POTPURRI

POTPURRI, or the mental meanderings of the old and feeble.

Okay, I've been falling behind on this whole thing and it's time to get up to speed before the end of the season. I've had plans to getting off to the Adirondacks, the New Jersey Pine Barrens, Pennsylvania Dutch Country and a few other spots over the past month, but weather and other minor scheduling details (Read: gotta make a living here) interfered. Hopefully, I'll get those rides done in the next few weeks....

Changes.....I've not been completely happy with the formatting problems in integrating photos and text in this cyberstory world of ours, so from here on out, the photos for my stories will be stored and displayed on smugmug. it's the best I've found, and yes, it costs $$$, but you get what you pay for. If any readers decide to go for it, using my referral number will get you a five buck discount. Oh, that's 3szLs70AV5bYs.

More News. if you want to subscribe, just click on the link over there on the right, and if I can manage to keep these postings a little closer together, you'll get them automatically, through the wonders of cyber space.

In The Meantime, I've been surfing, and found some sites that wouldn't fit into any given story, but I thought I would pass around.

For those of you too young to rememer it, Bruce Brown's definitive tribute to motorcycling "On Any Sunday" shot in 16mm FILM (remember that, folks??) it shows a time long gone, never to be repeated, when Mc Queen defined cool (okay, even if he didn't make the jump), a hot bike was a Bonneville 650, when the world--and motorcycling--was a much simpler place.

If you get the DVD, watch the last ten minutes when Mr. Cool and his buds are bouncing around the california deserts just having fun!!!. Kind of hard to remember when motorcycling was just that and little more. Here's some artwork that can refresh your memory.

Hmmmmmmmmm I think I'm going to do some redecorating over the winter.

And while we're on a "Back-in-the-day" kick, Try this great Indian site
bringing modern technology to this venerable old ride. He does some great stuff.

From the other side of the pond, I've come across a brit doing the same thing with Vincents that will make you drool. Just another thing on the long list of things I can't afford, but you never know..

In that same vein, seems no one can go anyplace anymore without a guidebook, telling them where to go, where to eat, when to sleep, when and where to do anything and everything without really having to do much thinking. and motorcyclists are no different. Whatever happened to throwing your leg over the saddle, kicking it over and heading off to whatever was out there? I don't know, but in the interests of spreading the word, The Ride Atlas of North America looks like it just wean me off my bundle of well worn folding maps. (Remember those? God, I'm getting old!!!)

In that same exploratory mood, the itnernet turned up two sites really trip my trigger, with some laughs and great motorcycling adventures. Riding Sun from Japan is a hoot, mixing humor, polictics and motorcycling and scads of other MC links and blogsites

Tales from around the globe at can be found here will give you some great reading and dreaming of the ride you would love to take, and may even motivate you to get out there...

See ya next week with the Hudson Highlands..

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.