My Superhawk was a BLAST through there.. did you hang any of that plastic on the tree of shame?
i did...i have a picture of me holding one of the mirrors up in front of the Tree, but my scanner died, and i don't have it hosted anywhere. i ordered a new scanner tonight...i'll upload it when i get the chance.
we actually stayed in that little motel at the base of the Dragon, and our room was DIRECTLY behind the Tree of Shame...it was pretty much the first thing you saw when you walked outside.
i actually ended up fixing that bike, mostly with eBay parts. TIG welded the frame where the subframe mount snapped off. didn't file a claim, and added a titanium/carbon fiber Hindle full system, since i had to replace the exhaust anyway.
then it got stolen not long after i got it back together.
and i've never ridden a Superhawk, but i'd imagine that it would work pretty well on the Dragon. i felt like my GSX-R 750 was a little bit of a bull in a china shop at Deal's Gap (lots of power, and the GSX-R chassis being biased more towards stability and smoothness than quickness and agility like my buddy's R6)
i THINK i wrecked by hitting the painted line in the middle of the road right at the apex, but i'm not totally sure. the funny thing is that i'd eased up a little from my runs earlier that day, b/c i felt like i had been pushing too hard and might wreck! it was a run-of-the-mill lowside, and it came out of NOWHERE.
The crew gets the kill, not an individual. That's the fleet mindset, make it your own.
i'm working on it. i still would MUCH MUCH MUCH rather be in a Harrier or Cobra.
You aren't in the Marines are you? I think you might be nervous a lot
haha. it's a minority mindset even in the Marines, i think (although certainly much more commonplace here than almost anywhere else).
Let me quote someone else to try to explain...i don't think i could convey it any more clearly (and reading this didn't "convince" me to have this mindset by any means...i had the mindset before i ever read this book--it was just the best explanation of my feelings i'd seen.)
One veteran I interviewed told me that he thought of most of the world as sheep: gentle, decent, kindly creatures who are essentially incapable of true aggression. In this veteran's mind there is another human subspecies (of which he is a member) that is a kind of dog: faithful, vigilant creatures who are very much capable of aggression when circumstances require. But, according to his model, there are wolves (sociopaths) and packs of wild dogs (gangs and aggressive armies) abroad in the land, and the sheepdogs are environmentally and biologically predisposed to be the ones who confront these predators.
Some experts in the psychological and psychiatric community think that these men are simply sociopaths and that the above view of killers is romanticizing. But I believe that there is another category of human beings out there. We know about sociopaths because their condition is, by definition, a pathology or a psychological disorder. But the psychological community does not recognize this other category of human beings, these metaphoric sheepdogs, because their personality does not represent pathology or disorder. Indeed, they are valuable and contributing members of our society, and it is only in time of war, or on police forces, that these characteristics can be observed.
I have met these men, these "sheepdogs", over and over again as I interviewed veterans. They are men like one U.S. Army Lt Col, a Vietnam veteran, who told me: "I leaned early on in life that there are people out there who will hurt you if given the chance, and I have devoted my life to being prepared to face them." THese men are quite often armed and always vigilant. They would not abuse or misdirect their aggression any more than a sheepdog would turn on his flock, but in their hearts many of them yearn for a righteous battle, a wolf upon whom to legitimately and lawfully turn their skills...
According to Gwynn Dyer, USAF research concerning aggressive killing behavior determined that 1% of their fighter pilots in WWII did nearly 40% of the air-to-air killing, and the majority of WWII pilots never even tried to shoot anyone down. This 1% of WWII fighter pilots, Swank & Marchands 2%, Griffith's low Napoleonic and Civil War killing rates, and Marshall's low WWII firing rates can all be at least partially explained if only a small percentage of these combatants were actually willing to actively kill them enemy in these combat situations. Whether called sociopaths, sheepdogs, warriors, or heroes, they are there, they are a distinct minority, and in times of danger a nation needs them desperately.
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On Killing, Lt Col Dave Grossman (U.S. Army ret, currently a professor of psychology).
