Scooter Sunday Captured Ep. 008 from Marty Mankins on Vimeo.

For the YouTube version, click on this link: Scooter Sunday Captured Episode 008

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The End Is Near

That’s right. The end is near for a couple of things. One is the election. This Tuesday marks the end of voting and when we will [hopefully] find out who will be our next president. I’ve got one more blog post before Tuesday with all of my election errata and final rants thoughts on all of it.

The second is Scooter Sundays. As I’ve been mentioning the last few weeks, winter approaches and with that comes slick roads, ice and snow – not exactly scooter-friendly weather. Next week will be the final episode for the season…. I know… sad, isn’t it. But I will have something to replace Scooter Sundays for the winter time [all the details will be unveiled in two weeks]. Then come spring [most likely mid-March, Scooter Sunday will be back in all it’s glory, with new logos, T-shirts and the videos you all have come to enjoy these past few months. Maybe we can break 30 fans by summer 2009… who knows.

The Number 29

Not too many people in the blogosphere know personal things about me. Oh sure, I’ll share almost naked pictures of myself and show off my dental work, but details of my personal life I leave out of the blog world. Every once in a while, I do find something I’m comfortable to share.

The number 29 has some significance in my life, in multiple ways. First and foremost, it ended up being my favorite age. My daughter turned 1 that year, which for me, was one of the greatest times of my life. On the flip side, it was one of the most challenging and difficult years of my life, coming off the heels of a job loss, a bankruptcy and various other life struggles. Two completely opposite parts of my life happening in the same year. But as they say, enjoy the great things in life and learn from the tragedies.

I’ve never been much of a gambler, especially the table games, but I took a liking to roulette. Back in my trade show days, a co-worker at Word Perfect and I wanted to try roulette, but being the left brained people we are, we wanted to see how the game worked and how the odds worked. So we wrote a couple of software programs and sat in the room and played roulette, betting M&Ms to see how we could do. After a couple of nights of this, we each took $20 and our new found skills and went to the casino. Two hours later, I was up almost $200 and he was pretty close at around $180. So where does the number 29 come into play here? Black 29 on the roulette board has been my lucky number. The few times I’ve had a hunch to place one of my chips on that number, it’s paid off. Not every time, mind you, but it’s been good to me on more than several gambling occasions.

Since then, the number 29 has developed a meaning of life’s lessons, both useful and entertaining. And it’s a number I will never forget. So this posting of the 29th Scooter Sunday brings both mixed memories and fun times – all learning life’s lessons.

Scooter Sunday Captured Ep. 006 from Marty Mankins on Vimeo.

For the YouTube version, click on this link: Scooter Sunday Captured Episode 006

Minor Formatting Change

All of my previous posts have had some form of formatting to them. I used a SPAN tag that formats the text to a Verdena font. It seemed to work ok, but there’s some feed readers and browsers that had an odd display to it. The formatting looked like there were tons of space between paragraphs [I am still using the < p > tags for each paragraph]. So the last post and all posts from here on out will not be using the SPAN tags. It appears to format the text better, at least from what I’ve seen. Let me know if you see any difference.

How Many More Episodes?

I’ve had a couple of people ask me how many more video episodes of Scooter Sunday Captured will I be doing this year. Well, that all depends on the weather here in Utah. So far, it’s been cold in the mornings, but warm during the day. We had a cold snap last weekend with some snow, but this weekend has been very nice… in the low 70’s. Perfect for scooter riding. But as I’ve mentioned before, cold weather is just around the corner. So enjoy the videos while I still have scooter-friendly weather. Once I’ve put the scooter away for the season, I’ll still be making videos… just something that’s more winter-friendly. I’ll post the details on that soon.

 
“you like-a the Video, eh?”

Thanks to all of your comments, emails and in person props, I got lots of positive feedback on the first Scooter Sunday Captured video I did last week. Given this popularity and the fact that I love making videos, I decided to make it a regular feature here, at least until I have to put the scooter away at the end of the season.

As for what I will be doing for the months I don’t ride my scooter, I am currently working on ideas for that. I may give some sneak peeks in a few weeks, but for now, it’s all just brainstorming and writing down every idea that comes into my head.

 
Scooter Sunday Captured

This week’s video is a bit shorter than last week’s. I’m trying to keep them under 3 minutes, including credits [like Wayne does with his DITL video blog entries, although credits don't count in his 3 mins and he tends to have bonus footage]. Anything longer has me making tweaks for hours, which is fine for making cool videos, but adds to the delays in this actually getting posted sooner.

I am also providing a YouTube option, due to some of my readers not being able to view the Vimeo version. Vimeo will still be the default format, as it produces a better quality video [at least in my side-by-side comparisons].

And without further bantering delay, here it is:

Scooter Sunday Captured Ep. 002 from Marty Mankins on Vimeo.

NOTE: Due to Warner Music Group (WMG), this video has been removed from YouTube.

 
Until Next Week….

Thanks for visiting. In addition to the video next week, I’ll have some extra coverage to add to this post.