BlueSky

Yep, for shooting long distances, the M14 was super. I could actually hit the targets at 350 yards using the M14, the peep sight was so good. I never had to qualify at a range with the M16 even though the Army required everybody to qualify annually I believe and paperwork was produced to show that we qualified while in S. Korea. I qualified "Expert" in basic training and when they randomly assigned everybody in the fake paperwork, they put me down as "Marksman" which was the lowest category. Didn't like that! The Army is a dictatorship and like all dictatorships, it is corrupt as heck.

The NAV in my wife's Infiniti can't be programmed while driving. I understand the intent but it's annoying that she can't program it while I'm driving it on a trip.

Excellent! Sounds like you went through it right and it should give you great service. I bought my Venture in 2014 I think and it only had 5,914 miles on it. My Kawasaki in my sig I bought in 2009 with only 1,054 miles on it.

When I was in the Army in 1969 stationed at a missile site in South Korea way out in the middle of the rice paddies, we switched from M14s to M16s. We were taken outside the compound and allowed to shoot up some ammo against a hillside to familiarize ourselves with the new weapon. No gun range anywhere near us. We had nuke warheads for the missiles there and there were about 100 infantrymen there for the sole purpose of guarding those warheads. Well, the infantry guys brought out a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a tripod. They were allowing anyone who wanted to to shoot it. I watched one guy shoot it. He sat on the ground with his feet braced against two legs of the tripod with another guy sitting back to back with him with his arms wrapped around the shooter. When he fired it, the tripod with the gun and both guys were bouncing around on the ground. I passed up my golden opportunity to fire a .50 caliber machine gun!

That is one powerful weapon! I have a video on my old computer of Canadian snipers shooting the Taliban from long distances and it is unbelievable. They evidently used explosive rounds. I'll see if I can retrieve it and find a way to post it.

That bike looks too good to be a parts bike!

$5k should be enough to buy two Gen1s in good shape!

Don't feel like the Lone Ranger!

Substitute aerobic exercise. There are many forms of aerobic exercises. Do the ones you can that you prefer. Improving blood flow does all kinds of good things for you.

I feel for you. I went through that with my wife. The process was long, expensive, and frustrating but finally she and her son got their citizenship. She is from Russia, a Tartar with Mongolian heritage , living in Omsk in Siberia, with a last name of Abdoulina! This was shortly after 9/ll/01 and she passed the background check! I didn't hire an attorney to help me. I spent the necessary time on the government web sites and figured out what I needed to do and the forms I needed to submit.

Diet will help a little in reducing cholesterol. Probably if a reduction in weight accompanies the diet change it will help a lot more. But, exercise is much more effective in my experience. In 2005 I was working at the Kewaunee Nuclear Plant in Two Rivers WI. Due to the cold winters and my laziness, I didn't exercise during the winter. My chlolesterol was 238, the highest I ever remember. I started walking as fast as I could maintain and worked up to 54 minutes 3 times a week. My cholesterol dropped to 188 in 3 months. I weighed the same and ate the same during those 3 months. Weighed 255lbs, 25 more than now. A coworker at the plant said his cholesterol was 300 when checked and the Dr scared him bad enough that he started walking more than I did and he went on a as he says a "leaves and twig" diet and got his cholesterol down. Then walking after work in the dark, he twisted his ankle. He couldn't walk but he maintained his "leaves and twigs" diet and his cholesterol went right back up to where it had been. This guy was an interesting character. He said he was the Ft. Hood heavyweight boxing champ while there and he spent a tour in Viet Nam in the middle of the fighting. Tough guy who according to him grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in St. Louis.

I bought one of those from ebay. when I tried to use it, bubbles formed in the fluid no matter what I did. I called the manufacturer. They said the vendor I bought it from was not an approved vendor but suggested i buy a fluid refill kit. If the sync is out very much the fluid will be sucked into the manifold which also happened. So, I sold it for a whole lot less than I paid for it and was happy to be rid of it. A forum member bought it so if you put up with its idiosyncracies, it will do the job I suppose.

John Stossel discussed this on one of his shows. According to him, high chlolesterol alone will not clog your arteries. But, with high blood pressure and high chlolesterol it will clog the arteries. High blood pressure damages the arteries by stretching them and then the cholesterol sticks in the pockets or something like that.

Yeah, and Yamaha could have at least updated the bike with fuel injection and maybe updated the cassette player over the 14 years of production. They wouldn't spend a nickel on it updating it to get a larger market share. How many expensive bikes were on the market in 2013 that still had carburetors?

We really need to educate ourselves on possible side effects of the drugs we take so we will recognize what is causing the side efffect if it happens.

I was taking it at bed time and half a pill too because of what happened when I took Zocor to ease myself into taking the statin. And I wasn't just a little dizzy. I was almost nauseous.

Hey, we could make some money! I wonder how much we could get paid NOT to do a posedown!

My cholesterol level has hovered around 200, sometimes under, sometimes over. Several years ago I was prescribed simvustatin, brand name Zocor. I took it for about 3 weeks and I felt achy all over and sore so I quit taking it. Early this year I was prescribed atorvastatin, the generic Lipitor. I took it for 3 weeks and started feeling really dizzy. I looked up the side effects and dizziness was one of them. So, I stopped taking it. Recently, I decided to try it again and the same thing happened. After about 3 weeks I got really dizzy. So, it appears that the statin drugs don't agree with me. One of the other side effects of Lipitor is weakened tendons. FlyingFool, were you taking Lipitor before you ruptured your achilles tendon?

I don't try to go to my limits in exercising any more. Just don't think it would work out. What I do I go for is lots of repititions because I'm afraid I'll pull something that wouldn't have pulled a couple of decades ago. About 5 or 6 years ago when I was working away from home I was using a pull handle and socket to remove a tire from my truck. I actually pulled my right arm out of its shoulder socket. Hurt like heck but it popped back in place and I never went to a doctor. But, I had very limited use of my right arm for a long time. It was over a year before I had full range of motion again and another year or so before the popping stopped in my right shoulder when I did pushups. But now it's all good.

Glad you made the ride successfully! Time to repair it now.

I'm convinced that deer were put on earth for food because they are so stupid. When a vehicles headlight lights up the road, they decide it's a great time to cross. I was working 10 hours a day at the Cooper Nuclear Plant in Nebraska in 96 and signed up for an Autocad night class at Peru Universty in Peru, NE at night. I was going to class one evening after dark and had already entered the 35mph zone inside the city limits when a huge buck deer slammed into the side of my car. His body slammed against the fender and door and I was eyeball to eyeball with him for a second. I think my car ran over one or more of his legs. He got up and fell and got up again and wobbled away. Two nights later when I went to my next class, I asked the instructor had anybody found a dead buck deer around there and he said they had found two. I told him one of them was mine! The deer in NE are twice as large as in NC.

I'm sure that if I stopped exercising, I would be an arthritic couch potato pdq. I'm fighting it as hard as I can.

Yep, the new Wing with a 1700cc V4 (what I was hoping for in the Gen3 Venture) would give you more room for your feet and would REALLY get me excited! But I'm only one in the crowd and I got outvoted. I realized a long time ago that my opinion doesn't count for much.

From what I have read on this forum, some Gen2's have a loud whine coming from the clutch or transmision or something. I don't think it harms anything but is annoying. The OE rear shock tends to fail. Overall, from what I have read they are very reliable like you would expect from a Yamaha.

I think retirement is great! I worked until I was 70 and the last 3 years I have really enjoyed not having to go to work any more. I have plenty of stuff to do to stay busy. My 2nd wife who is 17 years younger is still working so I'm the house husband. I do the cleaning, shopping, washing clothes, and have supper prepared when she gets home. Then I have the yard work, the maintenance and repairs of my 05 Magnum Hemi, 02 F150 4x4, the wife's 13 Infiniti, my two old motorcycles, and the 98 18' Boston Whaler. I enjoy doing everything I can myself and stay as busy as I want to. I spend my weekends trying to entertain my wife as much as possible. She loves the beach and fishing so we drive out on the beach for splashing in the ocean and surf fishing a lot as well as taking the boat out to fish and going on a fun vacation when the wife can take off. I also walk for 50 minutes at a rapid pace around the subdivision 3 times a week and I do several exercises 3 times a week, 30 pullovers on my total gym, 45 arm curls on the TG all on the highest setting, 40 pushups from the knee, 25 situps, and 50 squats, just one set of each. I weigh 230lbs and need to get that down. Life is Good! Knock on Wood!