{"id":871,"date":"2010-07-20T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-20T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=871"},"modified":"2016-05-11T11:03:23","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T15:03:23","slug":"it-must-be-nice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=871","title":{"rendered":"It Must Be Nice"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a number of errands to run yesterday and consolidated the visits to stores along a busy roadway, “the pike.” I was riding my Harley, as usual, on a warm summer’s day.<\/p>\n

I was dressed in typical “biker attire” — Wrangler jeans, Chippewa engineer boots (pants over), and a Harley t-shirt. It was way too hot to wear leather (other than my boots.)<\/p>\n

One of the things I was doing was making sure that changes I had made to the bike all worked. I was given a gift card from my former employer, and decided to buy a back rest for my Harley with it. I installed the back rest on Sunday, and it works great. I also relocated my GPS, and found a way to connect its audio output to the bike’s audio input for my CB radio, which connects to two little speakers inside my helmet. So now I can hear the GPS-lady yelling, “recalculating” as I make (yet) another wrong turn. LOL!<\/p>\n

Anyway, I pulled into a parking lot at a store and parked. A guy about my age was getting into a panel truck that was parked in the space next to me.<\/p>\n

He looked at my bike, and said, “it must be nice.” I didn’t say anything, and he continued, “you guys here in [snoburbia] have it all — time off during the day to ride your big-ass Harley wherever you please. It must be nice.”<\/p>\n

He wasn’t the kind of guy with whom to get into a discussion. It was obvious from the tone of his voice that he was jealous, or at least unhappy, that he had to work and drive an old beat-up truck and I show up on my nice shiny Harley.<\/p>\n

Well, you know, I worked<\/i> for my bike. Every penny I paid for it was earned by my own work. I didn’t take out a loan. I saved for years to have enough money to pay cash for the bike when I was ready to get it. So yeah, it IS nice, but is the fruit of my labors. I don’t travel (for fun), I don’t even go on vacations. I don’t eat out. I am really rather conservative with my cash. Even though right now I am “between jobs,” I have saved sufficiently to live my usual life. I don’t depend on my partner to cover my share of our expenses while I’m not working. I saved, invested, and have carefully managed my money.<\/p>\n

I realize that this guy probably has worked hard all of his life, too, and may have kids to feed and a mortgage to pay and taxes and bills, etc., etc. I have expenses too. I’ve been fortunate to plan and to save and to be financially prudent so I can have at least one “thing” that cost a fair amount of money. Okay, so be it. “It must be nice.” Yep.<\/p>\n

Life is short: enjoy the fruits of your labor.
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I had a number of errands to run yesterday and consolidated the visits to stores along a busy roadway, “the pike.” I was riding my Harley, as usual, on a warm summer’s day. I was dressed in typical “biker attire” … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-life"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}