LADY LIBERTY RIDE FOR GASPAR

Gaspar Tramma is gone, but his legacy lives on....This sunday, September 24, 2006, The Lady Liberty Ride will honor the man who did so much for motorcycling. He founded the first MSF course in NYC, and today, thousands owe their riding enjoyment to the effort he put into his classes, Including me. "The course is twenty two hours, but we cheat", he told me when I interviewed him for a story that I was going to do on my MSF experience. "We give you twenty seven". I learned more in thos twenty seven hours of non-stop instruction than I have in any other course in any other subject that I have ever taken, and I completed it totally drained. I would run into him from time to time after getting my license and getting more deeply involved in riding and I could always see the joy in his eyes at the idea that I had stayed with it. We did discuss my becoming an instructor, but scheduling prevented it. But every time I ride I can hear his voice whenever I'm going to do a lane change...He stood in front of my bike, hands on the handlebars, looking me right in the eye to correct one of the many errors I made in those three days..."Do those lookbacks, do those lookbacks. You don't, you're gonna be Road Pizza". Those words have saved my life on more than one occasion. The world of motorcycling is smaller indeed for his passing. So even if you can't make the ride, take a moment to remember a man who did so much for what we do.