FOR AN OLD DUDE, I'M HOT!

No, not hot as in "Whoa, check out that hot guy", those days are long since dead and buried, unless you like the leathery skin look that is...  I'm HOT as in I can't stay cool while riding.  And it's gotten worse each year that I have gotten older too.

They say...  That after you have your first real heat stroke, the next one comes upon you faster, and the next one faster, and faster, etc.  WELL...  I'm up to somewhere around number 36 or 37 heat strokes I think these days.  And "they" are correct, they do indeed hit you faster and with less and less warning each subsequent time.  I'm at the point now that when my face turns cherry red, I'm there, ready to pop like an overheated pressure cooker.  I literally have less than 5 minutes before it'll be time for a trip to the ER for emergency hydration IV therapy.  No, drinking water doesn't help.  My problem is I don't sweat, so therefore, I don't cool.  OK, I do sweat, but not like you see most people sweat.  At best under heavy exertion, my skin may get damp, but that it.  And it's just not enough to keep my core temperature from going thru the ceiling.

I've been trying to deal with the problem for quite a few years now.  It also affects my greatly in the summer while I am trying to enjoy my other hobby of metal detecting.  I got one of the Mission Endura-Cool "cooling towels" and damn if that thing didn't work like magic too! 

Our oldest Grandson and Granddaughter do football and Cheerleading, so we usually have many games where the temps are still in the 90's when they start playing.  The cooling towel worked great, especially when combined with some other 007 "trick gadgets" my Wife and Daughter bought me. 

They also got me a "O2COOL" combo water bottle with a built-in "mister" valve so I can drink or I can mist myself to keep cooling water evaporating on my skin to replace what I naturally lack.  And it too works like a badass!  The combo drink/mist bottle is by O2COOL.  The only drawback to both the cooling towel and the mister is, you need to have some air flow to help each one work at it's best. 

Enter another "gadget" that my wife picked up for me/us to beat the heat at the football games.  It is a mister bottle fan. Simple pump spray bottle with a 3v fan/mister nozzle.  It takes 2 AA batteries and runs for several weeks/games for us  It gives you the best of both worlds, the fine cooling mist AND a pretty good breeze to help keep things evaporating as they should.

And these items I mentioned are great for football games or stationary events, but wouldn't work too good on a motorcycle.  However...  I do think there is an application where the "cooling towel" (now sold by Harbor Freight Tools under their label for $3.00) could be sewn into patch panels on blue jeans to help keep you cool.  You could do a thigh pad and a calf/shin pad fairly easily I would think.  And you could just sew it on over the jeans I suppose, that way it would retain the original strength of the blue jeans material in case you go for a slide.  And IF you had a cup holder on your bike, you could stuff one of the mister bottles or even the mister fan in the holder for a quick, refreshing spritz at each redlight to help you keep your cool. 

And they make hard wired 12v mini fans that you could mount inside your fairing or handlebar so you could flick it on as you were pulling up to a redlight.  It would help keep the exhaust from the traffic blown away from your face while helping to keep your cool too.

BUT...  Here's the way I am going to try to handle the heat for now.  Simply hose down my pants legs and the front of my shirt before I ride.  I tried it the other day for my "High Noon" ride back from my Daughter's Restaurant and it worked pretty good, all things considered.  The moving bike and the wet clothes did keep me fairly cool for a couple of miles or more, until everything had evaporated and I was "dry" again.  The hard part was actually applying the water to myself accurately.  I tried using my 20oz drinking cup from lunch and filled it with tap water and then tried to pour it on the front of my legs and thigh area.  Yeah 75% of it hit my clothes and just ran right off before it even had time to soak in.  OK, so I need something that would allow me to add the water slowly so it was absorbed instead of just running off.  I picked up an Avia Sports Water Bottle, 32oz, that has a simple "one-way" valve in the spout that only allows the water to flow out, and only when the bottle is being squeezed.  I figure I can invert the bottle, touch the nozzle to my pants and with a gentle squeeze, I should be able to wet myself down pretty good with a minimum of waste and runoff.  At least that's my plan.  In looking for a way to carry the water bottle(s) today, I did find some damn nifty water bottle saddle bags that I think might help me kill more than one bird with a single stone.  I ordered the saddlebag below today.  I'll get some pictures as soon as they come in and I get them mounted!

DO YOU HAVE... BALANCE?

Well, I don't!  And I know I don't, haven't had much that even resembled balance going on for the last 25/30 years or so.  And here's why...

My Personal History:  I have ALWAYS been plagued by sinus issues as far back as I can remember.  Even as a small boy of 5 years old, I had to have surgery to correct a "tied tongue".  That's where the little strip of skin under your tongue that acts like a limit strap that keeps your tongue in place is too short and your tongue can't move as freely as it should, limiting your ability to pronounce certain words as smoothly as others can.  And I doubt if my tongue surgery at age 5 had anything to do with my lifelong sinus issues, but hey, I thought I'd toss it out there anyway.  I do NOT know, at almost 60 years of age IF I still have my tonsils and adenoids, but I suspect they removed them when they were doing the surgery for my tongue.  Back to the sinus issues...  Severe nose bleeds as a child, every now and then would actually have to go to the ER where they would have to cauterize whatever it was that was spewing my lifeblood out through my nose.  And it always worked, but even as a child I wondered if it might cause me issues later on in life.  As a teen, I sort of evolved into a "mouth breather" since my nose was usually stopped up completely most of the time anyway.  Breathing thru your mouth, is simply NOT the way God intended for us to breath.  It dries out the mucus membranes in your throat, and introduces a lot more germs into your body that your nasal hairs would normally catch.  So if you can breath thru your nose, it's a lot better for your body all the way around.  As an adult, I had trouble flying.  The pressure changes going up or down were extremely painful to me, and unlike most everyone else, I couldn't get my ears to clear using the "pinch and blow" method either.  Had a lot of sinus trouble throughout my military career too.  After I got out in 1990. it got worse.  The term my ENT used was "Pan Sinusitis", which simply means the whole damn thing is stopped up, SOLID!  And it got worse...  My ears clogged up, quit draining and sometime in 1990, my balance went on vacation and never came back.  We progressed thru 3 sets of "tubes" with the last being sewn into my eardrums.  And for about 10 years, I had a fairly normal life as far as hearing, draining and balance was concerned.  And then I ruptured both eardrums simultaneously and blew both tubes out where they landed on my shoulders.  In 2014, things flared back up again after a pretty bad head cold and sinus infection and everything turned into vertigo, and I still fight it every day even now.  If you have never had vertigo, then bless your ass!  I wouldn't wish the living nightmare that is vertigo on someone I hated and wanted to see dead.

So that's where I am in life right now.  You learn to adapt, to compensate, to adjust, but it can really make life a bitch to handle.    Sometimes my balance is so bad, that I have to hold onto something while I am standing still because I loose all sensory input that tells me which way is up, down, etc.  It makes seemingly simple things like walking, hearing, driving a car, etc. VERY hard to do.  Especially with any resemblance of normalcy.  I have my methods of coping, but in a nutshell, I now operated under VFR conditions ONLY.  VFR???  It mean "visual flight rules" to a pilot.  And to a pilot, it also means you can only fly when you can see, so no night flying, no bad weather flying, no instrument flying, eyeballs ONLY!  But like I've said, you adapt and compensate.  And I think I have actually done very good as a matter of fact.  You rely on your sense of balance to drive a car a lot more than you think you do.  Yep, acceleration, braking, cornering, are ALL extremely dependent on your ability to process those signals coming from your body's "balance center".  Yeah, mine don't work anymore, and what signals I do get, are shit.  So not only do I have to figure things out visually, BUT I also have to IGNORE a head full of bad data that my faulty balance center is trying to feed me.  It's not always fun, but so far, I still come home ALIVE at the end of a ride!

I use my head, literally, like a big ass counterweight on a stick to "sense" things like acceleration, cornering and braking.  And I do damn good with it too!  Enough that I could probably road race motorcycles if I wanted to.  Where I have my balance issues the most are that first few feet when starting off and the last 5 feet when stopping.  There simply is not enough data available at those very slow speeds for my little brain to go on, for me to do it "smoothly".  I wobble!  Not a lot, but a wobble is still a wobble.  And that's all I need if for some rookie cop to see me a "wobbling" and assume I am drunk or otherwise impaired.  Yeah, then he stops me, then he runs me thru NCIC and then he finds out I've got felony warrants in 16 States and 3 Country's!  And I don't even drink!  And I was just kidding about those warrants too.  No, really!  Matter of fact, I even have a current and valid concealed carry weapon permit (CCW) which required an extensive background investigation before it was issued by my County Sheriff.  So trust me, I've been run thru the mill every which way from Sunday and I passed with flying colors!

So...  Where am I going with all this?  Well, when I climbed back on the Triumph (whom I am affectionately referring to as "Blue" these days), I just looked at the tires, felt of the tires and thumped the tires to make sure they were sufficiently aired up enough t ride safely.  And they were.  And I wobbled, a lot.  The bike felt fine as far as handling went, and I just thought that maybe my excessive wobble was just because it had been a year since I had ridden.  OK, I'll get better, right?  But I didn't.  No matter how much I tried, or what I did to try to compensate, that wobble was still there.  According to the Triumph's Owner's Manual, the front tire pressure should be 36 psi cold, and the rear should be 46 psi cold.  It's really a pain in my ass (my back actually) to get down low enough to get my tire chuck into position and then hold it in place long enough to air up the tires or check the pressure, so I really didn't want to do it, at all.  I mean the tires looked sufficiently aired up, and it rode OK.  So I kept putting it off, and putting it off.  And the wobble was still with me, each time I rode.

Well, I finally heard something that concerned me the first of this week.  As I went over a particular textured section of pavement, I noticed that "hollow" sound that a low tire sometimes makes.  So no more excuses, time to hurt myself before I REALLY hurt myself by having a tire come off the bead.  A "blowout" on a motorcycle is usually a deadly thing at speeds above 30mph or so because there is NO recovery, especially if it's a front tire.  I took the Triumph out of the garage again the next morning as usual and had her running out in the sun when I realized that I never checked the air pressures in the tires the last time I rode.  So...  Back in the garage I go!  And it just so happened that where I stopped put the two valve stems for the tires in the most absolute worst positions to reach with my air chuck, wouldn't you know it.  My back was already singing it's familiar whiney song, so I hastily popped the air chuck on and noticed the front tire was reading around 32 psi and the rear was about 39 psi, so a tad low.  If this was a car tire I would have thought nothing of it.  But I knew the bike was handling sluggish so I squeezed the air trigger a few times on each tire and let it go at that.  Took off on my roll down the ally as usual when I "launch" the Triumph and I could immediately feel the difference in the handling.  I smiled!  When I made my usual 90* right turn to leave at the end of the ally, something now didn't feel "right" so I was going to just go around the block and right back in the garage to see what was going on.  On my ride around to the garage, the bike was very erratic, very squirrely, and I actually had some difficulty executing just simple 90* turns too. 

Back in the garage, and I got lucky and my valve stems were now at their easiest to get to positions.  I popped my air gauge/chuck on and whoa!  I now had 40 psi in the front and 50 in the rear tire.  Looks like I had squeezed the trigger just one too many times and I had actually OVERFILLED each tire by 4 psi.  I used the built-in air bleed on my air chuck to bleed off the excess pressure, checked it twice in each tire, and I was now absolutely certain I was dead on balls accurate (an industry term...).  Back out on the road and the difference between the CORRECT air pressure and ANY other random air pressure was AMAZING!  And the difference it made in the way I could ride the Triumph was equally amazing as well.  I instantly went from riding a cow with only a 2x4 to steer it with to being on a purebred cutting horse that knew and anticipated my every move!  I think the bike would have stood up on it's on WITHOUT the kickstand!  My "wobble" was almost completely gone and all was again right in my world!

So IF you ever have one of those days where your motorcycle just doesn't seem to want to go where you point it, take some time to bond with your air pressure gauge and your tires and see if that will get you back in the saddle with a smile on your ass!  READ the Owners Manual and try those recommended air pressures first.  And if that doesn't change your ride from a cow to a cutting horse, then break out the magnifying glass and start reading the sidewalls of the tire to find the tire manufacturer's recommended tire pressures.  It might just make all the difference in the world to you too!

For those of you that are trying to follow this Blog, my apologies.  Either Blogger has been hiding it from me, or I lacked the intelligence required to find it, either way, I have a handle on it now.

I have been riding, and I won't waste time detailing my "Daily Ride" since I got my Registration and tag last month.  Let me just sum it up as "I'm LEGAL, and I'm trying my best to ride every day.  We are "Mid-Summer" here in The Ham, and daily temps are almost bustin' 100 Dixie Degrees now.  Way too hot for me to ride and not succumb to the effects of heat stress while riding so I try to walk in the front door after I drop Joy off at her work every morning and then straight out the back door, into the garage and onto the Triumph.  OH...  To restate what I am straddling these days, it's a 2005 Triumph America 900.  I got it way back last year from a friend, and I had even worked on the bike for him for several years before that so I am intimately familiar with the bike.  Perfect?  Not by a long shot, but everything works (excepting the speedo) and she's quite, runs good, looks good and is a great ride to boot.  Matter of fact, the 2005 Triumph America was voted "Best Cruiser 2005" by some magazine back in the day.  And I don't doubt it in the least either as it has some really nice high end features that really set it apart from most bikes that I have ridden.  Like Automatic Carb Heaters for high altitude cruising so your carburetors don't ice up.  Huge, 15 inch rear tire really helps to soak up the bumps and "road tickle" too.  All in all, it is a very good looking, very ridable, and very capable mount.

For several months before I climbed back on her this time around, I set myself to doing some exercises that would help make the physical transition from "Couch Potato" to "Bad Ass Motorcycle Rider" status as quickly and as painlessly as possible.  I worked the crap out of my hand grip exercisers, and I can really tell that was a smart move and has paid off greatly.  Also did some leg work to help me make it into and out of the saddle a little easier.  I can make the leg swing over the bike, fairly, OK, but it takes my hip joints and leg/back muscles well past their normal range of movement and I would find that I would quickly have leg and lower back cramps after mounting.  And that too has had good results this time around.

Took the longest continuous ride (35 miles), with the most continuous higher speed (55+), at the hottest part of the day (90+ degrees), and survived!  And I learned a few valuable lessons today too.

Lesson #1:  Any motorcycle designer who puts a large chrome panel on the top of a motorcycle gas tank, has never ridden said conveyance at "High Noon" and been literally BLINDED by the reflection of the sun overhead in that chrome panel!  I will be using some of the flat black "Plasti Dip" just as soon as possible to cover that mirror up!

Lesson #2:  My "protective clothing ensemble" consists of blue jeans and a T-shirt.  Which at temps 90 Dixie Degrees and higher, turn you into a rolling oven.  As I left this afternoon for the return portion of my trip, I experimented with wetting the thigh and calf areas of my blue jeans with water.  I also hit my T-shirt a little bit too.  Pleased to say it helped to keep me cool, a lot!  So some sort of cup holster and a large squirt bottle for water will quickly be added for this summer.

And that's about it for now.  Matter of fact, this is exactly where I will end this edition of Rider BHM for now.  Looking forward to continuing blogging about an old geezer vs. Mother Nature in the near future!  

An Old Coot and his Scoot...

WOW...  Starting a NEW Blog.  A daunting task, to say the least.  Especially for someone who doesn't "type", well, at least not the way you probably do.  My typing skills are left over from my Pre-Computer Dinosaur days as a Cop having to type out the nightly Police Blotter when I worked as Security Controller (USAF SP name) /slash/ Dispatcher (common Police name) and there could be ABSOLUTELY NO MISTAKES, PERIOD!  I "could" type like you, but when every single keystroke had to be the absolute right one, otherwise you would have to retype the entire page, then you found that typing with all 5 fingers on each hand meant that you could actually hit the WRONG key 10 times as fast as if you just engaged and tasked ONE finger on each hand.  Think of it as a 10X Redundant Safety that kept my coffee fueled brain on the same lap as my fingers were on.  It saved me a LOT of retyped blotters over my 6 years as a cop in the USAF.  And it's a very hard habit to break too, so it's what remains today after nearly 60 years of exchanging oxygen for carbon monoxide on this planet.  And I doubt if I will be changing anytime soon either...

This blog, is a place for me to relive, share and explain, some of my more happy memories, people, experiences, trips and motorcycles I've had, primarily here in Birmingham, Alabama over the years.  Let's start with the name of this blog, RIDER BHM.  Should be an easy one to 'splain and understand...

RIDER:  It's what I am, what I do, how I think, how I live and how I love!  The world, and everything in it, looks drastically different thru the eyes of a Rider.  Potholes can be Death Sentences, and a patch of sand/dirt in the road can cause you to slide right thru that stop sign or shoot off the roadway like a Frisbee in a curve.  EVERTHING you do on a motorcycle, literally, involves "Life and Death" decisions, constantly.  Therefore, everything takes on a much more "serious" look, whether it's a Cheeseburger, or a Crow.  "The Crow" is a long story, and I'm quite sure I'll relive and retell it here sometime in the near future.  Exactly "What" do I ride?  I will, and have, ridden just about every type/style/brand of motorcycle ever made over the years beginning in the mid 1960's.  Stretched Panhead Choppers in the '70's, Café Racers, Crotch Rockets, Drag Bikes, TT racers, Trials Machines, Motocross, stock Street Bikes, Super Bikes, British Big Twins, More Hondas than I care to remember and even more Harleys.  I've ridden motorcycles that people have never even heard of, like Bultaco, Ducotti, Ariel, Puch, Allstate, Cushman, Norton, Munch Mammoth, Hodaka, Buell, Rokon, Styer, Husqvarna, Alouette, Sachs, Borile, Ossa, Agusta, And SO many more that have long since slipped off the pages of my brain.  I've been on a lot of motorcycles, probably have logged over a million miles on two wheels in my lifetime.  Got Married in 1980, climbed off motorcycles completely and worked and raised a family with my wife of 36+ years.  Oh I had a couple of motorcycles here and there over the years, but they were usually "project" bikes and never really did make it back to the streets (like the 1976 Honda 550-4 I have in the garage now...).  Fast forward to 2016...  My oldest Son is looking 40 in the eyes, has two kids 12 years old, my middle Son is almost 35, also has two kids under 5, and my Daughter is chasing 30 and is happy being single with no kids.  Well...  I've done my part, for the last 36 years, stayed safe (even gave up my career as a cop too), and I am now knocking on the door that says 60.  And I have denied who I am, what I feel, and what I love to do for way too long.  Life is short, and for me, it's a lot shorter than for a lot of you that are much younger than I.  So, I made the decision that I want back on, NOW!  I don't want to wait, I don't want to think about next year, I want back on...  NOW!

And here "she" is!  2005 Triumph America 900!  I haven't "named" her yet, I'm kinda personal about that sort of stuff and the name hasn't spoken to me yet, but it will, they always whisper.  Speedo is broke, so I don't have a clue exactly how many miles is on her, but I know the original owner pretty well, and these are the ORIGINAL 2005 Bridgestone tires she came over on the boat with, so I'm gonna guess well under 10K miles.  Still has the original brake pads, chain, bulbs, seat, etc.  Hell it's only had the oil changed 3 times!  The original owner lived in an Apartment near me, and I had worked on the bike for him several times before I purchased it from him.  He had nowhere "protected" to keep her, covers would frequently blow off, so he kept it parked mainly under the overhang of some big bushes that sat up high on a retaining wall.  That kept the sun off the bike most of the day, but it was caked with leaf debris when I first got her to work on a few years ago.  All in all, the paint is about perfect, seat cover is on it's last leg, some rusty parts here and there, some rust coming thru the chrome on the shocks and handlebars but I think with the right polish, it should not really be noticeable.

I've had her for over a year now, the previous owner made a boo boo on the title (checked the "Mileage is Incorrect" box and in AL, motorcycles are "Mileage Exempt" vehicles) that had us jumping thru hoops and trying to arrange his and my wife's work schedules so we could all meet at a Notary Public to get a bunch of papers stamped, sealed, and perforated in all the right places.  We finally pulled it off a couple of weeks ago and after a VERY expensive trip to the title office ($175.00!), we walked away with a legal title and tag.  In the year I've had her, I had put about 1000 miles on her before the old tag expired last year.  And since getting the new tag this year, I've put 200 miles on her.

 Here she is from this morning's trip, sitting in front of Birmingham's only Castle, Quinlin Castle.  I've been staying close to home, avoiding any roads that have speeds over 40mph since I don't trust the tires.  They are in excellent condition, 90% tread, very little sign of dry rot or cracking, but still, they ARE 11 years old and I just don't trust them.  I won't be riding anyone OR going "fast" until I get some new meats on the ground. 

BHM:  The other part of this Blog's name is the airport code for Birmingham, Alabama.  Back when I flew a lot, I was fascinated by all the City destination tags I would see all over everyone's luggage.  Birmingham has always been abbreviated locally as B'ham, so for me, BHM was a natural.  I've ridden Motorcycles all over the world, and of all the places I've ridden, BHM has got to be one of the hardest cities to ride in!  The streets SUCK, the traffic light sensors will usually NOT activate for a motorcycle and we have a lot of hills and blind curvy roads - WITH HIDDEN DRIVEWAYS!  You may not know this, but nearly all traffic lights are activated by essentially a large electro magnetic loop buried in the roadway right where you stop your car.  If you look at the roadway closely, you usually can see the buried loop at the redlight area,  It's just an electrified loop of metal, and that generates a constant magnetic field.  When your car pulls up to the redlight, all that metal in your car passes over/thru that magnetic field and it causes the field to fluctuate and distort.  The traffic controller, usually a large silver box mounted on one of the redlight poles there at the intersection, can sense/measure/see that field distortion and it says "Oh... I have a car that wants to pass thru the intersection...", and it causes the lights to change in your favor so you can proceed.  Well, in BHM, 80% of the redlight sensors don't work for the cars, and they damn sure won't see what little metal a motorcycle has compared to what metal a car carries.  Most of BHM's redlights are set up on a simple timer that just changes the redlights every 3 minutes or so.  Well 3 minutes sitting on top of a 400 degree motorcycle engine, with 100 degree air all around you, and 150 degree asphalt under you and the sun glaring down on you cooking your skin to a crust... can indeed seem like a lifetime!  Several Cities in Tennessee (may even be a Statewide law), know that motorcycles won't trip a properly functioning traffic sensor and the Rider will just have to sit there and bake, freeze, drip, etc. until the timer cycles the light, so they allow motorcycles to "run" the light after stopping and treating it like a stop sign, proceeding once it is safe to do so.  I sure wish BHM would pull their heads out of their collective asses and allow us to do the same.  But then I wish pigs DID fly too...

One of the first things I noticed last year when I got on the Triumph and rode for a little over 2 months, was that muscles I once used while riding, had long since give up the ghost and headed to Bermuda to relax on the beach!  I mean after the first week of riding, my arms, especially my left, clutch, hand and arm, were literally screaming at me with pain!  So, I've been using my "downtime" over the last year to better "condition" myself for when I could once again climb back in the saddle and point my head into the wind to chase the setting sun.  To help with my clutch arm/hand (clutch), I started using my exorcise grips, and I have done them for a 1000 reps each day since (500 per hand).  And after 3 days of riding daily, my arms feel great!  I also have been conditioning my legs to help me hold the bike up at the redlights, etc. and to help me have the strength to "catch" it, like when my foot slips in the gravel or something.  I nearly dropped it last year when my foot did slip in the gravel as I was pulling into my garage, and let me tell ya, trying to "catch" 500 pounds once it has started towards the ground is not an easy task, for anybody!  Especially ME!  Well, I DID catch it, and kept her from hitting the ground, got her back upright and parked in the garage.  I couldn't walk to the house however, and had to have my wife bring the car around and pick me up and take me around to the front of the house.  I couldn't get out of my chair or actually walk resembling anything close to humanlike for 3 days.  Sometimes when I would be sitting at the redlight waiting for it to change, my legs would start "hopping", and there again, when you're counting on your legs to maintain your balance and they turn into little hoppy toads, it can make for some interesting moments.  The kids in the cars around me all thought it was hilarious however!  So, I have been conditioning my legs too, stretch bands, stretch tubes and using my big exercise ball to do squats has helped a lot.  I can feel the difference in my legs and back this time around. 

There's still a lot of work to be done!  Both to the motorcycle, AND to the old guy riding it!  But, when you love it, it's not really work.  My wife asked me "Do you just want to DIE?"  And I answered her, "No, I want to LIVE"!  There's an old saying that struck a chord with me as soon as I saw it, it goes:  "Every Man DIES.  Not Every Man Truly LIVES".  And I can honestly say, that I am at my happiest when I am riding.  Everything about life is enhanced on a motorcycle.  All of your senses come alive and hone themselves to a razor's edge when you ride a motorcycle.  Do I think about Death.  Constantly.  Especially when I ride.  How can you not think of Death as it whips by under your feet just a short, 8 inches, below you.  But it's in recognizing that Death is only inches away, constantly, that you realize that you have made to the very edge of Life.  You are pitting your skills, your senses, your reactions, your perceptions... against Death, with every ride, every mile, and every inch of your journey.  I bet my life, every time I ride, that my skills, senses, reactions and perceptions are better, better than gravity, traction, inertia, speed, stupidity and immovable objects.  And it's only on that raw edge, between Life and Death, where you find out whether you measure up, or if you were just lying to yourself.  

  

So, if you like motorcycles, and/or know me, then follow along with an Old Coot and his Scoot as he grabs life by the balls and relearns what living is all about.  I can tell a pretty mean tale, and I call 'em like I see 'em, and I'm sure this journey will be filled with both funny and sad moments along the way.  One of the biggest things an my mind is trying to see if the girls still yank their tops up for a Rider as we go by???  If, so, I might need to invest in a neck brace!