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I had a great time on my trip to Deals Gap. Me and 2 of my friends drove up and stayed in Robbinsville, North Carolina for 4 days to vacation and ride motorcycles. The main attraction is Deals Gap, located on the TN & NC border. Motorcyclists come from around the country to travel this 11 mile stretch of road that contains 318 turns. We drove all night and arrived Thursday morning. After a quick nap we rode the Cherohala Skyway, which was amazing. It is so much different than Florida. I could not even find a straight road if I wanted to. Combined with sharp turns and elevation changes, this area is a motorcyclist’s paradise. My track experience defiantly helped give me confidence during our trip. The next day we woke up early to go ride Deals Gap. There is not much I can say about the Gap other than it is the craziest stretch of road I have ever been on in my life, and I wish I could have spent more time on it.

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Being that Robbinsville is kind of in the middle of nowhere, the idea of a movie theatre was laughable. We drove almost an hour to get to the nearest movie theatre and bar even (Robbinsville is a dry county). Asking around, locals could not tell us anything of interest to do other than a bowling ally and bar located a few towns over. Luckily the bar was decent and there was even live music. The three of us decided that we are going to move to Robbinsville and make a fortune opening up a movie theatre. Besides that we spend our last day doing another quick ride and then driving to the Ocoee River for some whitewater rafting. The river is full of class 3 and 4 rapids, and we all had a great time. Nick and I even got to “ride the bull” on a few rapids, which was so much fun. Other than that we got to drive all the way back to flat Florida, and even saw a UFO (geocache) on the way home! The gallery of pictures can be found here! ~Kyle

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Sorry it has taken me so long to get all this stuff gathered up and typed up. We had about 3 or 4 different people taking pictures that weekend and I wanted to collect all the pictures and go through them to put them in the album. I really did have an amazing weekend though, even though there were a few mishaps. All this took place over Memorial Day weekend. We left on Friday, May 25th from Jacksonville, FL where we all drove up to Savannah, GA to meet at Roebling Road race track. This was my 4th time at the track (wow, I am already starting to loose count!) and my first time at a track other than JenningsGP. When we arrived there were some race car teams finishing up practice sessions at the track. We all just waited outside the track until gates were opened for us. Our group from Jacksonville was the first one there so we all took up one whole side of the track pits. After a great night of BBQ and hanging out with friends we woke up the next morning ready to ride. The riding, like always, was split up into 3 sessions: novice (AKA mall security), intermediate (Police), and expert (FBI). I was riding in the novice group because this was my first time at this track and most of my really fast friends were riding in intermediate and I was afraid to ride with them because I figured I would not be fast enough. The day started out with expert group going first. Then intermediate and this is where it went down hill. Our good friend Josh crashed in the first session. Now I have seen quite a few crashes at the track, and so far I had never seen anyone get very hurt (even though some bikes have been left in not mint condition), but Josh unfortunately broke his leg during the crash.

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Many people would come to complain about the track because there is not a lot of room off of the track if you crash to ride off the track. Because he had to go to the hospital no one could ride while the ambulance was gone. Josh is ok now. His leg is broken, but he is in high spirits and it will heal in time. Also, his bike is pretty fine also. By the time novice group got out it was after lunch. My first time on this track, was, well…slow. But that is fine. It was only slow because the first novice session is always spent going slow learning the track layout and the proper lines through the turns. After that things sped up quite a bit. I was going fond of this track quickly. I love right hand turns, and long sweeping turns, and going fast. This track has all of these, but it makes it quite different. Roebling has a very long straight away. I was able to get my bike well over 160mph which is crazy when you have to hit your brakes and go into a right hand turn into turn 1. This was also my first time at the track using a lap timer, which tells you how long it takes you to go around the track. I was very excited as the day went on because the novice kids started getting faster, which meant it was easier to pass people (because they are no longer all bunched up into a huge mass of bikes). While I will not say I was the fastest one in novice (I might have been),

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I defiantly was one of the fastest. Me, Steve, Logan, and Matt were all much faster than anyone else in novice. By the end of the day I dropped my lap times almost 20 seconds from the beginning of the day. I went from 1:40, to 1:35, to 1:29, to 1:26s. By the end of the day I felt like I was flying and I was because my lap times were the same as my friends in the intermediate (Police) group. The rest of the day was sent goofing off, eating birthday cake (it was my birthday after all), and having a good time. We all went out to eat in Savannah at various places and went to bed ready to race another day.
The next day I wanted to try and move up to intermediate class, which they said I could once they got more stickers. So the first session out in novice I ran my all time best of 1:25, and it felt amazing. After that session I bumped up and soon I was getting ready to ride with a majority of my friends. This was very exciting and intimidating at the same time. These are people who are very fast. Most of them got me into track riding and have been riding for years, and here I was on my 4th track day, 8 months since I first rode on the track right behind them. We went out and had some fun.

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I could probably talk all day about how amazing it felt. I was afraid I would get caught in the dust behind them, but the amazing part was I stuck right behind them, and even passed a few of them! It didn’t even matter how fast we were going or what our times were, just the fact that we were all out there next to each other was so much fun and addicting! The second session out with them is where I hit the dirt. I was keeping up with all of them and I was following my friend Jimmy down the straight away into turn one. I applied my brakes very late so that I could keep up with him into the turn and I started to turn into turn 1. There I was right behind him in turn one, going close to 100mph with my knee on the ground when, before I knew it, my bike just slid out from under me and I began sliding. It felt like I was watching the whole thing from a TV, but before I knew it I was stopped and on the ground.

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I got up, looked at myself, and gave everyone thumbs up. The medic people came out and asked me if I was ok. I looked fine other than a few small holes in my jacket, which I could see some blood through. We lifted up my bike and it pretty much looked fine. Once I got back into the pit I cleaned my wound and assessed the bike. Total damage was just about nothing. The side of the bike was a little scratched up, and my brake level broke in one spot. The scratches were not bad and the brake level was fixed with a zip tie. That was it! One zip tie and tightening up a bolt or 2 and it was fixed. Maybe I just got lucky because it was the day after my birthday, I do not know, but I was back out riding the next session. I am really glad I went out again or else I would have had that crash looming over me until I rode again, which may not be for a month or two.

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The good news is that even after I crashed, I was still doing lap times only about 1 to 2 seconds off my best times. So I felt good about that. A couple more people crashed including Mike, Steve, Ralph, and Jeff, but no one was majority hurt (other than Josh) and no one from our group had a bike that was too badly damaged.
So it was pretty much a great weekend, other than some crashed. We all had a great time and gained some major speed. I can not wait to get back to JenningsGP and test my new skills on the home track though.
~Kyle

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Hey everyone. It has been a while hasn’t it? Well I have been under a rock to most people for the last month. But a lot has happened and I finally have some time to write. First of all, I am done with school! Yes, me, I, Kyle, will have a Bachelors Degree in Criminal Justice in a few short months. Why a few months? Well my ineternship, that is why. I am done with college classes, I only need to do my internship for one semester then I will have my diploma. The last few weeks I was studying for a few finals and finishing up my thesis. My final college GPA is a 3.85 and from what I am told it is the highest in the department (but this is hearsay). I finishing my undergraduate thesis this month. Look for “The Effects of Collective Bargaining on the Use of Innovative Police Policy” by me in the UNF library in a few months. If you would like to wait I am going to be the co-author on a related article due in a journal within a year.
My internship starts this Monday. I am very excited. I will be working with Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS) out of Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville, Florida. I am not only looking forward to the exciting work, but also a break in my schedule. For the last 2 years I have been working 40 hours a week and going to school full time. Now that I am not in school I actually get one real day off a week, and that is awesome! Let’s see what else is new, oh yeah, Roebling Road! May 26-27 I will be racing the track at Roebling Road in Savannah, Georgia with a very large group of friends. I am fine tuning my bike and upgrading a few things before I go, so look forward to some pictures. I also just happens that that weekend is my birthday, so that is going to be a fun weekend!
So what am I doing with all this free time I have? Well for one, Geocaching. I hit my 500th geocache last weekend in Tampa with my brother, and I have placed my 3rd cache last week. I am doing a geocaching series in Jacksonville called “Mother Bread.” I aim to put a geocache at every Panera Bread in Jacksonville. I plan to put my 4th one up tomorrow, so only about 7 more to go. Also, I am trying to keep learning Spanish as I am done with school. It it hard to motivate myself to hit the books when I am done with school, but I am trying. I also might be planning a extended trip/move overseas to help me learn a little faster, but that all depends what happens towards the end of the year after I graduate. So look forward to more pictures from Roebling soon! ~Kyle

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Well another great weekend at JenningsGP with my friends! I got there Saturday night after work. Unfortunately we caught a huge storm Saturday night. Luckily I was sleeping in my friends camper, so I did not loose much sleep. Sunday morning started with dark skies, but around lunch time blue skies were about. The rest of the day was great except for heavy winds which was distracting. As for me, I moved up to intermediate class and got my knee down on some new turns. I got my times down to the 30’s and even fishtailed coming out of turn 11 chasing Ed. I guess I need new tires before the next track day. So now go check out the rest of the pictures! They can be found here

I found this interesting article on the top 10 movie monkeys at The Shiznit

My last 2 days in Seattle. I am sitting here now waiting for the bus to arrive so I can leave for the airport where I can fly back to Jacksonville all night long. But I am ready to go home. The fact that it was cold, windy, and rainy all day is part of it, but I am fulfilled with my vacation and ready to go back, especially since today is the first official day of my spring break

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Sunday I took a ferry over to Bremerton where the main attraction was the USS Turner Joy naval ship which I walked around on for a few hours. It was quite enjoyable and it is pretty amazing to be on that boat and see how much engineering goes into a ship of that size, it looks like it must take hundreds of people to keep the thing running. Unfortunately there really wasn’t much else to do there because it is just a small little town.

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I did find a little mom and pop Italian restaurant where I had the best calzone ever. Back in the city I saw another movie, Black Snake Moan, which I would not really recommend seeing. Today, my last day, as I said, it rained all day. Luckily it wasn’t really raining do bad you couldn’t walk in it. I checked out and went to the zoo, which was pretty good, other than the fact it was raining the whole time. I got back, saw some more protesting (2 days in a row), and went and checked out some glassblowing places. Then I had the biggest bowl of ramen I have ever had. It was about the size of my head. I could not finish the whole thing!

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Now I am just getting ready to head on to the airport where I will sit for a few hours, fly all night, sleep in another airport for about 3 hours, and get back to Jacksonville around 11am. Then I will go to work a few hours after that. Fun! I hope you enjoyed the pics. Like last time I have just added to the main Seattle album, so more pictures for you. ~Kyle

Who would have thought, rain in Seattle. I guess I lucked out because it was suppose to rain on Friday, and it ended up being a beautiful day all day. I finished up my stuff that I had to do at the conference, then I went out on the town. I started out by geocaching which took me to some cool locations.

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I also checked out Pikes Place Market and saw all the fresh fish and food. It smelt really good although I did not buy anything. I must have walked 10 miles that day all around that city. The thing that is cool about caching is that it takes you to areas that you would have never found just walking around. I cached all day before coming back and resting. Yesterday rained all day, which hindered my plans of taking a ferry across the water.

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I ended up going to the Seattle Aquarium, which unfortunately was not very exciting. I also checked out the Science Fiction Museum which was really good seeing how I am a huge nerd. Then I spent the rest of the night at an Irish pub. Now I am off to catch the ferry. I added to the last photo album, so if you already looked, look again for more pictures.

So here I am, Seattle, WA. My trip started at 4:15am Wednesday when I woke up to catch my 6am flight. I timed everything perfectly and got to the airport at 5:15, 45 minutes before my flight left. I wasn’t planning on the airport being so busy at 5 in the morning! I would have missed by flight if it was not for the Delta people letting all of us skip to the front of the line because we would have missed our flight. Also, of course, I get security flagged so it takes me extra long to get searched a few times. But all is good because I made my flight with maybe 5 minutes before the plan lifted up.

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About 8 hours later I find myself in Seattle, glad I bought a decent jacket before I left. The weather has actually been great. The temperature has been around the fifties, which is cold for me, but walking around a bit warms you up enough. Even at night it is not too cold to walk back to the hotel. I have walked around quite a bit and have yet to take a taxi anywhere. My hotel is only about half a mile from the conference, so it is only like a 5-10 minute walk. Everything in the city is pretty walkable.

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I have walked all around the city the last 2 days and have yet to have any problems. Yesterday I went ahead and did the space needle, which was nice, but over rated. The nicest thing in the Seattle skyline is the needle, so by being on top of it there is not much else to see. I have also done some geocaching so far. I have found about 8 so far and there are a few more I plan on getting while I am here. Yesterday I also met up with a friend from high school who just happens to be here by chance the same time as me, so that was cool. Today I attended a few lectures at the conference and prepared for my presentation tomorrow morning. After my presentation I will more than likely have lunch with some professors and then try to go to the art museum. There are still a bunch of things I would like to do while I am here, so let is hope I will have time to do them all. Tonight while I was walking home I thought I might catch a quick movie and then maybe find a bar or something after to relax.

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I find an AMC and pick the movie “Zodiac” because it seemed interesting enough, seeing as how I had never heard of it. The film started at 8pm and it was not 11pm till the movie ended. I just so happened to pick the longest movie I had seen in years. The movie was not bad at all, it just didn’t need to be almost 3 hours long. Either way I made it back and I am just about ready to sleep, especially since my body is still getting used to the 3 hour difference, and that is not even counting the other hour we lost last week to daylight savings time. So for now I will sleep and you can check out some of the wonderful pictures I have taken so far ~Kyle