Art O’Connor

Last time I checked we are in America where you are innocent until proven guilty.  So much for French ethics.  Why are they releasing the results of his A sample when they know they need the results of a B sample to prove anything? Snail eating assholes.  I know it does not look good but I am sitting this one out until we get the whole picture.

11pm I land in Vegas it is still 102. I take a cab to Bob’s (BBK) boss bachelor pad change in to my “club clothes” and we head for the Strip to listen to bad music and talk to shallow uninteresting girls.  The Vegas dress code cracks me up.  Here we are in the tackiest place on earth and these club owners would rather have me roll up in pants, goofy shoes and a shirt with a collar drenched in sweat from walking from the cab to the door in 100+ heat at midnight than arrive cool and comfortable in shorts, flip flops and a t-shirt.  Yeah would not want to give the place a bad image.  Anyway we meet these two boring (but hot) girls from Canada.  BBK has mad skills and is doing pretty well with the blonde.  Her friend is a completely different story.  I try several times to get her into a conversation, every time I say anything she gives me a one word answer and then turns her back on me.  Yeah I am gonna put up with that.  So I bail and assume my usual post of holding up the wall.  After a while BBK gives up and we hit another place.  BBK uses his stroke gets us past the line of moussed up frat boys and waitresses from Fresno.  This place is massive.  They have two levels and some kind of showgirls on trapeze act going on over the dance floor.  The music is unlistenable.  A few 9 dollar drinks later and we are on our way back to the first club.  We get there and see the two Canadian girls have hooked up with a couple of Guido’s.  You know the type, $200 gay as hell Euro jeans, white long sleeve shirt unbuttoned to show some equally gay bling, and the kind of shoes Cipo would wear(and only Cipo should wear).   Well done, should make for a good story for the gals back at the call center.  So that is pretty much it for my first night in Vegas.

Sunday BBK scores us passes to Rehab at the Hard Rock.  It is basically a daytime rave at the Hard Rock Pool.  They bring in some “famous” DJ’s and charge the general public $40 to get sunburn and listen to the same beat all day.  It was great people watching.  It was like a big add for plastic surgery.  Everywhere you look insecure women with fake boobs, botox smiles, dyed hair, tattoo’s above their ass.  Too bad they can’t buy interesting personalities. (so I could buy one too)  Most of the guy’s are equally brain dead based on the need to tattoo their names across their stomachs.  Believe it or not I actually had a good time.  It was nice to be in the water since it was 114 that day and despite the phony factor the view was (mostly) good.

So after 2 days of listening to the same beat I was now very ready for the big show.  I meet up with Swill at the Hard Rock and we made our way to The Orleans.  We soon hooked up with Mistress Nikki and we were ready to rock.  Swill was able to get us all tickets compete with back stage passes so big props to him.  We got there right as Mastodon started their set.  Wow I was impressed.  I knew they had really complicated riffs and time changes that sounded great on record, but sometimes it is really hard for bands like this to pull it off live.  Not these guys.  The timing was perfect and the 2 guitar players were amazing.  Next up was Lamb of God.  I have seen them before and I knew that it was going to be a great unbelievably heavy show. The level of musicianship in this band is off the charts.  I don’t think the guitarists play a single bar chord.  The drummer and bassist are virtually locked together. Just perfect.  The power and energy their music has is really incredible.  Live these guys hold nothing back.  Later we were talking to the singer Randy and he said it was their 11th straight night and he was so tired he could hardly stand.  Based on the performance you would have thought it was the first night of the tour.  Success is no accident for these guys.  Thanks to some world class schmoozing and name dropping from Swill we were able to get back stage.  As soon as we get there Nikki spots Kerry King and we get a great photo of the two of them.  He was in his pre game mode so we did not bug him for long besides LoG was still playing so we went back out to the stage. We finished out the LoG set away from the unwashed masses watching from the side of the stage.  After a performance like that it was hard to believe that we still had Slayer to go.  Their music is so powerful and has meant so much to me over the years that it is hard to describe my level of excitement.  Every time I see these guys I am inspired.  They opened with “South of Heaven” and it was game on.  These guys have been around for 25 years now and it is easy to see why they are so well respected.  They did not play like a bunch of 40 something’s doing it for the check.  They played like guys who absolutely love what they are doing and doing it for the last time.   During Slayer Randy from LoG comes out and it is photo time again.  I was wearing a shirt that said “Kill the DJ”, which he said was cool. (All the validation I will ever need).  He also said something else but all I heard was DJ and lame.  After all Slayer was playing!  After the Slayer set we went back stage and are kind of milling around outside their green room.  A lady inside asks what we are waiting for and we tell here we are here to meet Slayer.  She invites us in and says they should be right out.  Cool.  Pretty soon Dave Lombardo (unreal drummer) comes out and is having some kind of heated discussion with security for giving the wrong passes to some friends of his.  He gets off the phone and you could see he is still pretty pissed so we were kind of laying low not wanting to upset him.  Then the lady who invited us in (turns out she is Dave’s wife) introduces us.  Whatever he was pissed about was over and he was super gracious and cool.  He asked us if we liked the show (um, yeah) and thanked us for coming out.  Unreal.  We waited a while longer but it seemed the rest of the band went out another way so we left.

We head into the casino to meet up with Nikki’s husband for a drink.  While we are walking around we see Willie (guitar) and Chris(drums) from Lamb of God.  They are doing the same thing we are, playing slots and wandering around like tourists.  Yeah partying like rock stars!  What a great end to a great weekend.  Again thanks to Bob, Swill, and Nikki for such a great time

I just spent a hour writing a post about my whole Vegas weekend and Wordpress crashed on me and lost it.  Crap.  Anyway it was awesome.  I put a bunch of pics from the Slayer Lamb of God show in the “Concerts You Missed” section of the photo gallery.  After the shit storm of texas I really needed something to lift my sprirts and this was it.  I am glad I got to spend it with such cool people.  Bob, Swill, Nikki you are the best. Thank You so much.

Where to begin?  It has been a while since I have written anything here.  Texas has been a challenge to say the least.  I have never been in heat and humidity like that before, absolutely ridiculous.  The slightest physical exertion and you would sweat through your clothes.  Then there was the customer.  Somehow they got it in their head that we did something that we don’t do.  I have no idea how they got that idea.  Never in the 10 months of negotiations did we ever discuss what they now seemed to think we were going to do.  The result was I ended up doing about 10% of the work I thought I would do.  I still came out in the black for the trip but the check is missing a few zero’s.  It was not a total loss.  Now there is no doubt as to what we will be doing on future visits and I was able to meet all the branch managers face to face.  Always a good thing.

I am now in the Denver Airport waiting for a flight to Vegas where I will see Slayer, Lamb of God, Mastodon, and Children of Bodom.  Hell yeah.  The best part is I will be meeting up with Swill and Mistress Nikki.  Swill being the connected internet mogul that he is was able to procure back stage passes for us as well.  I am so excited I can hardly sit still.

I have been here in Denver since Thursday.  I drive straight from Austin to get here. 20 hours including stops.  Anyway I have been mooching at Mike’s house, eating his food, watching cable and wearing out my welcome.  We met up with Patria Thursday for some killer fish taco’s.  Mike has been having a good summer avoiding work and training for Ironman Canada.  Patria is taking full advantage of the fitness she gained at Gila and is in the middle of a winning streak.  It was fun to hang with them again.  Yesterday Mike and I met his friend Troy at a lake and went out on his Hobie Cat which was pretty cool even if we were lacking some wind.  On the way home again scored some kick ass Mexican food and chowed down on the porch Mike scored on Craig’s List.  Then the fun really began.  We got on our bikes and went to check out a really cool local band The Railbenders.  These guys play country.   Not Nashville pop country but real country, like Jesse Dayton or Hank III.  They have a great song about how Texas sucks, it really hit home for me.  We met some lovely ladies, danced badly and rode home with huge grins at 2am.  After the bummer that Texas was I am really glad I made the stop here, it has done wonders for my attitude.  OK they are starting to board my flight gotta run.

So I am sweating my ass of here in Houston thinking how lucky I am to live in Utah.  94% humidity! For real, if it hits 100% does that mean we are underwater?  Anyway I get back to the truck and see that the world famous, tranier to the stars Gardie Jackson has left me a message.  From his tone I can tell he is super excited (even for him) and soon I understand why.  Kristen Kotval is now the new National Masters Crit Champion!  Hell yeah.  It really couldn’t happen to a better person.  This is a girl who at the Bear Lake RR crashes bad enough to total her bike, ride a borrowed one back to the peleton, win the race, and then get DQ’ed by an arbitrary ruling by the officials all with a smile on her face.  Yeah the girl has class.  So next Tuesday at the RMR if you see a girl in a Stars and Stripes jersey fighting for the same wheel as you, let her in she’s earned it.

Ride Safe

13 hours, that is how long I spent driving today from Peublo CO to Ft. Worth TX.  The drive was not exactly scenic.  In the panhandle you could fall asleep, go off the road and run out of gas before you hit anything.  They have a whole a whole lot of nothing in these parts. The first town in TX after New Mexico was called Texline. Creative huh?  I think they should have followed Texarkana’s lead and called it New Texico.  At 10pm it is a balmy 97, down from the 104 I was driving in most of the day.  Tomorrow should be sweatier than “Cool Hand Luke”.  Anyway I am pretty brain dead from the drive so hopefully I will have something interesting to say tomorrow.

Ride Safe

Today I left the Hive.  No teary good byes, no one to miss me when I am gone, no firm return date.  I stopped in Rock Bottom and exchanged for some kick ass music (Celtic Frost, Ministry, The Atomic Bitchwax) for some kick ass burrito’s at the Tone Mans house. After exchanging tales of the problems of walking with women I was back out on the open road.  I alternated between listening to the iPod and the “Learning to Talk Mexican” cd’s that I got at Costco, by the end of this trip I should be able to talk about the weather and ask where the hotel is with confidence.  Other than that not much else to report.  With my late start and visit with the Tone Man I have only made it to a lovely Motel 6 in Pueblo CO.  Too bad I don’t have time to stay, I am getting low on Consumer Information Catalogs.

Ride Drive Safe

So if you show up to a race but don’t really race why even bother? Why not just go ride 18mph with your buddies and save $30.  Anyone who races in Utah knows exactly which “team” I am talking about. So I really don’t need to mention the name and say how bad they are for the sport because it is just too obvious.  I would love to hear the pre race strategy meeting for these knuckle heads.  “OK guys lets go out there and do nothing, disrupt any chase attempts and at the finish we can congratulate each other for being so completely useless and being there for the sprint for 3rd.  Don’t worry about those other teams who think we are a joke they are just jealous.  Got it?  OK lets huddle up and for a big cheer,  DOOOO NOTHING.”

Finally, after nearly 5 months of legal mumbo jumbo I am off to Texas.  Good news on a good day.  Last night went down to the Gallivan Center to check out Spearhead.  One look at the 45 min. beer lines and people packed assholes to elbows because there is finally something fun to do downtown and I was out of there.  Got almost 2 full hours of sleep before heading out the door @ 5:30 am to pick up Mikey for a day on the river.  It is amazing how spoiled you get at this particular spot.  Probably about a 20 fish day which is pretty awesome most places but not here.  This place is in my opinion the best fishing river in Utah (no I won’t tell you where), I have had days there that really do sound like fish stories.  Literally a fish every cast for hours on end.  It does not take long to get used to that and forever skew your view of the way fishing should be.  It is all about perspective I guess.  Today was really a great day.  When we got there we could hear elk bugling, the air was crisp and clean, and not another soul around.  Yet at the end we both commented on the “disappointing” number of fish we caught.  Spoiled.  I guess it is human nature to always want more, but I am not sure how healthy it is in the long run.  I really need to start appreciating what I do have and not always be asking “is that all?”.

My Mom starts her first round of chemo today, so if you have read this far please take a moment and send some good mojo her way.

Ride Safe