{"id":2423,"date":"2010-04-26T11:30:21","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T16:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/65.175.102.14\/?p=2423"},"modified":"2013-06-30T18:19:55","modified_gmt":"2013-06-30T23:19:55","slug":"first-ride-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=2423","title":{"rendered":"First ride of the year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/images\/first_ride_2010.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" border=\"0\" \/><\/center>During many of my bachelor years I&#8217;d ride motorcycle year-round. These days I don&#8217;t enjoy the same opportunity, but I&#8217;ve got other fun stuff to do all winter (ie, toddlers). Besides, I am down to only three motorcycles in the garage these days. I used to use one of my more &#8220;spare&#8221; motorcycles for spring riding. There are several reasons:<\/p>\n<p>First, there&#8217;s the issue of North Dakota roads in the spring: the leftover sand spread in the winter will sandblast your motorcycle. The sand combined with the winter road grime can make for some challenging surfaces. &#8220;Cage&#8221; (car) drivers are not accustomed to looking for motorcycles. The sun is still low enough in the sky to shine into people&#8217;s eyes, making it even more difficult for them to see you.<\/p>\n<p>Now that the weather and roads been nice for a while, I got my license plates renewed, new tires mounted, and I&#8217;ve gotten some other things out of the way, my riding season has officially begun. Yes, it&#8217;s much later than years past, but I&#8217;m not worried. My little boys are old enough to take on short rides now, and my gracious wife makes sure I get time to ride or work in the garage when I express a desire for it. In other words, my life is far better balanced now than it was when everything revolved around my motorcycles!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During many of my bachelor years I&#8217;d ride motorcycle year-round. These days I don&#8217;t enjoy the same opportunity, but I&#8217;ve got other fun stuff to do all winter (ie, toddlers). Besides, I am down to only three motorcycles in the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=2423\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motorcycles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2424,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423\/revisions\/2424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}