Are those wedding bells or a warning klaxon?

Aack!

Okay, I've been to about 52 weddings, give or take a few... admittedly, as a videographer. Toting around a camera at other people's ceremonies was part of how I paid for some of my last year of school, as a cameraman and editor for Classic Videos by Brenner, located in Grand Rapids, MI. I should Google that and see if he's still in existance. In any case, I'm completely blunted to the concept of weddings now; my brain is on a forced pre-edit track whenever near one, thinking only of what shots to get and which kid-pulling-another-kids-hair cute moment would be best for B-roll material. The only wedding I've ever been invited to was my older sister's... and because I knew nothing else, I took a camera and went in a T-shirt, instead of dressing nice and sitting in the pews with everybody else. Gods, I felt so lame, thinking back on it.
( Well... Invite #2 has just arrived. )

Grumpy Gated Communities

So my boss asks me to drop by his house midday (he was working from home) to help him set up some new VPN hardware we just bought for him. Hey -- anything that gives me an excuse to ride around midday instead of living in the server room like usual is fine by me!

(yes, we're a small company, and the network architect is also the 'fix it guy' for any advanced configurations. Wheee)

Said bossman lives in a gated community with a golf course. The security goons gave me the 3rd degree trying to get in. Apparently nobody rides motorbikes in this community, and being on my R1150GS made me quite popular with the border patrol (The 'negative' type of popular, of course). While they went through with verifying my boss's name/address/phone-number before letting me in, I was reminded no less than three times of the speed limits, to make sure I didn't "rev up noisily", etc. After they let me through, one of the goons in his SUV followed me all the way to my bossman's abode.

It took about 20 minutes to do the work, and upon getting out I felt it was time to have a little fun, and see what the rest of this gated community was like. It's pretty huge, with a few hills and mini-valleys within its borders. The roads are nicely serpentine, and the huge speedbumps have those handy motorcycle-breaks down the middle. I was respectful and all that - but I did poke my oversized GS-fender into as many places as possible, to see all the huge fancy houses and mini-parks and stuff. They have their own private school district, even.

One area wasn't built out yet; it had just dirt lots on a hill, with signs about private bids happening next week. These are $3 million+ lots and houses out here, folks. Major richy-rich land. It was a moral imperative to go trashing through them on the GS. Lovely, lovely little dirt trails up and down clean hills. I figured if I got caught, I could pull the 'I got really lost... your roads are _so_ confusing...' trick.

It didn't take long before I saw the distinctive little security-SUVs start trolling down the roads towards 'my hill'. :)

Coming down the backside, I found a pedestrian path... taking it led to some poles meant to stop cars, but the GS fit through with a few inches on each side to spare. This went down a dirt track and through a nice little ditch, and popped up on some unnamed bit of asphalt. Following it out the backside of richy-rich land, it popped out like a driveway onto San Felipe road, and it was just a few miles before I'd circled around back to the front gate... from the outside.

I stopped long enough to wave at the guards in the little booth before leaving, catching them quite by surprise. Two of them were fuming mad. The third was grinning ear to ear.

I suspect he rides.