Back-up plan weekend

This is a blog “mostly about my journey in BDSM and Puppy Play… with occasional rabbit trails into art, philosophy, mythology, and motorcycles.”  I know that b/c it says so in the banner across the top up there.  This post has nothing to do w/ puppy play.  Nor does it involve kink – unless, like me, you have something of a bike fetish (or if you're into a couple of 20-year-old boys camping together).  No, this is about motorcycles, Scotland, mini-kilts, herding dogs, predatory birds, Youtube, old British cars, old Whisky, and new Star Trek.

So, I love to travel and don’t do nearly as much of it as I’d like – mostly b/c we don’t have the budget to do it.  Kitten and I had this plan that about every-other year we’d do some major trip (i.e. outside of the Southeast – we do a lot of traveling inside the Southeast – and preferably outside the continental US).  In the last 8.5 years that we’ve been together, we have, I think, only made it to Hawaii once and (briefly) to Colorado together, so obviously we’re not quite averaging 1:2 years.  We’d been planning a trip to Scotland for a few years – possibly even renting motorcycles and doing a bike tour – but that has yet-again fallen through.  Hopefully next summer…

I can live vicariously, however.  In searching Youtube videos of FZ6 riders, I found this whole series by a kid in England w/ an FZ6 who filmed a bike tour of Scotland together w/ his buddy.

The short version (4 min edit): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFVCt2OfMEI

The longer, multi-part, version for cycle enthusiasts w/ time to kill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBkDZUWO3b8&list=PLAA8E4EBF6EE0E83C

Speaking of travel-plans falling through… For Memorial Day weekend my Owner was going to take her pup to the beach to visit her folks and play some mini-golf (our secret vice).  That didn’t work out.  But we had a great back-up plan that began Saturday w/ the Greenville, SC Scottish Games.  We’ve been to a few other Scottish games, but this was really our first time at Greenville’s (we’d gone once before just for the evening concert).  Greenville’s games are held on the campus of Furman University, which is the most beautiful campus I’ve ever been on.  I’m not a utopianist, but I am an aesthete, and I really do think that if all our man-made environments were this beautifully designed and landscaped, we’d all be better people for it.

My Owner looks quite beautiful herself.  She has some fine legs and was rocking a mini-kilt – the kind that just barley covers your ass.  Very pounce-able.  :)

They had an antique British car show there, and we got some pictures.  I’m not a car guy at all, but Kitten knows more about them, and she loved the cars.  Sir is a car guy, so we sent him a pic of me w/ one of the cars.  His reply had us in stitches: “I want to lick everything in this picture.”  LOL.

Whenever we go to a Scottish Games one of my favorite things to see are always the sheep dogs.  This one had a great setup.  There was a long presentation, and it included watching three border collies working together at once; that was cool.  It’s actually harder on the shepherd than the dogs b/c each dog has his own whistle signals, and he has to keep straight all the signals, so occasionally he would slip-up and tell the wrong dog to move or to wheel left when he meant for it to wheel right…

The other really cool part of the Games was an excellent raptor show.  They flew a hawk, a huge owl (5’ wingspan), a falcon, and a kite.  The hawk flew right over our heads – close enough to feel his feathers.  He didn’t just fly over the audience, but would even fly between people sitting in the grass.

There was plenty of other coolness this weekend, but I’ll briefly just mention just one more:  for the first time I got to drink something older than I am.  I did three shots of a ’73 whisky.  How cool is that?

Okay, I lied; one more thing about the fantastic weekend.  Ma’am took me to see the new Star Trek.  I loved it.  It’s once again more action-driven, more “Star Wars” than Star Trek, compared to the old series – but it’s really good.  I enjoyed that he clearly had multiple references to other movies – most obviously the old Trek films, but as well he remixed scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark (the opening chase through the jungle), The Godfather Part II (the helicopter assassination), and Silence of the Lambs (the evil genius in the cage).  It wasn’t so much what JJ Abrams did that was "new" that I enjoyed as the way he re-invented old things from various source material.  I also liked the political subtext - clearly inspired by our "War on Terror," and the bad guys weren't so much the external threat (the Kilingons standing in for the Islamists) as the hyper-hawks w/in our own military who go too far to "protect" us from the Other.  The question between revenge and justice - between defense and aggression - is a theme that's handled really well in this movie.  Go JJ!

All-n-all... it was one awesome back-up plan weekend.