MNO Blog – Motorcycles, News, Opinions

I try to stay away from political commentary on this blog, but I am making this post for a few reasons.

1. I recently read a news article that is still eating at me (to be discussed below)
2. I have not made a post in a long time. I have been busy.
3. There are a lot of things going on in this country that can’t continually be overlooked.
4. This post is about dignity, dying , veterans and a motorcycle organization of honor.

Recently I stumbled across an post entitled Obama Tells Patriot Guard Get Lost. Yes, it is kind of an old article, April of this year, but not old enough to raise a valid concern over it. First off, the title of the post is a little misleading as no one apparently no for sure who called off the Patriot Guard Riders from being allowed. One thing was for sure the families of the 29 miners killed in a West Virginia mine accident asked for and welcomed the riders. Evidently so did the Governor of the state. So to set the scene a little better, on April 5, 2010 there was a huge coal mine disaster that took the lives of 29 miners. A memorial was planed for late April and the families of the miners asked the Patriot Guard Riders to attend and escort with honor their loved ones. Somewhere along the line a message was sent that the Patriot Guard were to “stand down” for this mission as Obama and Bidden were to attend. Again, no one has come forward with who actually issued the order, but I am sure it was relayed through the secret service.

Whoever made the decision is under a huge misconception on what this group of people stand for and exactly what it is that they do. They certainly would not have posed any type of a security risk for Obama, if anything security would have been tighter. They are a nationwide organization many of which are law enforcement officers and veterans. What possible threat could they have posed. Did they see them as a motorcycle gang, just because they ride motorcycles? Was there some sort of paranoia fear that some rival gang might ride in and have a big shootout? By far, the Patriot Riders are not a gang, they are motorcycle riders period. It is the mode of transportation that they choose and I speak from experience when I say that they add a great deal of honor and dignity to a funeral procession and memorial. My brother died on the streets a homeless vet in July of 2005. I asked the Sanford Chapter of Rolling Thunder if they would give my brother Lonny one last ride before I scattered his ashes in the water at the Veterans Memorial Park in Titusville. My brother loved and respected the grounds of this park and spent a lot of time there. On the day of his last ride along with Rolling Thunder there were also members of the Patriot Guard riders. I have the deepest respect for what they did that day and how they honored my Brother. I have some pictures of that day that I would like to share with you, this is what the Patriot Guard is

These people took the time out of their life to honor my brother and asked for nothing in return

over 30 motorcycles lined up for the memorial service

A short service was given before I set my brother free

 This is what the Patriot Guard Riders mean for me. They brought honor and dignity to the last ride and memorial service for my brother Lonny Odom. For the families of the 29 miners to be denied the same honor and respect was wrong. Whoever made the decision not to allow these people their rights were very wrong. My heart goes out to the 29 men who lost their lives and the loved ones they left behind. Now I share with you a documentary on the Patriot Guard Riders, who they are and what they stand for. How could these men and women have been considered a threat?

So now those who did not know may be a little wiser as to not only the Patriot Guard Riders and groups like Rolling Thunder, but the entire biker community in general. Respect is always given were respect is due. One more video of a funeral escorted by the Patriot Guard below. This video brings chills to me, just to see the endless line of motorcycles following in honor of a fallen military hero that has paid the ultimate sacrifice. 

Thanks again to those who came out to honor my brother, this post has been a long time coming. You don’t have to support the war folks, but always support our troops!

Dedicated to my dearly loved brother Marvin Lonny Odom

Technorati Tags: motorcycles, patriot guard riders, rolling thunder, funerals, veterans, west virginia, mining disaster, politics, security, honor

This video is scary!
Currently, our freedom and rights including the Second Amendment right to bear arms have legislation threats from our own government. But this video provided by the NRA shows that anti-gun politics and organizations here in the United States are not the only evil lurking to destroy American rights. There are other countries in alliance with the UN and a evil organization called IANSA that want to take away our right to defend or home and family.
It is wrong that so many have given the ultimate sacrifice to defend our freedom, The Constitution of The United States and the Bill of Rights. Currently we have troops in hostile environments fighting in wars putting their lives on the line to defend freedom. How can we, as Americans, stand by and watch as our rights are being subjected to deterioration! As our troops are over in distant lands fighting for our rights, we not only owe them our support. We also owe it to them and those who have fought before them to defend those very same freedoms from the enemy here in our own country. Americans here on the home front were given the right to keep and bear arms by the founders of our great country. It is also written that that right shall not be infringed. However, now has come the time when we must stand up and let our voices be heard. Today with the threats at hand that want to take away those very same rights, it becomes our responsibility to defend those rights and our freedom.
So, in this post I have presented to you a problem, but I also want to provide you some solutions.
On April 19, 2010 The Second Amendment March will be held in Washington DC. Visit The Second Amendment March web site for more information and make plans to attend. Join the NRA and GOA

Technorati Tags: second amendment march, DC, guns, law

A big thanks to the rock band INXS for having YouTube remove the audio from my Bike Week video!  You made my day. Yea, so I get this email from the web video site YouTube with a notice of copyright infringement today. Even though I listed the music credits on the video, it looks like that was not enough for the band. Guess I should have wrote to them and asked if I could use the song Mystify in my video. Sorry about that, new music is in progress of being added with the YouTube music swap software. Maybe if I ask the band to be one of my Myspace friends, they won’t hit that one too.

I am putting together more motorcycle event movies, so if there are any bands reading this that might want to have their music used in them. Drop me a line : )

Technorati Tags: music, youtube, video, bike week

Super Sunday is approaching and this year the buzz is all about the Super Bowl advertising. Last year I did a post on Super Bowl facts before the big football game. This year I want to look at the advertisement and the big buzz of what the ads will be like. There are a few super bowl ads sneak previews out there and here I have posted some of the available videos giving us a pre game look at what halftime will bring in 2008. 2.7 million dollars in advertising has been spent by big companies to get to the super bowl this year and while none of the ads are made to make you drop what you are doing to run out and but their product, it is more about brand recognition.

Of course one of the biggest advertiser to hit this mark would be Budweiser. Even if you do not drink beer, you know the name from the super bowl ads. Therefore, if you ever decided to have a beer, what do you think you might ask for? I think you might go for a Bud or bud light. Brand recognition is definitely what Bob Parsons, CEO of Go daddy is shooting for his his version of super bowl advertising. On Bob’s blog, he generates a great deal of excitement about the ads with his readers long before super Sunday. In the past, Parsons has put the rejected ads out for everyone to see to draw in new traffic. This year the approach is a little more on the it is a secret side of the dial. Bob is only allowing a small pinch of the video to be seen and then promising that all 3 ads will be available to be viewed online on February 3rd. While most super bowl advertising shoots toward humor, Bob Parsons uses sex to gain brand recognition. Indy race car driver Danica Patrick might not be a super model, but the Go daddy super bowl ad “exposure” makes her look like one and the ad as well as the ads from previous super bowls are all on one landing page. But now it is time for a commercial break and a word from some parrots? Watch the super bowl ad below

Yeah right. Just an example of the ads that we laugh at and talk about for a week after the game. Speaking of talking about the ads, You Tube has set up a page where the ads will be shown again and you can vote for your favorite super bowl ad here. One thing for sure, most people watching the game will get up to go to the bathroom before half time. No one wants to miss those super bowl ads!

Technorati Tags: super bowl ads, media, advertising, blogs, super bowl, video, halftime

Get ready to send in your pictures and reports live from Bike Week in 2008. I am getting the sites set up and ready to go for this annual Florida motorcycle event.

Daytona Bike Week Live has been set up and I am tweaking the site for mobile content and blogging. You can send me a note at my G mail account bikermobile@gmail.com and I will set you up as a contributor. Once you are set up, you will be able to send pictures directly to the blog using your cell phone. The web site address for the Bike Week live blog is www.daytonabikeweeklive.com and will be mainly for mobile photo blogging using cell phones and mobile devices.

Bike Week Blog is open, but still being constructed for multi users. This mobile blog will be set up for live blogging from Bike Week from your lap top or other mobile devices. I plan on having more content and news on this site while Daytona Bike Week Live will be mainly for pictures. Those of you who would like to participate and become a contributor on the Bike Week Blog can send me a note or reply to this post and I will set you up with an account. The web address for this site is www.bikeweekblog.com .

I will keep everyone updated on these two sites and look forward to sharing the experience of bike week live with everyone!

If you have not already made your bike week hotel reservations, it is not too late. You can still get some great deals here.

Technorati Tags: bike week, motorcycle news, blog, blogging, mobile, cell phones, photo blogs, travel, daytona beach, florida

It is amazing some of the things that you will come across while surfing the web. In fact, I have started a collection of pages that I have found and would like to share with my readers.

Today’s link is to a very large and popular blog site with many contributors called Blog Critics Magazine. I mean this site is huge! However, today we will be exploring the culture section where Frank Giovinazzi of Car Buyer’s notebook made a post entitled Harley Davidson – How Do I Hate Thee. Its a rather small post in itself where Frank gives out 11 reasons  why he hates Harley Davidson and the dweebs (as he refers to them) who ride them. The post was made in may of 2003 and only contains 243 words, but to this day the Post still gets traffic and has currently 1745 comments with the last comment being made as of this post at 16:36 on January 12th. That was yesterday in case nobody is paying attention…. this post has been read and commented on for going on 5 years now.

I have to hand it to Frank for making this post. Fact may even be that the man owns a Harley. But whether he does or not is not what it is all about. It is about the controversy that was created by him making the post. The post about hating Harley Davidson that has almost created a meeting hole on the web where people get together on a semi-regular basis to kick sand at each other on everything motorcycle related from helmet laws to owning American vs metric motorcycles.  How ingenious of Mr. Giovinazzi.

Technorati Tags: harley davidson, motorcycles, motorcycle blogs, blogosphere, blog, traffic, creative writing

I remember a day when having data backup was so important to me I installed a tape drive that ran daily backups of all my data. After years of trouble free computer use, I have grown more relaxed and only backed up certain items rarely.

A couple days of days ago I purchased a new 500GB hard drive from Staples. No big deal, I have replaced or upgraded hard drives before. I usually buy Maxtor hard drives because they have been reliable and have a good warranty backing them. Maxtor provides a program called MaxBLAST ™ that will copy your old hard drive over to the new one and this too has always been trouble free. That is until the new version of MaxBLAST™  and the third attempt in getting my old drive to copy over to the new one.

The new version 4 of MaxBLAST™ decided on the 4th attempt to do a drive copy that it would format my old hard drive (erasing all my data) and then take over 6 hours to copy the blank hard drive that it had formatted. Needless to say that now, after losing a lot of my old data, I am going to be a backup freak again. I am looking at weeks of installing all of my programs and updates before I get my machine back to where it was before this “accidental” formatting of my data and there are many things lost that will never be recovered.

Backup your important data folks. You never know when you might need it. 

Technorati Tags: backup, computers, software

Readers and fellow bloggers, hopefully you have noticed some of the buttons that I display on the sidebars of this blog. You may have clicked on one or two just out of curiosity? There is a new button that I want to call your attention to
This is the BlogShares button. BlogShares is a game of stock market fantasy where weblogs or blogs are used for stock. Friends let me tell you this game rocks! I am finding it very relaxing for my break time, which I seem to take more of now, while the game can get tense at times, the outcome is pretty much in your control. The game and playing area may look a bit complicated at first. It is not meant to be an easy game, but you can learn and as you do the game makes more sense and becomes even more fun.

Certainly, BlogShares is a game of wit and strategy. You can either become very rich or end up trying to recover your losses. It is a fantasy game and is played with play currency called B$. You can play the game whether you own a blog or not, but if you have a blog, be sure to claim it. You will receive extra B$ and chips for doing so. You can also receive chips, karma and sigma by voting the industry that a blog belongs in. Chips can be used for fun on a game called chance or they can be sold for B$ to recover or get more money to buy with.

For you bloggers, this game also teaches you a lot about traffic and linking. You begin to realise where the real traffic is at and where it goes. Where else can you play a game that you can gain fantasy bucks, learn and have fun doing so? I suggest that you click here and check BlogShares out.

See you there!

Mike

Technorati Tags: blog, blogshares, fantasy stock market, online games, blogs, blogger

As a web designer, like most do, I watch keywords and rankings for all of my sites. Today the latest key word top list was posted at Word Tracker and most of the normal search terms were knocked out by the Saddam execution video.

In fact, the Saddam hanging video replaced keywords and search terms that normally hold the top 10 position. The execution of Saddam Hussein video holds 8 of 10 in results giving way to only sex at number 1 and porn listed at number 3. Sexy celebrity gossip and paparazzi hits Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are usually steady in the top 10, but slid down to take the 11th and 12th position in the key word report.

Along with Paris and Britney in the top, Google is normally listed as well. While many search engines visit this site, the pages have yet to receive any type of page rank….. hint, hint

Here is my homemade stuffed turkey recipe for Christmas.

Ingredients:

• 1 14/16 lb Turkey
• 3/4 Loaf of Breads
• 1 1/2 Stick of Butter
• 1 Medium Onion
• 2 Stalks of celery
• 1/2 lb Sausage
• 4 Cups of Water
• 1/2 teaspoon Basil Leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon Parsley
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 1 tablespoon Chicken Broth Powder
• 3 Celery Leaf Tops

This recipe is for what I call a “traditional” turkey with homemade stuffing and can be prepared and cooked faster than my original slow cooked turkey. It is also for a smaller bird than my original recipe which again is for quick serving. Quick in this case is around 1 1/2 hour preparation and 4 1/2 hours cooking time. So if all goes right, you should have a tender and juicy stuffed turkey on the table in around 6 hours. OK, let’s get started!

Preheat your oven to 325. Notice that I say that we will use 3/4 loaf of breads. This is because for my stuffing I like to use a mixture of bread that will usually include some white, wheat, rye or pumpernickel rye, cuban bread or dinner rolls. I have used garlic bread sticks as well and that will give your dressing a nice flavor.

Gather together around 3/4 loaf of breads as above and put it in a 13 x 9 deep pan or larger. Put the pan loaded with the bread in the oven. You will need to keep an eye on the bread and turn it a couple of times so that you get some of the pieces close to a dark toast color as below.

While the bread is toasting, you can brown the sausage. Tip: because you are doing this early morning, I usually will cook the whole pound of sausage. Use 1/2 pound for the stuffing and the other half set aside to make sausage gravy and biscuits! Do this and you will have kitchen help hanging around. I will post my recipe for the sausage gravy and biscuits another time if you need it, but for now back to our turkey dressing.

While you are browning the sausage, chop the celery, celery leaves and onion and set it aside. Don’t forget the bread that is in the oven, turn it bringing some of the slices to the top and flip them over. The bread should be getting light brown by now.

In a medium sauce pan bring 4 cups of water to a boil and add a couple of the leaves from the celery finely chopped to the water. When the water boils, turn it down to a simmer and add the chicken broth powder, salt, basil and parsley. Let this mixture just steam a bit and turn it off. You will be adding this to the bread.

By now your bread should be well toasted. Remove it from the oven and let it cool a bit. While the bread is cooling, drain the sausage of fat and return to pan. Set the pan on the same burner, but lower the heat to just above warm. Put 1 stick of butter in the pan with the sausage and let it melt down. While the butter is melting, chop your bread into cubes. I usually add a bit more basil and parsley into the bread while chopping.

Now that the butter has melted down with the sausage, turn up to a medium heat and add the chopped celery and onion. You want to just lightly heat this mixture, being careful not to fully cook the celery or onion. When the mixture begins to sizzle a bit, add the bread that you have cubed.

While stirring the bread, butter, sausage, onions and celery together, slowly pour in the water and spice mixture to moisten the bread. Mix all together lightly trying not to mash up the bread to much, but get it all moist. You may need to add more water depending on the types of bread that you used.

Be careful not to soak the bread! It will gain moisture while cooking inside the turkey. Remove the wrapping on your turkey and wash the bird inside and out. Remove the neck and giblets and wash the inside of the turkey well with cold water. You can cook the neck and giblets for those who like them, if not, for this recipe, throw them away. Again, this would be used in the stuffing for my original recipe, but for the traditional, they are not of use.

Pull the turkey neck skin up and stuff some dressing into the pocket below it. Then pull the skin back down and tuck it under the turkey setting the bird in your roaster pan. You should have 1/2 stick of butter left and it should be soft from being out. Take the butter and rub the turkey down with it. Be sure to coat the turkey well with the butter as this is what will cause it to brown nicely. Lightly sprinkle the chicken spice all over the turkey and put it in the oven at 325. Your turkey should be ready to serve in about 4 1/2 hours depending on the size of the turkey. Most turkeys have a pop-up timer that will pop when the turkey has reached the proper temperature.

I also suggest that you use a roaster oven as in my post about my Thanksgiving Turkey.

Don’t throw that turkey juice away, it makes a wonderful gravy!

So there you have it. My traditional stuffed turkey recipe. Give it a try and tell me how it turns out. I will post my original turkey and dressing recipe on a later date. However, for this recipe you will need more time and a larger bird.

Merry Christmas!

By popular request, I have made this recipe available to print. Click here to view and print this turkey and dressing recipe.

Technorati Tags: thanksgiving, turkey recipe, food, cooking, holidays, stuffing, home cooking