Re: Where are the SuSE 9.2 Professional CD ISOs?

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 17:45:22 +0200, Vahis wrote:


> Still, Finland is, all in all, the home land of Linux and Linus Torvalds.

And more important, pike, right off the porch of the cabin. ;-)

>
> This just makes me write double the amount of text because I'm trying to
> make all the howtos in both languages.
>
> Motorcycling has helped me a lot in this, I broke my collar bone on a
> trackday, so I'm on sick leave. Paid for by the insurance.

Paid, or not, that's a rough way to get a vacation. I've wiped out three
bikes, including being struck by a car, in 1983, having the rear bumper
hook my front wheel, and being dragged for a mile, before the driver
realized what had happened, and never had a broken bone, or other serious
injury. Makes you wonder, though.

I have to tell you that story, as only another biker would fully
appreciate it.

I'm driving down the road, and I see a car pulled to the side, in the
middle of nowhere. Thinking that the driver might pull back onto the road,
I slow to 30 mph as I approach, and see that the driver is looking down at
the passengers seat, probably checking a map or some such. Just as I'm
about to pass him, I crank the throttle, and he, at the same time, hits
the gas, spins the tires, and whips the car back on the road, right in
front of me, and continues to make a full left turn onto a side road that
I hadn't seen, as I was watching him, on the right. So he's now broadside
to me and I'm on top of him, and that one second, or less, before impact
goes into super slow motion. (For background, six months earlier, my
brother-in-law was killed when he struck a car that ran a red light, and
flew over the handle bar, and the car, and broke his neck when he hit the
pavement.)

All of the following happens in that one second.

I get a clear mental picture of me hitting the car and taking that fatal
last flight, and just as clearly thinking, as if I'm actually hearing it,
"*** that".

Second mental picture of the bike on its side, striking the car with both
wheels, the shock absorbers taking the impact, me being pressed firmly
into the seat, and staying with the bike. That mental "voice" says,
"That's a winner."

Third mental picture. The movie/TV scene, that everyone's seen at some
time, where, from an aerial shot, the bike rider kicks the rear wheel out
to the right, and lays the bike on it's left side, while turning the front
wheel full lock to the right, and the bike slides endlessly down the
road, while the rider comes loose from the bike and goes end over end,
bouncing down the road as the bike crashes, in a ball of flame, into some
obstruction. The "voice" says,"Crank the throttle, spin the wheel, lean
left, front wheel lock to the right, hang on tight, and forget that
bouncing and fireball ***."

When people speak of "the bike and the rider are one", that statement was
never so true as at that moment. I "thought" that bike on it's side, and
it was so; positioned precisely as I thought it, and fully in control,
with me thinking, as if I were an observer, "Damn, that was slick, and so
graceful too."

Then I heard the thump, as we struck, and the "voice" said, "Perfect".

Just as quickly, I find myself, and the bike, bouncing hellbent down
the road, to where, I don't know, and I now see the hook of the car's rear
bumper, passed through the front wheel, for the first time, and the
"voice" says, "That ain't right, and it sure as Hell ain't graceful."

For a mile, I'm hanging on tight, and I'm thinking "It's about time for
the bike and I, to cease "to be as one", like as quickly as I can figure
out a way to do so, without getting killed."

Just then I see a head lean out of the window, turn and look towards the
rear of the car, and a pair of eyes open so wide they look like a pair of
fried eggs, "sunny side up". Seizing the moment, so to speak, and
suddenly seeing the humor of the situation, again, as if I were an outside
observer, in a voice as calm as if we, the driver and I, were having a
nice little chat on a bus, I say, "Would you mind slowing down a
bit, at the next curve, I think this is my stop."

Well, the next curve was about twenty to thirty feet in front of the car,
as I said that, and he "locked em up", like NOW. The bike and I came
loose, and kept right on going. We ceased to "be as one", and each of us
took our own separate flight, on our own separate trajectory, proving
that; objects in motion do, in fact, tend to stay in motion; what goes up
does, in fact, come down; said motion continues at least until contact is
made with a relatively immovable object, like the Earth; objects of
greater mass do store more energy than objects of lesser mass; air has a
greater drag effect on a fat Polack, than on a streamlined bike; rain
soaked bean plants afford much less friction than dry bean plants; and
because all of the aforementioned things are true, and describe the forces
and conditions in play, at that moment, the bike had a much greater range
than I, so came to Earth, and rest, well away from my delicate body. I, in
turn, with a relatively flat trajectory, having completed only 180
degrees of a full, flying summersault, landed flat on my back, but still
in a "seated" position, having cleared a three strand barbed wire fence by
a margin so small as to be a tad unnerving, and make my nuts and nearby
friend pull up and try to hide behind my belly button, and slid, ass
first, through the soggy soy bean field to a gentle full stop. The only
injury I sustained, throughout all of this, was a one inch circular spot
of "pavement rash" on my left elbow.

The bike didn't fare so well. The frame, front fork, and handlebars were
bent. The front wheel was bent, and missing spokes, where the bumper went
through. All the running lights and mirrors were bent, or ripped off
entirely. The side covers were broken, and the gas tank was smashed on the
right side. Still, once I got it under the fence, back on the road, and
scraped most of the mud off, it fired right up. I actually drove it home,
but we weren't "being as one". It was a hell of a fight.

The driver of the car was so shook up, I thought he was going to have a
heart attack. He took the whole thing much worst than I did. He kept
apologizing, over, and over, and saying "You could have been killed, you
could have been killed." I couldn't be angry with him. He didn't even know
there had been an accident, yet alone that I was being dragged. He'd
looked in his mirror, seen an empty road, (I'd reached his blind spot,
outside of the field of vision of his outside mirror) and turned down the
side road. He'd also looked down the "empty" road he was crossing, as he
made the turn, just to be sure it was safe, but I was already on my side,
so close that the car itself blocked his seeing me. The car was old, and
noisy, and the tires spun in the road gravel, that in turn, hit the bottom
of the car, so he didn't hear the thump when I hit, and only when he heard
a steady clattering sound from outside of the car, did he look out,
because he thought that maybe a piece of the exhaust pipe had come loose,
and was dragging. The last thing on Earth he expected to see, was me,
asking to be let off at the next stop.

To this day, I feel sorry for him. He was really a nice old guy that
wouldn't knowingly harm anyone. Biker type people must be a little
nuts, because once I realized that I was virtually unharmed, I thought the
whole situation was hysterically funny, except for how upset the old guy
got. As I'm typing this, tears are running down my cheeks, from laughing,
just thinking about the whole thing, and remembering all the details, and
I remember them like it was yesterday.

My only regret, was that there was no way to record the entire event,
and especially that spectacular launch, from the bumper, and the flight,
and landing, that followed. I could have made a few bucks, and bought more
than a few replacement bikes, if I had a video of the whole thing to show
on some "Real Videos" type TV shows. Well, that, and the nine pounds of
beans up my ass, that I got plowing ass first through the field. ;-)

Except for the "nine pounds of beans" line, the rest of the story is
absolutely true. The bean line came to mind as I was describing my
position, when I landed, and I just couldn't resist. I had to throw it in
there. The Devil made me do it!! ;-D

I kept the dragged bike, a 1975 Honda Super Sport, to remind me what can
happen if you stop paying attention, even for a few seconds, and to remind
me just how lucky I am, to still be alive. Now my son is rebuilding it as
a one-off custom that should see the road again, sometime next spring, or
summer, depending on how much time he has to work on it. It's looking
really good so far, and I'm getting anxious to see the end results, and
the look on his face, when he and bike "become as one". As it's creator,
the soul of "his bike" will already be part of his own.

>
> I'm working on the next subject on the site, should be there by tomorrow
> 8-)

I'll check that out. Thanks for the heads up.

--
imotgm
"Lost? Lost? I've never been lost... Been a tad confused for a
month or two, but never lost."


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