their favor.
The death of Steve Jr #1 happened on what was a relatively normal start to a work day. I got dressed, put on my shoes and started heading towards the door to leave and made a pit-stop at the living room couch to take off my shoe to get rid of the wrinkle in my sock. Upon further review, the rolled up sock was actually a rolled up Steve Jr who had been snoozing in my loafer.
An unconfirmed murder happened a couple weeks later. I was cleaning the house and as I walked into the kitchen I saw a roach run behind the leg of my dinner table so I ran and grabbed can of raid and soaked the whole area. Not a second after I coated the whole floor, Steve Jr #2 pokes his head out from around the corner. I freaked out and grabbed towels and water to clean up as much of the poison as I could but I think the damage may have already been done. He ran off and I've yet to see him again. It sounds ridiculous, but I was really upset about both occasions.

The less lame story:

This past weekend, Jillian invited me to Birmingham to go with her to the 7th Annual Barber Vintage Motorcycle Festival. It was pretty awesome. We showed up just in time to see the end of the sidecar race. I thought it was one of the more entertaining concepts for races. You have these flat sidecars and the passenger on the bike has to shift their weight around to take each turn. It makes for a lot of interesting poses on the bikes; like so...

 After walking around the track we got a nice shaded spot on the backside straightaway just as the lunch-time air show started. The vintage festival included a quartet of stunt pilots flying old World War II AT-6 "Texan"s. As a fan of all things WWII era, I ate it up. I wasn't really aware of how freaking loud those planes were. I'll post a video below.
After the airshow, they had the 'Century Race' on the track. The only motorcyles allowed on the track for this event had to be over 100 years old, so they were all basically bicycles with engines strapped on. They were still very impressive at a roughly 35mph top speed. It was definitely a crowd pleaser.

Once the Century Race ended, we headed toward the swap meet where you can buy basically anything related to motorcycles: Parts, posters, manuals and even the vintage bikes themselves.
It was a pretty cool festival. I'd definitely go again... and perhaps next time I'll actually buy a bike.
As promised: