TWNW #5

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Hi!

The moto and I are still in Santa Fe, and things are still going pretty swimmingly so unfortunately there'll be very little funny herein.

I'm remiss in naming the moto, and any suggestions will be tolerated if not welcomed or used. I asked my 8th Graders to name it, back in March when I brought it home.

(She's a girl moto, but I can't go there with the correct pronoun, usually. Too close to home, because I love her so much and I don't want anybody to envision any unnatural acts despite what the police report said.)

One of the 8th Graders had a great idea for a name: "Seveera." I liked that one, because the moto is kind of mean and severe looking but it didn't take for some reason. Another 8th Grader came up with "Rodney's Mom," which is funny as hell and everyone liked it a lot except for Rodney, so no-go on that one. Here's a good name, which I thought of: "Saracen," which was the name of Sam Houston's horse and means "Muslim invader." Sam Houston is my favorite history guy ever, so this one is probably the front-runner at press time.

Again, please submit any ideas that are better than those above.

I brought along a couple of cans of primer, and at some point I'll mask it and spray it and that's when the name will go on the tank. Not sure what the final paint job is gonna look like; I'd thought about all sorts of things - 50's-era Aston Martin green, Gulf Oil powder blue and orange, murdered-out matte black which is the easy default option - but here in Santa Fe my buddy Loren, who does paint effects for movie shoots, came up with the idea of making it look ooooooold and busted and rusty. I like this idea a lot.

Yesterday was fun. I went to the pistol range with Luca and his son, Matias. The range we went to was Tina's Range Gear which was the outdoors store in 'No Country for Old Men," where Llewellyn goes to buy tent poles.

"We don't sell tent poles sir, just tents with poles that come with them."
- "Well I guess I'll but a tent then."
"What kind of tent, sir?"
- "The one with the most poles."

Or something like that. Anyway we had a blast. I had my little .380 mousegun, and Luca brought two cowboy-style .45s that he'd used as props for a movie he produced a few years ago. My gun is kind of stupid and annoying, because it's so small and a little bit painful to shoot, but the cowboy guns were awesometown. Blammo! Kablooey! And so on.

As per usual, the untrained tiny little kid shot way better than the two grown gun-familiar men. Luca and I didn't come anywhere near the bullseye but Matias kept nailing it like he was mad at it.

Today, Luca's daughter Kalila helped me clean the guns. She was in charge of oiling the patches and catching me up on all the Santa Fe Prep gossip.

(Some kids are mean; some are pretty nice. Boys, it turns out, are stupid AND mean.)

The fires are still doing their thing, all along the Jemez range. At night, when the wind is right, you can see the burning and during the day you can see the smoke coursing up out of the forest. Scary, sad.

It hasn't been too hazy here though, but it's not as clear as usual either. Apparently last week everything was smoky and ash was falling. Still, at night with binoculars, you can see the trees exploding as the fire reaches onward.

I need to be on the road by Friday, I guess, to be in Washington in time to get some q.t. with my dad. Then it's down to Tahoe to see Zana - we're going camping for a night so she can teach her kids how to make fun of nature. Nobody makes fun of stuff better than Zana. In college she got flashed by some weirdo, and she taunted him relentlessly until he turned and ran away in shame. God help the poor bear that tries to maul our campsite, in Tahoe.

"Ohmygod bear, you are so stupid. Look at your stupid fur. Is that why you smell so bad? Why are your teeth so dumb-looking? None of the other bears like you, huh? Hey where are you going, come back here bear."

Et cetera, etc, and so on.

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Photos

Yup.
Safety third.

Sad
Scary