A Time For Thieves

With the Christmas spirit all around, let's not forget to take precautions necessary to protect ourselves, our loved ones and our shit.

Just three weeks ago I came home from a trip to NC. This wasn't a pleasure trip for the sake of pleasure. It was a trip to my grandmother's home that was being sold to some strangers that will now make it their home, with their memories. We (aunts, cousins, brothers, etc.) were helping clean out and clean up the house for the new owners. While walking through the woods behind the house I noticed some handle bars poking out of some leaves amongst some thicket. With a little pulling and maneuvering, I was able to break the bike free from it's multi-year bondage of wood and vines. Whoa, this was an old bike. I had vague memories of playing with this bike as a child. It was a ladies bike that for a small boy was nutcracker proof, because it had the dropdown tubing instead of the dangerously rigid horizontal top tube. The bike had front and rear fenders, big flat pedals, fat white wall tires, a huge seat and little place to carry stuff on the back. The entire bike was coated in rust. It was a mixture of faint green paint and brown rust. The pedals were permanently locked in place as was the handle bars. The bike was just a relic, but a relic that meant a lot to me.

I asked permission to have the bike. My mom and her sisters, the rightful heirs to this old junk toy, figured it for trash or at least recyclable materiel, but I had other plans. Amy and I are trying to develop our green thumbs and have taken an interest in making the yard look nice and also reflecting a bit of our personal style. We had decided that the bike would look great in the yard as art. A rusty bike tucked off in the corner of the yard, hidden amongst some bushes and flowers. A sort of yard surprise. We'd seen something similar at a bed and breakfast earlier in the year and thought it was a very unique idea.

I hauled the old bike all the was back from Mt. Holly, NC to Macon, GA to see it's new home on Idleway Dr. (Ayers Rd.). A home for many years to come that would show off it's stylish body lines and be proud of it's aged look. I set the bike up in the corner of the front yard. I have two tall pine trees at the end of my house that have a huga azalea bush between them. I thought this would be a fine showplace and it was. For the last three weeks that old bike has welcomed us home, played resting spot for birds and obviously caught the attention of passersby.

Unfortunately for us, it caught the attention of a thief last night. The bike was there when we arrived home last night at approximately 10pm. We could see the bike under the glow of the Christmas lights on the front of the house. When Amy left for work this morning, it was gone. I don't think the bike would fetch much on the open market. About the only one that would pay anything for it would be an antique dealer or a collector of old bikes. Nonetheless, it was worth a lot to me and I'd pay a lot to have it back. I'm sorry I don't even have a picture of it or a name brand to mention. That had worn off long ago as has the character of someone in my community.

Snowboarding HURTS!

Last Thursday was about as hectic a day as any I've had in quite a while. It rarely fails that when I've got plans to leave town for the weekend, I'm bound to have the busiest day of the month...that day. This particular day was no different. I was meeting a group of friends for a 10 hour drive to Snowshoe, West Virginia. That's John Denver country bitch and we were going to tear up the slopes of Denver's home far away.

The ride was crazy because it included 6 (Robert Long, Matthias Blackshear, Jimmy Long, Chris Gore, Troy Tarpley and Josh Marsh) wired guys, 8 anxious boards, too many bags overflowing with insulated clotches and enough alcohol to open our own little club. Funny thing was the alcohol was consumed mostly by two guys, which made the trip all the more entertaining and difficult. Bathrooms stops were really like reloading stops. Piss some vodka out, take some vodka in. Red Bull cans dropping from the opened doors of the Tahoe like little rabbit droppings. Luckily, three of the 6 in the group were proffesional computer geeks, albiet drunk geeks, and had their laptops in hand to entertain everyone not driving with movies. Suprisingly, no porn. Now I know why DVD's in cars has become such a big industry. The cost/benefit ratio is not hard to understand. The benefit of keeping everyone preoccupied and quiet greatly outweighs the cost of a couple hundred dollars.

We left Atlanta around 8pm and drove all night, arriving in Snowshoe around 6am Friday morning. The temerature guauge on the car read 1 degree farenheit. We were told that when you calculated for wind chill it was near -20. Snotcicles were guaranteed! We checked into our plush tree bedroom condo on the slopes and prepared for battle. With our warm clothes on and our boards in hand, we headed to Starbucks for some energy. Thirty minutes later, we were set for launch. To the bunny slope I headed!

I locked myself in and shoved off for my first experience on a snowboard. It was a very very short experience. I made it about 8 feet at about 8 miles an hour before falling on my ass. It hurt a little the first time. By the 25th time, it hurt a lot. We were skiing on packed granular ice that was man made a few days before we arrived. This was not powder. In fact, I don't think Snowshoe knows what powder is. Anyway, the ice was to my ass what a meat tenderizer is to a steak. After two hours and many many attempts to travel more than 15 feet without another anal impact to the freezing floor I was now well aquainted with, I decided to move on to something a bit more challanging...like a "green" slope.

Suprisingly, that's exactly what I needed. The greens had a little less ice and much more slush. I was able to make the edges of my board hold a line while moving and NOT falling....immediately. I fell and fell some more the entire weekend, but the falls became more spread out as the hours passed.

Saturday, I woke with pain in parts of my body that I didn't know I had. I have muscles in my neck and didn't know that they could be exercised to the point of ouch, but they can. My left ass cheek and left forearm felt like they'd been sucker punched by Mike Tyson and all I could think of was getting my hands on some Aleve or Advil or Tylenol or bottle of Beefeaters. I settled for a venti Christmas blend and a blueberry muffin at Starbucks. After a little breakfast and working the stiffness out of my legs, arms and neck, I was good to go.

The rest of the weekend was about the same as far as snowboarding goes. I continued to painfully land on my face and continued to bitch each time, but I continued to get better and continued to brag about it too.

I'm now a snowboarder and look forward to going again, but I sure am glad to be home too. My awsome girlfriend was waiting with a smile, our Christmas tree was flickering through the window and the house smelled much better than that Tahoe.

Some pictures of our trip: http://drunken-snow-2006-4th-annual.blogspot.com/ and
http://picasaweb.google.com/cdgore/DrunkenSnow2006?authkey=GLmp6V6Eu-8

Use YOUR Money For Long-Term Care

The following was a letter sent into the Macon Telegraph regarding long-term care and who should pay for it. This guy's ideas about being able to keep assets, yet look to others to pick up the bill is asinine.

I would like to direct your readers' attentions to an extremely important health issue not often addressed. Regardless of political prejudice or persuasion, long-term care is an issue affecting us all, impacting thousands of families in our area.

There are about 4,000 victims of Alzheimer's disease alone, living in Bibb County and more than 12,500 living in 21 central Georgia counties. The "Georgia Long-Term Care Partnership Program" has been adopted by the General Assembly of Georgia. As part of the "Own Your Future" campaign Gov. Sonny Perdue will send a letter to all Georgia residents between the ages of 45 and 65 encouraging them to plan for long-term care.

The partnership provides that certain assets of a person not be considered when determining Medicaid eligibility if that person is covered by an approved long-term care policy.
This means a person may be able to reduce the cost of their long-term care insurance and qualify for coverage under the state Medicaid program with out first being required to substantially exhaust their resources.

This is especially important since the Deficit Reduction Act which was effective Feb. 8, 2006, will require much tougher standards to qualify for Medicaid.

Thank you for providing a forum for the information our most deserving citizens need to maintain their freedom and dignity and protect their life savings.

Nick Nichols
Macon

The following is my response to his letter....

Nick Nichols letter regarding long-term care left me a bit perplexed about who should pay for services rendered. Here is what I understand his ideas regarding this issue to be. I’ll use an analogy.

Let us say that Nick’s mother has a net worth of $300K including her $200K home. That’s a home worth 200,000 bucks and another $100,000 in assets.

Now let’s say Nick’s mother needs long-term care that cost $40,000 a year.

You would think that she would use her money to pay for the services
she needs over and above what her insurance does not pay for.

So, first she would use her cash to pay the service provider for the food, housing, utilities, medical attention, cable, organized activities, etc. In the example, the cash would pay for about 2 ½ years of service. When her cash ran out, you would think she would liquidate assets for cash in order to pay for the services she wants or needs.

But, Nick seems to think that she should be able to keep things of value -like her house- in order to, I assume be passed to him at her death. So, instead of the house being sold and paying for five more years of services provided to her….the taxpayers pick up the bill so Nick can get his mom’s house. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Beneficiaries of long-term care should be expected and required to use ALL of their assets BEFORE looking to taxpayers in the form of Medicaid to pick up the bill. If you want to inherit your mother’s house, then you buy them long-term care insurance or pay for it out of your pocket, but don’t take money from me.

It seems to me that so many people today, especially baby boomers have squandered their incomes on materialistic crap and or consumable goods and services that have not added any value to their lives whatsoever. Many have little saved and are facing their geriatric years standing at the front door of Wal-Mart or working in the linens department at Macys. So, when faced with the fact that their inheritence could be spent on services to make their parents last years comfortable, they'd rather use government to pay for that, so they can get a house to help subsidize their retirement. That's wrong and if you do this, I hope the house you inherit comes with ghosts that haunt you or at the very least has a cracked foundation.

The 'War on Drugs' is an expensive losing fight

I had the following letter published in The Macon Telegraph (www.macon.com) on December 1:

Billy Boney may very well be a good man, a loyal servant, an honorable citizen and an effective law enforcement officer. Unfortunately, he is not a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).

Twelve-steppers say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That is exactly what most law enforcement officers do and have done for decades now, while wasting billions of tax dollars that could be used to fight violent crime, help people with addictions or secure our borders. Instead, insanity prevails and valuable dollars are thrown away trying to fight a fight that cannot be won.

Perhaps that is a large reason it is fought. Those entrusted with protecting citizens don't want to be told they "can't" do something. When the money spent does not come out of their pockets directly, it is easy to buck up and push harder against the failure we call the "war on drugs." It is a war based on stupidity. Prohibition does not work. The 1920s proved that with alcohol prohibition. It didn't work and it was ended. Alcohol has become a regulated and taxable product that millions of Americans enjoy responsibly.

LEAP is a growing organization of people from the law enforcement and criminal justice communities speaking out about the failures of our existing drug policies. Its Web site says, "Those policies have failed, and continue to fail, to effectively address the problems of drug abuse, especially the problems of juvenile drug use, the problems of addiction, and the problems of crime caused by the existence of a criminal black market in drugs."

Considering that in 1914, just before the Harrison Narcotic Act was passed, the government said 1.3 percent of the U.S. was addicted to drugs. In 1970, the government said the addiction rate was still only 1.3 percent. in 1996 the government said 1.3 percent of the population was addicted to drugs. It seems this fight is ridiculously wasteful.

I wish Deputy Boney, the law enforcement departments of Twiggs, Baldwin and Bibb counties and the taxpayers of these counties would visit http://www.LEAP.cc/ to learn a little about what we could effectively do to HELP citizens with drug addictions.

Our law enforcement and criminal justice men and women should be thanked and honored for their service to the citizens, but when something is wrong with a process or program, it should be fixed. If it is not fixed and it continues to burn through billions of dollars, those who participate should be chastised and held accountable. I urge everyone to visit LEAP's Web site and possibly change their paradigm on how to help addicts.

(A couple of small changes, like punctuation and adding a couple more words, were made to the above letter for this post.)

I just attended the funeral of my 24 year old cousin yesterday 11/30/06. He was an addict to alcohol and drugs and after years of dealing with depression, decided to take his own life as a means to stop whatever pain he was always battling. I've thought about this topic for many years and as a triathlete, marathoner and non-eater of partially hydrongenated oils (translation: healthy diet), I truely believe this "war on drugs" is doing more harm than good. I don't condone the use of drugs. I believe to abuse drugs is stupid, self-centered and unhealthy. I do believe in personal freedom though and believe we should all have the right to put in our bodies what we choose.

That being said...there is still a better way to solve the abuse of drugs than prohibiltion. That better way is explained at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition's website, www.LEAP.cc. Please read and listen to the information with the idea that our goal is to stop drug abuse and help heal those that are addicted.