Adventures in the life...

Motorcycle Bloggers Intl is Going Dark

2008-10-22T17:13:00.001-04:00

Read about it here on the Sojourn Chronicles.

Good Morning America on Iditarod Training

2008-10-19T14:57:00.001-04:00

This should be the link to the story for Karin Hendrickson's story on ABC's Good Morning America. Aired October 18, 2008, about her rookie Iditarod training.

ABC News

2008-10-17T17:27:00.001-04:00

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This is not my picture. I am testing PixelPipe, and testing how small a file can be.
Posted via Pixelpipe.

Blue on Black Kennel Update - Iditarod Training

2008-10-13T15:00:00.003-04:00

This is an update from my friends in Alaska who run a small Kennel and are training for the Iditarod dog sled race this year. We all went to junior high school together, that's where I know them. Check out their website!

Varan Hoyt & Karin Hendrickson
18024 Birchtree Street Chugiak, Alaska 99567
907-688-3306 www.blueonblackdogs.com

October 13, 2008

This is the year that we run Iditarod for the first time! Karin is officially signed up – see her profile on the Iditarod website at www.iditarod.com. The challenge of this race is so big and looks nearly impossible from here, but we just keep taking each step as it comes. Right now, that means running the dogs and getting them in shape to run a 1,000 mile race.

Training with four-wheelers began in early September, and the team looks really great. The team currently consists of 20 dogs and we’ve been hooking them all up at once. That is a whole lot of power, but the dogs have been very cooperative and are working well together. Last year we had mostly yearlings who had a lot to learn. This year we have experienced, motivated, educated sled dogs that are ready to run! Our two yearling girls are fitting right in and are already trying their skills as leaders.

There are many challenges in addition to making sure the dogs are trained and ready, like collecting all the gear and equipment for a race of this magnitude, finding the hours needed to train and care for the dogs on top of working full time, and of course working on sponsorship and funding.

Maybe the coverage on Good Morning America will help bring us sponsors! Look for us on Saturday, October 18 (GMA Weekend Edition). Who knows what kind of coverage they will decide to include, but we sure had fun sharing our dogs with them!

Please pass this newsletter on to anyone who might be interested. We’d love to hear from you, and we can always find time to share our wonderful dogs and this amazing sport.

Dog Sponsors
Gwen Rodman – Sponsoring Luna, our entry fee, and MANY other things!
The Domonoske Family – Dan, Sara, Colin, Heather – Sponsoring Alis
Joan Presecan, Sandra Baldonado, Marilyn Dale – Sponsoring Angel
Linda Frost – Sponsoring Chase
Bea & Darryl Churchill – Sponsoring Gringo
Marta Escanuelas – Sponsoring Maggot
Danny & Missy Poore – Sponsoring Scooby (plus lots of promotion help!)
Richard & Sandra Hendrickson – Sponsoring Shotgun
Auntie Carol – Sponsoring Voodoo

We still have several wonderful dogs looking for a sponsor. Check them out on the ‘Dog’ page of our website!

$100 (or more) Sponsors
Bob Sept, DVM
Bob & Nancy Strickland
Bruce & Diana Moroney
Chuck Owen
Cindy McCartney & Bob Borba
Dale Barwick
Doug & Sue Brandt
Harry & Barbara Senn
Haulin Hsu & Bob Wingard
Kim Arriaga
Mammut headlamps
Martha Ethridge
Mary Bennett
Mary Johnson
Mt Baldy Visitor Center Crew
Rayma Zack
The Wingates - Richard, Sheryl, & Evan
The Wood Family - Holly, John, Helen Catherine, & John Wesley
The Mt Baldy Community

A Previous Motorcycle Adventure

2008-03-25T00:31:00.004-04:00

3-25-2004

Rialto man killed in motorcycle crash FONTANA- A 20-year-old man was killed when he lost control of his motorcycle and crashed on the Interstate 10 early Thursday morning. Samuel Sikes of Rialto was riding a Suzuki motorcycle on the I-10 east at 12:20 a.m. Thursday when he lost control of the bike and slammed into the center divider at the Cherry Avenue over crossing, according to the San Bernardino County Coroner's office. Paramedics responded and pronounced him dead at the scene. The California Highway Patrol is investigating the incident.

4 years ago this week, I awoke to a phone call from my little sister at 4:30am, telling me about the above accident. Sam was our baby brother.

I had spoken to our mother the night before, and she was worried that he had told her that he was "going to buy a motorcycle". He had just moved into his first "place of his own" with his girlfriend, and they were going to sell his car and he would ride a motorcycle to save some money, as they were both students. He was a very talented basketball player who had recently received 2 full-ride scholarship offers to large universities, and those were just the early ones. He was young, felt invincible, and had a lot of people who seemed to think he was a pretty nice guy. I was going to call him the next day and ask him about the bike and see if he wanted to go riding with me.

He had already bought the bike when I talked to mom the night before. His friend picked the bike up for him and brought it to his work later that night. I can list pages of things that he did wrong after that. I got my motorcycle license in 1988, when I bought my 4th bike (a CB-1...miss that thing), and had lived bike-only for about 8 total years of my adult life. I may not be a pro, but I know a thousand things that can go awry when riding a motorcycle. Everything from his gear (gloves and helmet only), to his helmet being too big for his head (it came off his head after he hit the bridge support...the strap was still strapped, and didn't break). He was not stunting or racing, he just didn't know what he was doing, he thought he could handle it, and lost it on the freeway. Fortunately he didn't hurt anyone else.

Anyone who knows me from forums or meatspace knows that I am not someone who tends to whine or complain about much of anything. You also know I don't like getting attention about things like this. While a handful of people on here were aware of this, I only really talk about it with either people who are very close friends, or when I think telling someone about my experience may be of some small benefit to them in some way. I've never hidden it, I just never sought to get a bunch of attention over it, and I don't want it now. But I know I am not the first person to lose someone close to me, nor will I be the last.

I am the last person to ever discourage anyone from riding. Even after this happened, it never occurred to me to give up riding. I rode to the funeral home in Fontana to make the arrangements for his remains and funeral, and then rode again to pick up his cremated remains, and I didn't even think not to until people started asking me if I was going to give up riding. I know some people stop riding for their own reasons, and I have no problem with that. It is a very personal decision, and it's up to each of us. I will ride as long as I am physically able to do so.

When I picked up Sam's Katana from the impound lot in Ontario, there were only 12.7 miles on the trip meter. Those are the only miles he got to ride the bike. Nobody in our immediate family wanted anything to do with the motorcycle, nor would they have known what to do with it had they had to deal with it. Mom just wanted to not deal with it, of course, so she told me to do whatever with it. I wondered what to do with it, and because of the way the accident happened, and being a katana, the damages weren't really THAT bad, all things considered. I finished putting it back together in June of that year. I figured I'd get enough enjoyment out of it for the both of us, since he didn't get a chance to. Hopefully he was along for the ride in some way.

So the bike was in less than ideal condition, but I scoured ebay to buy what was easy, and ordered up the rest of the parts I needed to make it mostly whole again, so it could be ridden. I was only going to restore it this one time (since it was just a Katana, I mean seriously!), and determined that other than regular consumables, I wasn't going to put any money into it ever again. I wanted to ride it into the ground and get as much out of it as I could, without much more of any kind of a "plan" than that. I had no idea it would be so hard to destroy the damn thing.

This was the first ride other than test runs, down the street to the Rock Store. The other side had most of the damage originally, but it looked the same. I put stickers over things I didn't want to fix!

I sold my other bike, as it had been ridden daily for too long, anyway, and began to ride this bike daily. It became sole transportation (I prefer living bike-only when practical-ish). My commute was 3 miles each way at the time, but I managed to put 20k miles a year on it for the next couple years.

I used to help a couple people I know do "n00b Rides" in the canyons of SoCal. We all know there is an abundance of squids with sportbikes that go tearing up the canyons and invariably winding up on the losing end of a guardrail made to keep cars from going off cliffs, but not necessarily designed with the near-naked human body being flung into them at high speed in mind. We spent a lot of time doing what we could to help new kids who wanted to learn to see that gear was actually good for them, not just to "look cool", and the track was a lot more fun than the canyons. But we knew they were going to go ride the canyons anyway (hell, we did, too), but since most of us had buried friends, family, and seen other friends and fellow riders in various states of disrepair, we figured it couldn't hurt to help some of the newer kids learn how not to kill themselves. I don't wish anyone to see their mother sobbing so badly that it makes the coroner's eyes well up, because she's trying to decide if she doesn't sign the paperwork to claim her youngest son's personal effects, that "maybe he won't really be dead". These days, I do what I can in other ways.

We got to see a lot of great places just doing that in and around the canyons of Southern California.

Sometimes, we even got "weather"

In addition to my whopping 3-mile commute, and the n00b rides, there were long travels to find new roads to ride, new places to eat, new sights to see, new friends to make. California does have such a diversity of terrain and places to see. If you haven't been there, you really should try. Adventure around every curve, and all year long...here are some of the places that Katana took me.

Okay sometimes winter gets to be a bit much in some places...

Not the best tires when it's cold enough to make icicles on your bike and ice over the road (yes, we both crashed here...minor).

That put lots of miles on it, and the thing started every day. Hmmm...I wonder what a pretend sportbike can do at the track? I did quite a few of them on that bike before I finally pushed past the limits of the street tires and/or my own skills at tossing around a bike with a dry weight of 471lb and not even meant for the track (Just Diablos, never put race rubber on it).

Willow Springs

Pahrump a couple times:

And I finally tossed it at Buttonwillow.

I may have outridden the brakes, slightly. I had to be a late-braker to get around the literbikes that would park in the turns. They weren't this color when the session began...

But, remember, I wasn't going to spend any money on this thing. So I chopped it up a bit, made it a ratty street fighter, and rode it another year. Damn thing wouldn't die, even after the 75mph toss through the dirt. Rode it from Los Angeles to Monterey that year for the MotoGP. Direct route is about 4 hours. We did it in 10. All loaded up, waiting in Gorman.

Up near Big Sur, stretching our legs...

A couple more minor changes...

Before finally deciding to part it out and sell it off, the motor had over 60,000miles on it, ran like a champ, and could have kept going for at least that many more, I think.

There is little room for error on a bike. Sam only made a simple one, wasn't riding "reckless", and is dead because of his mistakes. I am pretty confident that I am well aware of the consequences of things going wrong on a motorcycle, and not just based solely upon this experience. But I have always had a passion for riding, and I do my best to be as safe as I can, weighing the consequences of everything I choose to do based on no scientific formula. I know what CAN happen, all too well. And I accept that. I'm certainly not trying to lecture anyone (especially here), but I still get occasional messages from n00bs from forums the original draft of this in 2005 or see it pop up somewhere I'd never been where people had cut and pasted it, so if it helps someone in some way, so be it.

My life has been very fulfilling so far, and I don't regret a moment of it. I know what it is to know true joy, and I extract every bit of it from this world that I can. I've been blessed with much more than I ever would have had if I had chosen my life myself, and everything that happens from here on out is just a bonus.

Life is short. Don't take it for granted, because every moment is a gift. Make the call to tell someone what they mean to you today...don't wait until tomorrow. (And yes, I actually typed that, I didn't just cut & paste it out of a chain letter lol)

I can't bring my brother back unless I figure out that whole time machine thing, and I got outbid on the last one I saw on ebay a couple years ago. I believe something good can come out of everything, and I found my way into several motorcycle forums while looking for parts for rebuilding this bike. People there have become some of my closest friends, and "family". It truly has been an amazing Adventure so far, and I look forward to whatever happens next.

Florida Keys, Day 4, really

2008-01-02T16:51:00.001-05:00

Since Maria's friends left the night before, right after we had dinner, we really had no plan at all for the day. We had just figured there was bound to be something to do, and it seemed a waste to spend new year's eve driving home all day, so we went back to the guidebook.

Bahia Honda, for the win! We tried pretty aimlessly to find a place to eat breakfast, only to end up with McDonald's, since no breakfast places on Big Pine Key were open (3 had actually shut down recently, according to the crazy local guy who'd been living on his boat for 30 years).

So we tried to find some key deer since we were there. It was too hot, so we only saw one, hiding in the shade.

Then it was on to Bahia Honda State Park. If you read the earlier parts, I had said that we'd be standing on that section of bridge later. This is where that bridge was. This is a section of Flagler's railway that didn't need use for trains anymore, as they never rebuilt the railway after the 1935 hurricane. So they used it for the Overseas Highway. This bridge was so narrow, that passengers had to be told to keep their hands inside to avoid hitting the trusses. Not wide enough for 2 car lanes...so they built the road on top of the friggin' train trusses...the VERY TOP!

Now I'm sorry, but can I get a "HELL NO!!" to driving over the top of those rusty-ass steel train trusses put there almost a hundred years ago? THANK YOU for the new road!

Absolutely spectacular view from up here, though!

It's hard to see in the picture below, but there is a shark in the water, just above and parallel to the shadow of the bridge. The water here was a bit clouded today with some weather coming or something. Not only did we watch him swimming around for a bit, but about 30 feet to the left of that little breakwater wall sticking out to separate the lagoon from the channel, he TWICE jumped completely out of the water like those damn crazy Great Whites do in South Africa!?!?! We were like WTF?!?!? I know damn well it was no dolphin, and am 100% sure it was a shark, and that sumbitch breached the surface TWICE inside of 5 minutes. Not just poke his dorsal fin out of the water, but jumped, whole body out of the water about a foot, jumped!

It was amazing to see.

Then we saw a Spotted Ray swim toward us and out under the bridge. You see it real good when he was in the shadow.

So I decide to go snorkeling over in that lagoon down there. I went as far as the breakwater, but I still couldn't see too good in that water, and I knew there were sharks in the water, and the jellyfish were everywhere, too. So I didn't go out past the swim bouys or anything dumb(er) like that.

Then it was time to get gas and head back to the campground to clean up before going to Key West for New Year's Eve!

We had a Cheeseburger on the balcony overlooking Duvall Street as the sun was setting. The crowds were just starting to come out. Our waitress told us all the places to be, but it was still very early.

Since there was hardly anyone out yet, we decided to walk to the South end of Duvall, as we hadn't been there, yet. There was not much going on, so we walked over to the Southernmost marker again...just because I could see it a block away, so why not?!

They were practicing the lowering of the slipper (with a transvestite in it) with the CNN camera crew in front of the Bourbon Street Bar.

Walked back up to the North end of Duvall (hey, the island is only 2 miles x 4 miles LOL), saw where the original Sloppy Joe's was, a half a block from it's current location. Legend has it the owner told his customers to grab their stools one night, as they were moving, and they walked to the new place, over a rent increase dispute. Now it's Captain Tony's. According to Pirate John's guide (which I got the info about the barstools from!), Captain Tony is an interesting character in his own right! I must go back...too much to see!

Walked around a bit in the darker corners, and found a lot more cool stuff to check out. It was all closed, but even more reason to go back.

And on the back of the obelisk:

We went back over to the harbor to see the lit up boats. There were a LOT of VERY expensive yachts in town. By expensive, I mean multi-million dollar yachts that cost more than every house you've ever owned combined, expensive. They apparently lower a wench at this party.

We had more Key Lime pie to kill time until it was close to midnight, then we decided we'd be at Sloppy Joe's to watch the dropping of the Conch at midnight. Caught a few sets of beads for Maria, got a champagne overspray, but otherwise it was a good time to be able to say we'd done it. Neither of us likes crowds, and I don't even drink, but it was fun to say we'd done it once. And now I never have to do that crap again :-)

We had been finding good parking everywhere we went, and never paid for parking. This was no different, and we got out of town pretty quickly, despite the crowds.

The next day, we woke up to 2008 to break camp finally, and head out of town...The sky was beautiful as we got up early. We drove out of town, and off the keys, only stopping to gas up or go to the restroom. Weather was turning, as that cold front that had been threatening us down here finally decided to turn toward us. It rained on us as Maria took over the driving (first time she'd driven the truck), but we didn't care, as vacation was over...and we like the rain. When we saw the Skyway bridge, we knew we were close.

Just another beautiful day in paradise...

Florida Keys, Day 4

2008-01-02T16:45:00.001-05:00

On the 4th day, we just wished we were still at the Dry Tortugas all day.

The end.

Florida Keys, Day 3

2008-01-02T15:20:00.002-05:00

This was the day. The one day we came down here for. The one day we actually had anything "planned". The one day I'd been waiting for for months, now. We were going to the Dry Tortugas!!

Don't worry, I had never heard of them until recently, either. Maria has lived in Florida her whole life, and she learned about them from me. Look it up on Wikipedia. Try to find it on a map. Look 68 miles West of Key West. Only get there by boat or floatplane, yet has the largest masonry structure in the western hemisphere on it.

We took the trip with Sunny Days Catamarans, one of the tour companies. It was a well-done trip, providing food and drinks, and a fast way out there. Next time, we are definitely going to camp there for at least 3 days, if not a week or more. Even though it was very small, there was just too much to explore and do.

Key West is waaaaaaay back there, somewhere.

I went straight for the water. Didn't catch it on film, but I walked out to the cement ramp there and slipped. Fortunately my secret ninja training and catlike reflexes kicked in...and I landed flat on my back.

These are "Magnificent Frigatebirds" and just sat there riding the breeze the whole time, never flapping, never moving...

The inner courtyard of the Fort while on the very informative tour. After the tour, we got to wander pretty much where we pleased.

It was really expensive to bring water to the islands (they are called "Dry" Tortugas because there is no fresh water there). Being that they needed to bring water there for the workers building the place, they often chose to use seawater to mix the mortar instead of fresh water. That is why the walls all have this white coating on them in places. It's the salt bleeding out of the mortar.

I have a ton of pictures of the place. I could just post them all, or you could figure out where to sift through them on my photodumper site. But this is interesting: These boats here are called Chugs.

What they are is a mishmash of anything that can be found to make a boat or something like a boat. Then the boater buys a gps which already has the Dry Tortugas programmed into it. This is all done in Cuba, which isn't too far away. Then the Cuban refugees see if their chug can make it all the way to the Dry Tortugas.

Now why would they want to do that?? Well it's simple. While it may be further away than Key West, Key West Has an active Navy base and an active Coast Guard base. The current rules about Cuban refugees and the U.S. are that if they are able to set foot on American Soil, they are granted political asylum (because Cuba is run by a fucked-up commie dicktatorship and all that). If they are intercepted at sea, the Coast Guard sinks their boat, puts them on board their own ship, and deports them back to Cuba, where they will likely be imprisoned and tortured and all that fun shit that goes along with getting caught trying to defect from a fucked-up commie dicktatorship.

Anyway, the Dry Tortugas is American soil. But it is the most remote National Park we have, so all that is there are a handful of park rangers and some maintenance folk...not several active military bases. So the Rangers go running out (and they are VERY well-armed, by the way...Pirates do still exist, ya know...) and welcome the new American resident aliens ashore and make sure they aren't dying or anything. They get transported back to Key West to get their new ID's and stuff later.

They get 1200 of these landings in the Dry Tortugas every year. Not 1200 people...1200 boats. There weren't any on the day we were there, though there were 18 people made it there they day before.

Anyway, after the tour, we explored the fort a little bit, checking out each floor, and the different rooms and roof, and holes that went nowhere.

I've been to the edge...and there I stood lookin' down...

These next 3 show the areas we went snorkeling on the outside of the moat wall:

There was a good amount of sealife along the wall. I don't know if I got any good underwater shots, though. I had issue with my technology, so we'll see!

These were taken by Maria while she was standing on the wall, that's how clear the water is.

But we had to go back, eventually. Talked with a couple who had been camping there the past few days. They never even took their tent out, they just slept on the beach. They loved it.

We had 3-5 foot swells on the way back, and we ran over a floating rope that got caught in one of our props. The first mate had to go cut it off in the middle of nowhere. Other than that, it was a great ride back, and we ate at the first place that wasn't straight from Pirate John's guidebook, finally!

Florida Keys, Day 2

2008-01-02T14:23:00.002-05:00

I try to break these up, as I type fast, and have a tendency to include a ton of pictures (I love the digital age!!), but they get long. Oh well, if it's too much to read, then don't. If the pictures bog down your computer, get a better setup :-)

Since we got to our campsite late, we found it in the dark. Turned out it wasn't TOO bad, so the tent stayed there the whole 4 nights. Maria's friends were going to join us sometime later tonight, after they drove out from their campout in the Everglades. So we had the day to ourselves, and no plan at all.

We went straight to Key West. I knew we had to go to the silly Southernmost Point marker. It's not actually even the southernmost point on Key West, but it is a must-do, of course. A few people were there, so we got someone to take our pic, as well as returning the favor. We were told that we picked a good time to go there, as the couple who told us that said the line goes around the block during the later part of the day. Good Mojo, indeed.

So then we were concerned about parking, as we kept seeing signs all over for parking anywhere from 20-40 bucks. I found the restaurant I wanted to go to (from Pirate John's Guide, of course), and found a spot a street or two away in the residential Ghetto-like area, that was neither metered, nor marked as residential or permitted only. Ended up leaving it there all day. Yay for cheap Mojo!

So we walked the 2 blocks to "My Blue Heaven". As most things in Key West seem to be associated somehow with either Jimmy Buffett or Ernest Hemingway, this ramshackle little outdoor dining courtyard of a restaurant stakes it's local fame on the fact that Hemingway used to referee boxing matches here. His house is about 50 yards away, and I know he was a boxer himself, so I have no doubt that's true. They have several bits of memorabilia, particularly in the gift shop. The wait was about 20 minutes, but it was fun to check out all the parts of the building, and try to figure out what might come crashing down at any time.

I've never eaten anywhere that had chickens and roosters walking around between the tables, though. Everything is done differently in Key West...But the Shrimp omelette was delicious!!

After breakfast, we headed over to the Hemingway home. He lived there for a buncha years, wrote a bunch of his books there, his ex-wife stayed there (one of the 4) after they were divorced, when he finally died, his sons sold it to the lady that made it a museum. Go there, take the tour...I didn't remember all the facts. It is worth it, and you are free to walk around wherever you want as long as you want whether you take the tour or not.

Something like 47 of the 6-toed cats Hemingway kept (descendants of his, obviously).

His writing studio is a separate building on the property.

Me lounging by the pool with one of the cats, posting a picture on So-calsportbikes.com.

The local story claims that the pool was put in by the wife while Hemingway was elsewhere. He saw it when he got back, she said it had cost somewhere like 20k to build. He thought it was dumb, since the house had cost considerably less than that. He said, "here, take my last penny" and tossed her one, claiming it was now his last cent, since she'd spent so much. She pressed it into the cement, which was still wet. The penny is a 1934. Probably not entirely true, but it's a cute story, so who cares?

Legend has it that Picasso designed the tiles of this ugly bathroom. Hemingway was friends with him, so it wouldn't be too far-fetched.

This is a watering hole for the cats. Hemingway's favorite bar, Sloppy Joe's, was remodeling. He thought one of the urinals they were throwing out would make a good trough for his cats if you laid it flat. The wife he lived with in this house was mortified (she was the editor of Vogue Paris when they married). So she had it all tiled like that, and had the big vase (Spanish Olive oil jar??) to pretty it up.

The house has been there since it was built in 1851. It was built by Asa Tift, who was the biggest dude in Key West back when Key West was the biggest city in Florida. More on him in a second. The walls are 18inches thick of limestone mined off the site the house sits on. It is also on the 2nd highest point on the island (at a whopping 18' elevation...they actually called it a "hill" :-), so it has never been destroyed or flooded by any of the myriad hurricanes that it has experienced.

Here's a chunk for reference:

The lighthouse across the street is open for self-guided tours, and worth it. I have always liked lighthouses. Probably because I had never really seen one except in movies. But it was fun to climb to the top of the spiral staircase and try not to throw up, lose my balance or pass out and tumble to my painful death below. Definitely the best view on the island, being the highest.

Now if you are actually bothering to read any of this little tour, you'll recall I mentioned a Mr. Asa Tift, having built the Hemingway House. Well as I said, Key West used to be the largest city in Florida (being only 2x4 miles in size, that's interesting). Now it was the largest city in Florida because of the main industry at the time. It was a port city, being the closest point of the U.S. to Cuba and the rest of the Carribean, so obviously a lot of ships came through that way. Many merchant ships filled to the gills with the treasures and goods of the Americas back to Europe.

The waters around the Keys and Dry Tortugas were very shallow and many a reef was lurking just beneath the surface of the water. This made navigating in and around the island waters very treacherous. Lighthouses were very important navigational aids to these valuable merchant ships.

The biggest industry of Key West at this time was Salvage. Yes, if you were unfortunate enough to run your ship aground onto a sandbar or reef in these shallow waters, a salvage company could be hired to come recover the goods of your wallowing ship, and transfer it back to their warehouses on the Keys. Their payment was a percentage of the loot saved. Oftentimes, extra goods were known to simply disappear, of course. But it was a very lucrative business. Asa Tift was the man who owned the salvage companies.

Remember how I said the lighthouses were important to the ships? This one was actually the 2nd version built on Key West. It was put on it's highest hill (18' elevation), and even had to be extended 20' higher because buildings around Key West were getting bigger (business was GOOD).

Remember also how Asa Tift built his sturdy home on the highest hill in Key West? It is across the street from the lighthouse. The lighthouses helped ships from running aground, yet ships running aground was the biggest business of the island. It wasn't unusual for the biggest ships that did run aground to claim that the lighthouses were turned off. Turning off the lighthouse when certain high-dollar vessels were coming in would make for big money. Good thing it's right across the street from the only person who stands to gain from a ship not being helped by the lighthouse...

Sloppy Joe's is still there, and likely the most popular bar on the Island. Pirate John says on any given day there are 185 of them, so to be there since the 30's and still the best is something, I guess. Getting ready for New Year's.

Over to watch the sunset festival that happens every night. Maria's friends got there, and met us there as the sun was going down.

We then went over to the Conch Republic Seafood Company, as I learned in the guide that this door is Shrimpboat Sound Studios, Jimmy Buffett’s recording studio. And interestingly enough, where we had to be at 7:30am to catch the boat parked right next to that to go to the Dry Tortugas!!

We just walked by this window, and these were set up like this...we didn't do it!

Florida Keys, Day 1

2008-01-02T13:49:00.002-05:00

I'll start with a little bit of background history of the Keys. A guy named Henry Flagler built the Overseas railroad, all the way out to Key West (about 110 miles from the mainland). It operated from 1912 until a major Hurricane of 1935 wiped out sections of it, along with killing a lot of people. They then built the overseas highway, in many cases using sections of the old railway pilings. More recently, whole new sections of highway has been built, and you'll see the new one running alongside the old highway/railroad.

The Dry Tortugas are a set of keys 68 miles west of Key West. There is no road going there. You can only get there by boat or floatplane. I recommend looking it up online for a lot more information about it. (Here's a good start: Wiki on Dry Tortugas NP )

From 1826 to 1846, it was only used for placement of a lighthouse. Building began in 1846 of the enormous Fort Jefferson to be an advanced post to defend the Gulf of Mexico. It eventually became obsolete and was never quite completed. It is the largest masonry structure in the Western Hemishere, and made up of 16 million bricks. It became a National Park in 1992.

I only had heard of it about 2 months ago, checked out that site, and knew we had to go there someday. A couple weeks later, Maria's friend tells her that his buddy in Oregon heard about a trip his friend took to the Dry Tortugas, and is flying out to take a boat ride to the Dry Tortugas on the 30th of December. We immediately invited ourselves to join them. They were only going to be in the keys the night of the 29th (Saturday), camped at the KOA on Sugarloaf Key. We figured we'd just make a long weekend of it since Monday was New Year's eve...we'd be in Key West already...

I downloaded and printed a copy of a guide to Key West I'd seen on the ADVrider forum. Captain Ron and Pirate John put together a great guide of what to see and do while in the keys, starting from Mile marker 110 as you enter the Keys, all the way to Mile Marker 0 in Key West. The guide saved us a LOT of having to figure things out, learning about the Keys in various random places, and finding the best places to eat! We would have missed so much on this trip, had it not been for this guidebook! We saw so many things we otherwise never would have known about. You can find the guidebook at Bucaneer Publishing We did not get a chance to visit everything in the guide, but some changes have taken place, but mostly it is just as the guidebook says!!

We decided to drive down before first light on Friday, and that part was mostly uneventful. It was only my second time through Alligator Alley, but we were just going straight through. We didn't want to stop anywhere in or around Miami (another trip), as we knew there was so much to see in the Keys.

The guidebook said we needed to take Card Sound Rd onto Key Largo, and for good Mojo, we needed to stop at Alabama Jack's. Sounded good to us, and after a 300 mile drive first thing in the morning, we were hungry. We got there about a half-hour before they opened, but they opened for us, anyway. Weather was beautiful, and we sat on the rail, with the water under the floor. It could not have been a nicer way to start out trip to the Keys!

Ordered up the sampler platter: Conch Fritters, Grouper Fingers, Battered Shrimp, Steamed Shrimp, Crabcakes, and something else I forget.

They didn't have a current CA license plate, so I gave them the front CA plate off my truck to tack onto the wall. Hopefully helped with the Mojo!

Then a few yards down the road, pay the toll, and drive over the really tall and short bridge onto Key Largo!

Our first stop, again going by Pirate John's Guide, was the Florida Keys Wild Bird Sanctuary in Tavernier. The place was free (takes donations to help with the upkeep, of course), and rehabs birds that have been hurt or otherwise messed up. A lot of 1-winged Pelicans, for instance. Free to walk around and explore. We enjoyed it, and would not have even seen it had it not been for the Guidebook. First time I've seen a spoonbill in the wild, anywhere in Florida.

After checking out the premises, we had to stop at the giant Lobster, just because it's silly. Florida Lobsters don't have claws for some reason...but the guidebook said this place was a shopping center. It sure had been, but the owners of a Montessori School decided it would make a good location for their facility, and bought the property. Numerous signs telling people to stay out, and that it was a school. I made sure to trespass to take pictures and re-enact the one in the guide.

The next stop on the drive out into the Caribbean was at the Hurricane memorial. The hurricane I mentioned in the beginning killed a LOT of people down in the Keys. Somewhere around 700, though the numbers are not truly known, and differ, depending on who you ask. The memorial in the pictures below is in Islamorada, and you can learn more about it here: Hurricane Memorial Page. It was put up in 1937, I believe? A well-kept memorial on the National Register of Historic Places.

The water was getting nice.....

Next was one that my friend Charles had told me about, as well as being in Pirate John's book. Feeding the Giant Silver King Tarpon at Robbie's Boat rentals. ( Robbie's) Buy a bucket of fish, walk out and feed them to the Tarpon, try not to get bit by the Pelicans, who want the fish, too...

Really bizarre, but a must-see!

A quick stop at Anne's Beach to see how the water is (keeping in mind it is December 28th in this picture!)

We started seeing more sections of the old railway and highway in different places.

Another vacation idea:

Later on in the weekend, we'd be standing on the section of that bridge on the left:

When we got to Big Pine Key, we had to go extra slow, as the island is a Key Deer preserve. They are smaller deer that are super protected. $250 fine if caught feeding them, so I don't wanna know what the speeding fine is here...signs EVERYWHERE to slow down, deer x-ing, etc. Since they are so well protected, they are not afraid of people.

That is the same deer...he never ran away even when I pulled right up next to him. Just stood there. I was getting hungry, so it was a good thing the guidebook told us about the No-Name Pub on No-Name Key. We had good mojo from stopping at Alabama Jack's earlier, as we got the last seat available before the line started forming outside. By the time we left, the wait was 45 minutes to an hour. Food was great!

We were almost to Sugarloaf Key, where we were hoping we could camp. We only had a reservation at the KOA for the next night, and we were going to need to sleep for 4 nights in the Keys. We don't like to plan our trips out too much...takes a lot of the fun out of it, and worse comes to worse, we find a beach and stretch out! It turned out they had room, since we were only tent-camping. We set up camp, and made some tea before going to bed. I don't like KOA-style campgrounds, normally...but it was a last-minute trip, and all the State Parks were booked solid since it's the height of the season down here.

Day 7--Gulfport, MS to...

2007-11-29T13:51:00.001-05:00

Day 7--Gulfport, MS to...

We woke up in Gulfport to find that the major tropical storm everyone had been so worried about was a little bit of rain. Never woke us up or anything. No oil platforms awash into the motel parking lot or anything we'd see on the news. Oh well.

We had decided we'd try to make it home today, giving us Sunday to "unwind" before the dreaded return to work on Monday. So we mostly just headed straight home on this Saturday.

We went through the little dogear of Alabama and saw the Battleship there. Only from the parking lot, where we took a couple of pictures, and kept going. The freeway goes into a tunnel that goes under the river :-O

We stopped at the border of Florida, where I was moving to, after having lived in the Pacific Time Zone my whole life. I was finally a resident of elsewhere. I was informed that this was referred to as "L.A." or "Lower Alabama", and the conflict I had always been taught was called the "Civil War", shall now only be referred to as "The War of Northern Aggression".

Oh yeah, it was a little windy. You normally wouldn't see that verticle piece in the center of that building, as it'd be blocked by the flagpole...but it's leaning...

The only thing to note on this stretch through L.A. was it was nice & green, and we got a flat somewhere outside of Cottondale, FL. No biggie, just lather up with enough DEET to give skin cancer to a Rhinoceros, and go put on the spare.

The bugs are out in full force.

I didn't run over the gator here...and he still smelled...

A nice family in a Jeep with LA plates stopped to help, but it was just a flat tire. Thanked them for checkin' on us, but we're fine. Here they are...look like they were moving, too...

Rained one other time that day. I could just load up a bunch of scenery shots, but most were blurred, as we were just trying to get home. Just a lot of bugs and rain...

I still want to know what exactly this place is...

We made it all the way back to St. Petersburg (604 miles...most we drove in a day) without really anything else to report, other than a lot of places I want to check out while I'm our riding around! We didn't finish the last CD of the book (we have since), but it was interesting to listen to most of the way, and we may have to learn more about Jack K and his whole story...

Adventure totals:

2955.3 miles
3 rainstorms
8 states
1 flat tire
4 national parks, WITH Passport Stamps (all in 1 day...in Arizona alone!)
0 tickets
1 Book on CD
2053 pictures
Bunches of other stuff...

As a Post-Script of sorts, while looking up how to Spell Jack Kerouac's last name online to type this up, I discovered a few things interesting to me. After he got famous from writing this book, he moved to St. Petersburg, where we live. In fact, his last home is about 5 blocks from ours. He died in the very hospital in which Maria was born here in town. Not a big deal...just more of that wormhole Twilight Zone shit that started in New Mexico...

http://www.pbase.com/pzo/jacks_house

Day 6--LaFayette, LA to...

2007-11-26T14:44:00.001-05:00

Day 6--LaFayette, LA to...

I could feel the humidity before I ever even opened my eyes, and I knew we were in the South. All we had really thought about doing in Louisiana was seeing the French Quarter. I am not a huge fan of crowds and big cities at all, and the mere thought of going to Mardi Gras kind of makes me twitch. But it was just a regular day, we would be passing right by it, so why not see it and say we'd been there. Other than that, we had no desire to even be in Louisiana, let alone stop for anything. How wrong my preconceived notions were to be.

This is a parked train. This dirt section is someone's driveway. The whole road just before Avery Island was like this...the train tracks separated the houses from the road, and cut through each driveway.

We had spent much of the previous 2 days just moving to make up distance. We were only going 2500 miles total, but we wanted to see and do a lot. But now we were in the South, and close to home. We had talked to a friend at the wedding we went to the night before we left, who is a huge Tabasco fan. He carries a bottle with him in case a restaurant doesn't have it, and puts the stuff on everything...wouldn't surprise me if he put it on his Capt'n Crunch. He had mentioned wanting to go to the Tabasco factory in Avery Island, LA. Well, since we were ready to sightsee a bit, we thought that sounded good enough. Hell, he said they give tours, so there must be something to see.

Wow! This Island is nice! Took the tour of the factory. Being a Friday, the workers were mostly off except for the tour guide and the store workers. The processing plant was closed (they work 4 10-hour days Mon-Thurs). But the tourguide told us all about the history of this Island, which was also a massive salt mine. The family was already well-to-do with the salt business. Someone gave a pepper tree to one of the family long ago, and he tinkered around with it until he created Tabasco. It's been a family business for several generations.

They buy the barrels from Jack Daniels (they once use them once, for 1 year) to let the sauce cure in there for 3 years. I am pretty sure they said they reuse them several times before finally chopping them up to make charcoal starter out of, but I forget exactly.

They make it with vinegar and salt from their mine...otherwise just their special peppers that can only be picked once they get to be the color of a little painted stick each picker carries (called a Baton rouge, or red stick...they do a lot of this French thing in LA).

Several generations back, since the hotsauce thing had done pretty okay for the family, one of the family decided to bring in all sorts of exotic flora and fauna, to make a jungle paradise. That was one of the highlights of the trip, aside from the gators in their ponds. They had bamboo from everywhere, a canopy to drive through, a once stolen Buddha statue about the size of a Hummer 1, and a bird sanctuary. It was a very nice, self-driven tour...take as long as you like.

Gators:

I'm not sure this is a problem specific to Louisiana, or the whole South:

Then we headed to New Orleans. We weren't looking too forward to it, as I said about, but we figured what the hell, at least we will drop in, take a couple quick pictures, be out well before dark and then say we'd been there, if even for 5 minutes. Turned out it was pretty damn interesting, and we stayed for about 5 hours.

We had wanted to see a NOLA cemetery, saw one on the way in, but counted 3 different gangs within a block of it, so we weren't gonna park there. Tourguide in the French Quarter told us not to go there alone, and which streets not to go down.

We signed up for a Ghost Tour with Ernie, our guide. But it wasn't to start for a bit. So we asked for a good place to get real Cajun food, and were directed to The Gumbo Stop. Had a bowl of Jambalaya and one of Gumbo, but I can't recall which of us had which dish. We both picked things with no red meat or bird, so Maria could eat both and we shared. Both were good, but I don't know how it compares to other versions, as it's the only time we've had it. I loved the inner courtyard of the old building, though.

One of the main reasons we both loved it so much was because of the architecture. It is definitely an unusual place in 2007, and they seem to have done well to preserve the buildings, even though they've been modernized a bit. The "Ghost Tour" was as cheesy but as fun as expected, and we got to see a few things we would have missed meandering on our own. I could posts several hundred pics here, but the place should really be seen, so I'll just post a few here.

My buddy from NOLA told me afterwards that this is the first apartment building in the Western Hemisphere.

This guy was cool:

Only Maria's photo eye could make me look this good:

Maria got our palms read, and it was a fun little experience, overall. I definitely want to go back and explore more of the history of the city. It really is fascinating. We were there with no plan, on a Friday night, and the Police were warning the palmreader and other street vendor types that they had to be gone by midnight because a tropical storm was headed that way. So we made our way back out of town.

We stopped in Slidell for a Pizza, and then went on the rest of the short way to Gulfport. We had hoped to visit some friends, but they were up in Ohio racing that weekend, so we just hunkered down in a motel off the freeway to ride out the Tropical Storm.

Total miles traveled this Friday were only 242, but we spent most of the day enjoying the Louisiana coast! We will definitely go back! Louisiana proved to be our biggest suprise of the trip, as we both enjoyed it immensely!

Day 5-- Wichita Falls, TX to...

2007-11-23T14:22:00.002-05:00

Day 5-- Wichita Falls, TX to...

We were up with plenty of time to make it the rest of the way to Dallas and meet our friend for his lunch break. We saw that Texas was indeed as flat as we had felt it was driving all through the night before. At one point, we stopped to look at some cows and stretch our legs. Other than that, we went straight to Dallas.

A lot of critters in Texas:

We met at a Texas-style steakhouse, which my vegetarian girlfriend found helpful. But it was Texas, so he wanted us to eat someplace "Texasy". The ribs were allright, but I doubt they were Texas' finest. If so, Texas is in trouble, 'cause I've had better ribs in Los Angeles.

If you know her...you'd know how funny this is:

We had planned simply to drive straight through Texas, other than to say hello to our friend, but while Maria was in the restroom, I made the mistake of asking what there was to do around there. He mentioned Dealey Plaza. Wow, I hadn't even thought about that. That is someplace I'd always wanted to go, and I had been so distracted by everything else, I forgot about it. I knew we were going there next...i was even on our way out of town...

It was very surreal seeing the whole square where one of the most significant events in American history took place. I had been seeing video footage of the plaza and the assassination of Kennedy since I was in school. It fascinated me then, and it always had whenever another movie came out about the situation. I can't say I'd really "studied" it or anything, but as soon as we drove into the plaza, I knew right where everything was, and how to get around.

The old book depository is now something else, but the 6th and 7th floors are a museum. "The 6th Floor Museum" tour is where we went first. The corner where Oswald allegedly shot Kennedy from is set up to look just as it did the day of the assassination. It is all glassed in, so you can't look out the window, which is still open like it was that day (there is a pane of glass there, so it is sealed, but just propped open to look that way).

The view outside of the window next to that window looks about the same. The plaza all looks basically the same. The trees have only gotten bigger since that day.

Other than the museum, there are no other "official" things to do there, though there are plenty of people selling some form of story about that day. It seemed all of them were selling the conspiracy story. Especially up on the infamous "Grassy Knoll". The orange marked post is where the conspirators claim one of the other assassins was standing. I hadn't noticed the mark until later. From what I knew of the stories, I knew it was somewhere around there. I was close.

It is strange to experience a place that is so ingrained into your brain, but only from tv or something. I have seen so many plays of the Zapruder film, I can roll through it in realtime with my eyes closed. I knew what the x's on the road were for. Shots 1 and 2, where Kennedy was when he got hit. When we left, we took that same path down Elm St. and out through the bridge.

Then we got back onto the road. East of Dallas, Texas turned into more of what we were used to the "South" looking like. Maria is from Florida, so she's known it her whole life. I am from California, though I'd spent enough time in Florida now to know we were getting closer! Very green and wooded from here on out! The plan was to take a right at Shreveport, and make it as far south in Louisiana as we could before we decided to call it a day.

Every time we stopped for food or a break, people were so nice. I sat and listened to two older ladies speaking Creole(?) back and forth to each other while we ate. I enjoy language, and can usually figure out what is being spoken, but I don't think I'd ever heard the language before.

As we sped past on the freeway through Texas, I saw a strange Bull, so I got off the highway, and doubled back. Turns out there were quite a few strange animals there. Bison, Zebras, Camels, Ostritches, and several other odd-looking cattle of some sort. The place was called "Toontown", and I haven't called yet to learn if they are for shows, breeding, or what. But we stopped and took some pics.

The whole rest of the way, it was getting dark. We had been kind of nervous about what the roads would be like in Louisiana, but it was by far the best stretch of driving we had. It was dark once we went South from Shreveport, but the highway was perfect, and if we passed 50 vehicles the whole time between Shreveport and LaFayette, I'd be surprised.

We stopped and ate at a Cracker Barrel off some offramp, and kept on another hour or so to LaFayette for the night. A buddy in CA text messaged me about staying away from some trouble in a little town called Jena that night. A quick map check told me we were far enough away, and we got ourselves a cheap hotel room while we wondered what to do tomorrow. Welcome to Louisiana...

These longer miles were getting old...we needed to see some more sights...

Total miles traveled were only 545.

Day 4-- Albuquerque, NM to...

2007-11-12T11:53:00.001-05:00

Day 4-- Albuquerque, NM to...

The room was dark and not in any way noteworthy as to what city I was waking up in this time, but a quick glance at the local "What to do..." pamphlet I laid on the nightstand to remind myself what timezone I was in brought back the memory of the previous day.

Having never been to New Mexico, I really had no idea what to expect. I knew we hadn't timed our trip to see the balloon festival, but that was something that had always been on my list of things to see. A quick call to my friend, and it turned out we were staying across the street from where she wanted to meet for breakfast, a nice place called Weck's. Good food, big portions, no pictures.

After breakfast, we headed out. This was to be a "just drive through" day. We debated what to see and do in NM. Thought about going to the Petroglyphs National Park close by, but decided there was just too much to see and do in NM, so we'd come back another time just for this area. We made virtually no ground yesterday, and we could easily get sucked into sightseeing all over here, as it was so beautiful. So we headed out of town after gassing up.

Once outside of Albuquerque, the terrain turned into flat. I mean real flat. This was all we had envisioned for Arizona and New Mexico both, not to mention Texas. This was flat like "if Columbus grew up here, he'd have believed the earth was flat" kind of flat. Not that there's anything wrong with flat, it just didn't change much, and it seemed like we never made any forward progress. That's the part of traveling I don't like a bit: having a destination. It spoils some of the fun. But we didn't let it.

Neither of us having taken such a long trip before, we though we'd go ahead and try one of them books on tape. Before we had left, we went to a bookstore, looked around for one we'd both be interested in listening to for 20 hours or so, and didn't really get too excited about any of them. But as we were walking out, having given up on the idea, I noticed "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. I had only heard of it, but never read it. All I knew about it was it was about roadtrips, Route 66, and probably a lot of drugs. We snatched it up.

On this long, flat section of New Mexico, we decided to finally start listening to it. I know right where we were when we turned it on, because as I was reading a sign we were passing to figure out where we were, I hear the familiar voice of Matt Dillon reading to us, "with the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road." The sign said we were approaching Moriarty, NM. I wonder if that's how he got that pseudonym for the character in the book.

Strange things happen in New Mexico...

So nothing really else to note other than we started getting hungry toward the far East end of New Mexico. We see a town ahead called Tucumcari, and figure they probably have somewhere to eat if they're big enough to merit a green highway sign. We pass the first exit as we are trying to figure out if this is the main part of town or not.

Off in the distance (you can see quite a ways out here), Maria says she sees 2 planes "flying in formation". I look through the bug-encrusted windshield and tell her that it sure looks to me like an A-10, and I KNOW that's a P-38 flying with it!! I was not 100% about the A-10, but I KNOW P-38's!! Well, the only reason they'd be doing that is practicing for an airshow all the way out here on a random Wednesday afternoon in Tucumcari, NM. I want to go check it out, but it looks like they are further away from civilization, and we need to eat.

So we get off the highway at the end of Tucumcari, go slightly North, and backtrack along the main road, which is Route 66. Yet another well-preserved town of Route 66 buildings and businesses! Some look new...others...not so much. It mostly looks like it could have been the 50's, and we just jumped back through time. Between the buildings, the reading of "On the Road", and seeing a mirage of a random P38 (my favorite plane, the P-38 and the same kind we were just talking about at the random Planes of Fame museum 2 days earlier), I am beginning to wonder if I am still asleep in Albuquerque.

We get pretty much back to the West end of town, and head back toward the freeway. We pull into a parking lot, and check out the scene of a crime of some sort at a Motel, as we eat our crappy fast food in the truck. We didn't even get out to use the restroom, we just wanted to keep moving. I knew there was a body in the motel somewhere, as they had the whole property taped off, with the kind of vehicles inside the perimeter that only come out for things like that. It turned out the night clerk had been murdered, as I later found this news story: Murdered clerk

We hop back on the freeway, hoping the P-38 is still out flying, so I can take a look. There are only about 5 flying that I am aware of. We don't see it still up in the air, but after going another mile or so, I just have to find the airstrip they flew out of to investigate. So we take what looks to be the right exit, see an arrow on a sign, and follow it down the rural road to Tucumcari Airport. I don't believe it...they are having a full-fledged airshow today!

We drive through the parking lot, find a space to stop right next to the gate entrance to the tarmac. We sit and watch outside the gate for a few minutes, staring at the beautiful B-17 in front of us, wondering how we could have stumbled onto this in the middle of nowhere, wondering if we should ask if this is Rod Serling's hometown. Then we thought since we are here, we NEED to see the P-38 up close, and the Canadian Snowbirds are about to do their show! I'd been to a bunch of airshows, but this was Maria's first time, and she loved it. We walked right in, there wasn't anyone taking tickets at the gate or anything!?

You have GOT to be kidding me...the P-38 flying at the airshow was now parked at the end of the tarmac by itself. It was the very P-38 the lady at the museum had talked about 2 days earlier. The plane I had been following for about a decade, but never had seen. This was the plane recovered from under like 268' of ice on a glacier in Greenland that people had been trying to recover since thinking they found them in 1977. This was the Glacier Girl!!

Random...I literally had tears running down my face as I tried to take it all in. State I'd never been to, town I'd never head of, using a plan we never made, watching a demonstration team I'd seen before perform, as I stood next to my favorite plane I'd never seen before, looking at Maria's smile of complete joy and fascination. This just couldn't get any better.

After a quick tour of the B-17, answering all of her myriad questions about the planes, we headed out to beat "the crowd". It was late afternoon, and we still had a long way to go. We had no idea if we could make Dallas by sometime reasonable tonight, but it was looking less likely. And we could see storm clouds off in the distance.

As we crossed into Texas, I noticed I got a little nervous. My family was from here, but I had only been here as a baby. The storm was closer, and I knew we had a long way to drive. We stopped at a Dairy Queen to get drinks. Maria was excited about the 2 young (but huge) teenagers who got out of the truck next to us, and said "'scuse me, Ma'am" to her.

Since we were up on the 40, and would hit Amarillo, I had wanted to see the Cadillac Ranch. I'm not sure why, and didn't know anything about it, other than that it was in Amarillo, somewhere. So when we saw Amarillo, I got off the first exit to ask where it was. I didn't want to pass it and have to back-track. Turned out I passed it already by 1 exit. Had I bothered looking to the right, I would have seen it. So we went back and checked it out. It had just started raining, and this was our first rain of the trip. I was actually surprised at how interesting it was. I guess it's art or something, but I just think it's funny. Certainly something you don't see every day! Unfortunately, a bunch of litter around it, but I found a can with some leftover to do my part to add to the art, before dumping a bunch in the dumpster the guy provides. Worth a look if you're headed that way!!

Then finally, we turned away from the famous Route 66, and headed Southeast through Texas. There isn't a lot to report through here, as it was nighttime when we left Amarillo, and we mostly drove straight through the darkness. It was flat and straight. A few really old town that would have been fun to see. Most of the buildings seemed fairly old, and most even boarded up in one town I recall going through. We did stop at the nicest rest stop we had ever seen, as well as a Sonic in Childress.

We ended up calling it a day at a Best Western in Wichita Falls, Texas, after driving a total of only 534 miles. We really stop too much!

At least we have food pics tomorrow, I think...

Day 3--Grand Canyon, Az to...

2007-11-09T16:33:00.001-05:00

Day 3--Grand Canyon, Az to...

The campsites at the Grand Canyon are fairly large. For the 2 of us, a pickup truck and a tent is all we really needed the space for, but there was plenty of room for more people and tents if we had needed it. They were a bit crammed together with other campsites, and though the folks next to ours didn't seem real friendly, we could still hear every word of their conversations, as they unpacked every camping doo-dad and gizmo ever created. I've never even used a sleeping pad, so maybe I'll look & see how comfy those are one of these days. Sure seemed like it took a long time to make camp, though.

It gets fairly cold in the desert at night. We were up in elevation, as well, so after spending much of the night shivering, after having to get up to answer the call a couple times during the night, I gave serious consideration to getting a new sleeping bag. The old, matted material bag I used didn't keep me nearly as warm as Maria was in the newfangled 0-degree mummybag she gets when we both camp out. The truck tells me it was 40F when I got out of bed in the morning.

We packed up our camp and made for the breakfast buffet (really roughing it at the Yavapai Lodge, I know). We spent a couple hours exploring the South Rim of the canyon, trying fruitlessly once again to grasp the size and scope of the terrain laid out before us.

Maria could care less how cold I was:

Still going with our "Plan B" from yesterday, skipping the 4-corners, we headed back South to Williams, and jumped on the 40East again. Arizona was much more forested through here and on into Flagstaff, where we stopped to resupply. Another place we need to stop longer and learn about when passing through next time.

Maria found what appeared to be a National Monument...not quite a park, but something neither of us had ever heard about, so we went ahead and stopped to check it out. Walnut Creek is a circular, steep-walled canyon, made up of many different obvious levels and types of rock that had been eroded away for eons, much like the Grand Canyon. This was obviously on a smaller scale, and the canyon walls on at least one level had been used by some Native Americans, who used them for shelter.

Rock walls had been cemented into place, forming walls under a natural overhang of rock. There were around 300 structures built into the rock walls on both sides of the canyon. These were a couple hundred feet below the top of the canyon walls. The hike down was quite easy and beautiful. Then the path proceeded around the inner curve of a horseshoe-shaped canyon. Many of the walls were merely recreations on this side, but it was interesting to try to imagine families living here in this canyon. They had everything they needed provided by the river and some of the surrounding land. You were allowed to go into most of the structures, and even when the walls were partially missing, it was noticeably cooler inside, and vented for smoke.

(It's steeper than it looks)

(The Ranger said we could walk in, just don't touch walls)

The only problem with the .9 mile hike was that the other half was back up the stairs to the top of the canyon. I think they said it was 270 stairs, but I'll just round that up to a thousand. We stopped to check on an older young lady visiting from Scotland was okay. She was sitting on a bench just before the stairs waiting on her travel companion and husband. As we walked past her at first, she was gazing at us longingly as though she was hoping we'd offer to carry her back up the steps. We weren't about to, but we did stay and talk with her for about 15 minutes and learn about great places to travel in Scotland. Of course she just HAD to tell Maria where her family is from in Scotland, so now we had to add that to our list of places to visit (before it just said "Scotland", now we have it narrowed down even further).

That's where we have to go back to...and it IS steeper than it looks!)

This is back at the top, seeing that our Scottish friend's party returned to her...zoomed in:

Zoomed Out:

After leaving there, we just kept plodding along to the East on the 40. At some point we dropped into the kind of terrain I had expected Arizona to be the whole time. Flat, dusty...desert. It didn't disappoint. The next item we saw on the "Things to see in 'that' general direction" guide was something I'd heard of a few times, and was glad to see it was so close. We weren't making very good mileage time, but hey, it was only Tuesday, and we'd expected to spend more time at the Grand Canyon. Since we didn't hike down to the bottom, we figured we had time to see Arizona's other big hole.

Meteor Crater is not too far off the main road at all. It is kinda pricey to get in, but once you're out there, you really don't want to turn back and say "nah, not worth the money". There is nothing else out there. They say it's about 4000' across, 2.5 miles if you hike around it, and pretty deep (you can google all the specs...go look it up!!). NASA trained the Apollo astronauts there, and there is thus much space stuff out there. A training pod, Astronaut memorial wall, etc. NASA has a trip planned for 2012 to get back to the moon (again, Google...I'm just typing from memory, here!), and intend to also train out here in preparation for that mission.

You can see the rock in this pic, then zoomed in a bit. This was debris displaced when the meteor hit:

Meteor parts are really dense iron? lead? Some other heavy metal? They had a piece that was a little bigger than a softball, one the size of a basketball, and the one you see me trying to lift. They weighed 48lbs, 175lbs and 1440lbs, respectively. I didn't move it at all (and oddly, I can see through walls, now...weird).

We took our requisite pics, and got going again. As much as Maria enjoyed my repetitive version of the Eagles "Take It Easy", we did not stop in Winslow, AZ, nor did we stand on a corner there. But that is something you can do on your way through to the meteor.

We turned off the 40 and into Holbrook, AZ a short while later. We saw mention of the petrified Forest National Park, and Painted Desert National Park somewhere around here, so we got off and drove through town on the Route 66 portion again. We are definitely doing the whole Route on bikes, next time. We passed the Wigwam Motel, and said we will come back for pictures on the way out. They had another great selection of Route 66 history still up and running, preserved well for anyone passing through to still enjoy. It turned out the road we were taking would not lead us back through town, so we wouldn't get to go back, unfortunately.

On the long road out through the plains, we stopped when I saw some Pronghorn. I was excited! I had some weird flash that we were in Africa or something. Smewhere in the darkest reaches of my memory that still housed viable information, and hadn't been purged by a chemical burn of some sort, I was able to access early school memories of reading about these animals here in the U.S. Spending most of my life in California, I had never had an opportunity to see one, and until that moment had completely forgotten that such a creature even existed!

Maria was enchanted with the petrified trees, and wanted some. We weren't allowed to take any out of the park, so we didn't. I asked the Ranger why there were so many places selling it outside the park, and was told that it isn't illegal to take or sell it outside the park, and the park only covers about 10% of the petrified forest. She explained how it became "petrified", we walked a quick tour in the waning sunlight, and started the drive through the park to the adjacent Painted Desert (2 parks in 1!!).

The park was due to close, so they said we only had an hour. By the time we got done, and at the North end of the park, back at the freeway, all the Rangers had left, and all was closed. We missed out on many of the views due to the sun going down. We just ran out of light. We did get to see a few areas of petroglyphs, including newspaper rock, and a prehistoric remains of a stone building. We were snapping pictures as fast as we could as the sun went away.

We stopped to see the old car that is a monument to Rout 66 here, too:

As we drove through the night, we stopped for gas in Navajo, AZ, on the Navajo Nation. All through that final section of Eastern AZ, there appears to be nothing at any exit at night. We didn't stop until after crossing into New Mexico, where we stopped to eat at the Olympic Kitchen restaurant in Gallup, NM. I guess we went with some pasta to stay awake long enough for the rest of the drive.

We were going to be too late to do much with my friend in Albuquerque, so we stopped at a motel near her place, and washed the 2 days of Arizona off of us before drifting off to sleep.

Only 2 states today, but we saw 4 National parks, including waking up at the Grand Canyon, and the Meteor Crater. Not to mention the Navajo Nation.

461 miles we covered, too.

Day 2--Kingman, AZ...

2007-11-05T13:49:00.001-05:00

Day 2--Kingman, AZ...

We woke up in a decent hotel somewhere in Kingman, AZ. We ate the continental breakfastish meal, and got on the road. Today we wanted to make it to the Grand Canyon!

Maria had never been to the canyon. I had only been there once, and only on a test flight with a customer of mine who flew for a Helicopter tour company. It was a great way to see it, for sure, but it had only been a brief landing next to the river, and a quick stop at the reservation up top for a soda. We were back in Vegas within an hour.

Most of this part of Arizona seemed to be getting up into the mountains. Again, having done virtually no research or made any plans at all, we were constantly enjoying the scenery and getting to experience whatever was around the next bend with childlike curiosity. Much of it seemed like huge cattle ranches that kept getting into the higher elevations. I hadn't expected it to be like this here in Western Arizona. We were expecting the completely flat, see forever hot terrain that we would only find later in our journey.

I know people who live in Williams, AZ, and though we did not intend to stop and see them, we knew a little about the town because of them. We needed gas by the time we rolled into Williams, so we stopped at a gas station that I believe may very well have been untouched since Route 66 was the route to take, and owned by the same nice man.

Maria, being from Florida, was unfamiliar with this device, and I had to explain to her what snow was. I eventually found internet access, and was able to show her pictures.

We only drove through the main downtown part of Williams to see the old buildings, and get a good sense of how we want to do a Rte 66 journey next time through. They have done well in Williams to preserve what they can, and seem to be doing a good job of keeping themselves alive. Many of the towns we passed through were all but ghost towns ever since the interstate went up.

Then we headed out North to finally get to see the Grand Canyon. It was just a straight shot North form Williams, and we were in our usual non-hurry. After driving a ways, we saw a Constellation parked near an airstrip, so we figure we'd stop and stretch our legs a bit. As it turned out, the building was the Planes of Fame Museum! I didn't even know they had one out here, as I only knew of the Chino location. So now we had actually stumbled upon a great treasure trove of aviation history! I looked through the window to the museum, saw a shot-down Zero and an OHKA right there, and knew we had to go in!

We spent a couple of hours there, and knew we were going to take forever to get across the country at this rate, so we bought a couple things to help out the museum, and listened to the lady talk about what's been happening lately with the museum. I told her how I loved P38's, and she was talking to me about the "Glacier Girl" plane. This was the one recovered from under 268' of ice in Greenland. I've been sort of following that story for over a decade.

Then we went the rest of the way to the Grand Canyon. I'm not going to bother trying to describe it. While on one of my trips to Yosemite, I finally understood why Ansel Adams spent his life trying to capture what Yosemite was on film, or John Muir spent his life trying to get folks to understand it's beauty. Neither of them had the tools available to accurately do it any justice. That is the same sense one gets when you first actually see the Grand Canyon with your own eyes. Words and pictures just can't capture what it is. It has to be experienced. We took enough pictures to kill the batteries, and came nowhere close to capturing how vast and beautiful this place is. It's just surreal. Anyone who has been there will understand. Anyone who has not, will think I am trying to make this RR sound more interesting.

Obviously, we found the secret place to see the Grand Canyon. Nope, not a soul around for miles...

Now that it's getting later on in the day, though, we wonder aloud what we should do at this point. We have only been at the Grand Canyon for a couple hours. It's almost sunset. We need to eat. If we want to go to 4 corners, it's a lot of driving through a lot of empty desert, it looks like. If we go back to the main Interstate 40, we can likely find some more places of interest, according to the maps we're finding on the way.

I've always wanted to see 4 corners, but the thing isn't even in the right place, technically. So I nominated: let's see if they have any campsites here at the canyon, set up the tent, eat, watch the sunset in the canyon, wake up and explore a bit more around here in the morning! Maria seconded, and the plan was voted into effect!

We really did kill the camera, so all we had to capture the sunset was a cellphone camera:

They had plenty of campsites available. I just needed a spot to park and pitch the tent. They had picnic tables and a firepit, though, too! Have to buy the firewood there at the store (or bring it in), but I busted out the Magnesium firestarter and we had shmores under the stars in the Grand Canyon by the fireside!

It was a great day, though we only traveled 181 miles today! :)

Day 1 Driving across the USA, CA to FL

2007-11-05T11:36:00.001-05:00

Before I get too far into this trip, I should probably tell you a bit about my situation. I had been traveling back and forth to Florida for 2 years by plane. By back and forth, I mean a trip a month. I used to kind of like flying, but only because I rarely did so...because I despise it now. (I am an aviation buff...just not a fan of commercial aviation) The idea was to move out there, and it just took some time setting up, but finally was time to make the trek.

I have owned many bikes over the years, and had 2 just prior to finally taking this trip. I had been living in CA, and was moving to Florida, so I wanted to "pack" as lightly as possible. So getting rid of the bikes was part of the plan, temporarily.

So this is technically a car trip, where I just had to move all my stuff from one timezone to another. But what fun would a point-A to point-B trip be? I had always wanted to travel across the country, and if I was going to do it, I wanted to actually SEE some things. My sister had wanted me to rush-drive her moving van to Boston for her years ago, but she wanted to drive in shifts straight through, stopping only for gas and gas-station snacks. No thanks. This country is too purdy to drive past all those things I've grown up wanting to see without even stopping to take a picture. Luckily, she found a friend to do it, and they hated it. We were going to take our time and SEE America.

We didn't want to plan too much, so our trip atlas before we left looked like this in it's entirety:

WSMC Races,
Grand Canyon
4 corners?
Albequirky at friend's
Cadillac Ranch
Dallas at friend's
French Quarter
Gulfport at friend's
St. Petersburg before following Monday.

I punched those points into Streets & Trips, so we knew basically where we were going. Otherwise, just make sure the dash compass said "E", and we should get there eventually! Had we made the list right after the trip, the list would be 3-4 times as long.

(This trip also occurred before I found ADV, so I didn't know to take pictures of every meal we had on the way, though by force of nature, I did get some, anyway. I don't believe I have any ADV salute pics, though. My ladyfriend Maria was usually taking the pics and traveling with me, and it would have made no sense without a bike. Oh yeah, and she is a much better photographer than I am)

It seems the weekend we had picked to make the move was then when everyone else decided on plans, as well. We had debated going to go watch the AMA season finale races at Laguna-Seca before heading out. Then my sister told me she was coming down that week from Washington. And we had to go to a close friend's wedding that Saturday (so now Laguna-Seca was for sure a no-go). Since we can't leave until Sunday now, we may as well stay and watch the Toyota 200 roadrace at Willow Springs on Sunday, and just leave from there on Sunday evening. I'd been going there for years to watch that one, and had several friends I likely wouldn't be seeing too often again after the move.

The racing was good out at Willow Springs (except for the guy with the slight smoking problem...), and I got to see a lot of friends I hadn't seen in a while, as I hadn't made it up there for a few months prior to this trip, as I got things prepared. But now we could get our much-anticipated adventure underway!

We headed North up to Mojave, and cut across the desert Sunday evening. So much history out here. The early space program...Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier...Burt Rutan's countless experiments...The Right Stuff, indeed. I wish we had time this trip...oh well, another day.

We made sure we watched what could be my last California desert sunset for a while, otherwise we were just hoping to cross the desert as part of the drive-thru, and get someplace closer to the Grand Canyon tonight. The desert really is a great place to watch the sky get painted all kinds of different colors each night. The colors and hues change so rapidly in that sweet spot of about 4 minutes, where every conceivable shade of red, yellow and orange is splashed across the sky as if being tested to be certain they still "work", since you can find them nowhere else in nature.

We only stopped to get gas in Needles, and otherwise crossed into Arizona late in the evening without any fanfare, and stopped to get some sleep in Kingman, AZ. I know we were missing a lot of gorgeous views by driving at night, but we wanted to make SOME progress, and get to the even better stuff.

We would definitely be rewarded the next day...

We only made it 321 miles this first day, but we didn't even leave the track until 6:20pm or so.

Oh wait, I found a food pic! :D

Original Sam Post from 2005

2007-03-25T00:29:00.000-04:00

3-25-2004

Rialto man killed in motorcycle crash
FONTANA- A 20-year-old man was killed when he lost control of his motorcycle and crashed on the Interstate 10 early Thursday morning.

Samuel Sikes of Rialto was riding a Suzuki motorcycle on the I-10 east at 12:20 a.m. Thursday when he lost control of the bike and slammed into the center divider at the Cherry Avenue over crossing, according to the San Bernardino County Coroner's office. Paramedics responded and pronounced him dead at the scene.

The California Highway Patrol is investigating the incident.

A year ago today, I awoke to a phone call from my little sister at 4:30am, telling me about the above accident. Sam was our baby brother.

I had spoken to our mother the night before, and she was worried that he was "going to buy a motorcycle". He had just moved into his first "place of his own" with his girlfriend, and they were going to sell his car and he would ride a motorcycle to save some money. He was a very talented basketball player who had recently received 2 full-ride scholarship offers to large univerisities, and those were just the early ones. He was young, felt invincible, and had a lot of people who seemed to think he was a pretty nice guy. I was going to call him the next day and ask him about the bike and see if he wanted to go riding with me.

He had already bought the bike when I talked to mom the night before. His friend picked the bike up for him and brought it to his work later that night. I can list pages of things that he did wrong after that. Having ridden for so many years, I may not be a pro, but I know a thousand things that can go awry when riding a motorcycle. Everything from his gear (gloves and helmet only), to his helmet being too big for his head (it came off his head after he hit the ground, but before his head hit the bridge support...the strap was still strapped, and didn't break). He was not stunting or racing, just didn't know what he was doing, he thought he could handle it, and lost it on the freeway. Fortunately he didn't hurt anyone else.

Any of you that have gotten to know me over the past 8 months or so I've been on these boards know that I am not someone who whines or complains about much of anything. You also know I don't like getting attention about things like this. While a handful of people on here were already aware of this, I have only ever talked about it with either people who are very close friends, or when I think telling someone like Min's sister about my experience may be of some small benefit to them in some way. I've never hidden it, I just never sought to get a bunch of attention over it, and I don't want it now. But I know I am not the first person to lose someone close to me, nor will I be the last.

So now, I'm posting this for a couple of reasons. The riding "season" is just getting started this year, so perhaps I'm just trying to remind someone to ride within their limits, because while inevitable to some degree in the motorcycling community, many of us are very weary of attending funerals for friends, family and loved ones. I don't participate in any of the more "heated" debates on here, and do not intend to start. But I will just offer my perspective on my experiences, and you can take from it what you wish. Many of you know I have every-so-often fractured an occasional vehicle code statute, so I'm not pointing fingers at anyone for how you ride, even if it's not the way I ride.

When I see posts about police, particularly CHP, being the "bad-guys" out to target us poor, innocent sportbikers, I wonder if any of them have had to tell a mother that her son is never going to graduate college, and in fact never going to call home to tell her he misses her again, because he is dead and there is nothing that anyone in the world can do about it. Try doing that every day as a career. How "hardened" and cold would I have to be to do that, because somebody unfortunately has to do it. I'd rather you get a ticket and get to listen to you bitch about it than have to go to your funeral. But that's just me. I'm not saying all of thier behavior is acceptable or justified.

Perhaps when the CHP tickets us for riding way too fast down dangerous canyon roads with little to no room for error should we happen to make any one of the thousands of mistakes that are possible in each moment of riding at high levels, they are actually concerned, even if they don't show it in a way you are familiar with, because their experience is different. But yeah, they should make an exception for me and let me ride or drive however I wish, because I "know what I'm doing", right?

I wonder if you've ever seen a motorcyclist go down and be dead or dying when you got there. Many of us have, and you can find pictures all over the internet that are graphic and disgusting as an example, but they don't do it justice. My brother had to be identified based on his tatoos. I can't imagine what that has to be like to see that...EVERY DAY.

I know we're all too smart, "cool" and experienced for something to go wrong with us while we are riding the canyons at triple-digit speeds, making unsafe passes over the DY, or stunting in front of a big crowd where even the slightest error can take out ourselves and others, though.

If you think we are a bunch of sissies or trying to be your mommy when we tell you to be safe, and to not be a squid, then perhaps you can see that we just know how often riders can and do crash, even the experienced ones. Not everything is under our control, even if we know how to ride "really good". As a matter of fact, there are only a handful of things that are under our control, especially when compared to the infinite amount of things that are out of our control, but can affect our ride.

Maybe when I say to be safe, I just don't want your siblings to ever have to watch your mother sobbing so uncontrolably that even the hardened officer at the coroner's office wells up with tears and can't speak, because mom is trying to figure out if she doesn't sign the paperwork to pick up her youngest son's personal effects, maybe he won't "really" be dead.

When we go on a newbie ride or other group ride up the crest or some other place, and I volunteer to follow the "slow" group up the road, hopefully now you will stop apologizing for "holding me up", because you know that I don't want anyone to be left behind, and if someone does go down, they won't be alone to die without us even knowing it. I will go as slow as need be so you can learn safely at your comfort level, and know you won't be left alone if you have a problem of any kind. I can go fast whenever I want, but if we're together, then we're together, no matter how slow. I'm not trying to "save the world", but I'd rather the "inconvenience" of going slow so you can learn, than have to explain to your sister why I didn't even know you had gone down because you were too slow for me, and I wanted to practice hanging off at higher speeds with the extra ground clearance afforded by my new rearsets.

I am the last person to ever discourage anyone from riding. Even after this happened, it never occurred to me to give up riding. I rode to the funeral home in Fontana to make the arrangements for his remains and funeral, and then rode again to pick up his cremated remains, and I didn't even think not to until people started asking me if I was going to give up riding. I know some people stop riding for their own reasons, and I have no problem with that. It is a very personal decision, and it's up to each of us. I will ride as long as I am physically able to do so.

When I picked up Sam's Katana from the impound lot in Ontario, there were only 12.7 miles on the trip meter. Those are the only miles he got to ride this bike most of you have seen me ride. I have put 15000 miles on it since I finished putting it back together in June. I figure I'll get enough enjoyment out of it for the both of us, since he didn't get a chance to. Hopefully he's along for the ride.

Rico and a few other people have asked me if they could ride my bike, and I have declined. I hope you didn't take it personally. I'm not concerned about the bike getting binned up, and certainly don't question your abilities, but as Nate said last Thursday, it kind of has "sentimental value" to me. Not to say I won't let people ride it in the future, but as of now, only one person besides myself rides it and has ridden it since Sam died on it...that person knows the history, and is someone extraordinarily dear to me.

I don't know what I am going to do with the bike once I've ridden it "enough". But if I ride it until it falls apart, or just push it off a cliff (preferably without me on it!), that's fine with me. It's just a bike, and a Katana at that. If you've ever made a comment to me about the damaged plastics, and I was vague about how it happened, then now you know why. It tends to make people uncomfortable if I tell them my brother died riding it, especially when they've just said something stupid like "Whoa, looks like you fukked up here, dumbass!".

There is little room for error on a bike. He only made a simple one, wasn't being "reckless", and is dead because of it. I am pretty confident that I am well aware of the consequences of things going wrong on a motorcycle, and not just based solely upon this experience. But I have always had a passion for riding, and I do my best to be as safe as I can, weighing the consequences of everything I choose to do based on no scientific formula. I know what CAN happen, all too well. And I accept that.

If I should ever happen to die on a motorcycle, then so be it. No need to "mourn" me at all. I am not wishing for it, but my life has been very fulfilling, and I don't regret a moment of it.

I know what it is to have a true friend, and to be one.

I know what it is to know true joy, and I extract every bit of it from this world that I can.

I know what it is to Love another person so completely that the words to even the most romantic of songs or poems pale in comparison to the reality of it.

I've been blessed with much more than I ever would have had if I had chosen my life myself, and everything that happens from here on out is just a bonus.

Life is short. Don't take it for granted, because every moment is a gift. Make the call to tell someone what they mean to you today...don't wait until tomorrow. (And yes, I actually typed that, I didn't just cut & paste it out of a chain letter lol)

I can't bring my brother back unless I get ahold of that time machine on ebay. I believe something good can come out of everything, and I found this community when I was looking for parts for rebuilding this bike. People here have become some of my closest friends, and "family". Hopefully you now will have some small idea how truly I mean it when I say thank you all for being in my life this past year, and sharing yours with me. It truly has been an amazing experience, and I look forward to more. Some of you have been here through some less-than-perfect times. I Love you, and you know who you are.

I hope someone gets something beneficial from this, because I'm only partially writing this for my own reasons, and not because I want any attention, pity or sympathy from it...I really don't. I was encouraged by some to write something, and if I didn't see any slight way it might possibly help someone, I would just keep it to myself. And if it sounds dramatic in some way, it's only because I'm trying to get a message across, not because I care for the attention. I just try to make the best of everything I am given in life, and I have a great deal of serenity with this subject.

They say when life hands you lemons, make lemonade...well drinks are on me, today...have as many as you can stand.

You may say "I'm sorry for your loss", and I say "I'm sorry you didn't get the chance to know him".

I don't profess to know how the world works, or much of anything else. If I can ever help you in some way, even if we've never met, feel free to ask...that's just me. I don't tell people how to live their lives, so I'm not trying to be your mommy or daddy telling you not to have fun on your bikes at all. I'm simply offering my perspective. I don't want to have any flame wars here, please. I just hope it helps someone in some way. If you do not find this perspective useful in some way, I hope it was at least a good read.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Thanks,

-James

March 20, 2006
I wrote this last year, for really no other reason than I just felt like writing about it, a friend encouraged me to do so, and convinced me someone might enjoy reading it. I just kind of spewed it out on the screen, didn't bother proof-reading it or editing it, though I may change a few things at this point. The first italicized paragraphs are a newspaper article, the rest I wrote. But a few friends and random people ended up posting it on at least 12 different message boards all over the internet. I still find it posted in a new place every now and again. I have only ever seen one guy say anything negative, and everyone else has said something positive about it, so I haven't changed a word of it.

March 25, 2007
Another year, and I still get messages from people that say it helped them think about being careful, appreciating life and other such stuff, so I keep bumping it each year.