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|  There has been a great deal of coverage lately regarding the killing of a single particular lion in Zimbabwe by an American trophy hunter. I’m angry, and wish no good will upon the pathetic excuse for a human being who ‘hunted’ this lion- but that isn’t what I want to talk about here.
Life is full of surprises: some good, some not so good. I don’t deal well with surprises, but to counter that I’ve adopted a ‘seize control’ mentality that sometimes kicks in and gets me past the unexpected. My motorcycle road trip for 2015 is essentially a case history of that adaptation of mine, and I’m not sure whether to be proud or a bit sheepish. Either way, here is my accounting of the Journey of Unexpected Turns. Wherein I was supposed to be going to Reno, Nevada, but ended up going somewhere else entirely…
Continue reading 2015 Motorcycle road trip: An Unexpected Journey It all started in August of 2014. Irene thought her Mother really wanted a companion cat, and so she went out and found what she thought to be exactly the kitten her mother desired: a Siamese – Balinese cross kitten, to be exact. The kitten was to spend a day or two in isolation at our house before making the trip over to the island to live. It didn’t work out that way…
I set out in June of 2014 (June 28, to be precise) to meet up with my brother Colin for the second of our ‘annual’ motorcycle road trips. The plan was simple: go to Yellowstone Park, and see what is to be seen. A very rough map of the sites we visited (if not the route we followed… more details below) looks something like this: Everyone who rides a motorcycle should wear a helmet. I am sure some people will disagree, and that is their right. But, and I mean no insult, wearing no helmet at all is foolhardy. I might even say going lidless is stupid. But hey, stupid is a choice sometimes too: and it is true that a helmet won’t save your life in every circumstance. Wearing a helmet doesn’t make you a super-hero, or indestructible, or even close to ’safe’. You are better off learning how to ride defensively all the time and going without a helmet than popping on a helmet and riding like an idiot. But if you want to go helmet free, you may as well stop reading now. The freedom to wear or not wear a helmet isn’t the topic of this post. I assume you have already chosen to wear a helmet- good for you! I want to share my continuing journey towards the unachievable ‘perfect’ helmet, in the hopes that someone will benefit from my mistakes and discoveries. Because I have owned a lot of helmets over my past five years ‘back in the saddle’, and I’ve learned a few things along the way…
Continue reading A Cornucopia of crash caps…what I’ve learned about noggin protection  I have been running a personal blog for many years- arguably since about 1997. I think I switched to WordPress in 2005 after previously managing with a static HTML page and then a PHPNuke website. I started getting comment ‘spam’ shortly after I started using WordPress: like email spam, spam comments are irritating messages that aren’t really created by actual people who have something meaningful to say. I decided in December of 2013 that 2014 would be the year I upgraded the performance of my 2011 Harley Davidson Road Glide. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with my bike’s get up and go. But after over 65,000 kilometres of riding, I felt I knew better what I wanted when I rolled on the throttle. And I had driven some steep roads at American highway speeds i.e.: somewhere around 130 km/h (85 miles per hour), and there were times where I felt the end of the throttle looming.
Continue reading Looking for things to make us go: Road Glide performance upgrades  I recently upgraded (side graded?) from a circa 2011 MacBook Pro to a 2015 MacBook. This change isn’t for everyone, but I’m pretty happy with the differences. In this post I explore what changed, and why I made the leap.
 My vast audience has no doubt noticed that the site has been sporadically unavailable, slow, or outright broken periodically for the past few days. I won’t go into all the details at this time, although I expect such details will be coming. For now, be aware that I have made/am making a number of updates/upgrades to improve performance, mobile device compatibility, and functionality of the site. I also intend to start posting a little bit more regularly. In the interim, please accept m apologies for the disruptions! Back in August of 2013 I set out on what would be my longest motorcycle road trip up to that point in time. Apparently it was so big that it has taken me nearly two years to even start documenting it 😉 That’s a little bit of an exaggeration- I did post a few things for friends and family on Facebook. And I managed to edit one of what expect to eventually be at least three and probably four videos down to a reasonable size to post. But along with a lot of other neglect of my blog, I seriously procrastinated in creating a post here. Time to rectify that oversight! Continue reading Motorcycle road trip 2013: Sturgis, New Mexico, Grand Canyon, Vegas, and aliens |  | |||
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