Houston, I have a problem!

Ever have a motorcycle shut down on you, in midflight, at 70 mph? All systems just kaput, instantly and all at once! I just did, on a mental health run to Cle Elum, Washington,  and back on my clattertrap KLR 650.....

 As I coasted to a stop on Washington State's Hwy 97, my biker's mind was already grappling with explanations and solutions... No explosion, din or clatter -- so probably not a grenaded engine; no sputter, cough, or wheeze -- so unlikely to be fuel-related; so, the only alternative, something electrical....

 But what electrical? What could collapse a sweet-running KLR all at once and without warning? Spark plug lead, of course, but it's buried under the fuel tank, and if it somehow got vibrated off, I wasn't going to be able to fix the thing alongside the road anyways, and I had disabled the sidestand safety switch and the clutch override safety switch, which, if I still had them, would cause such an instant shutdown if they malfunctioned...... Hey.... Wait a minute!

I then remembered that the internet article I read years ago showing how to cut the wires to those two switches, and then solder them together bypassing the stupid things.... and how the author strongly suggested soldering rather than the much easier twist and tape method..... I have to admit I don't know how to solder, but I do know how to twist and tape, and so I did..... do you suppose?

 Yup, within seconds, I had found that one of my old school redneck twists and tapes had untwisted and almost untaped..... I pulled the remains of the rotten old tape off and re-

twisted the bare wires, and the bloody good bike fired up again most satisfactorily! On the road again......

I love solving mechanical mysteries, especially those of my own making....

My drug of choice....

Good motorcycles are powerfully addictive...and I think the reason is because, like drugs, they seem to make you more than you are. Faster, more powerful, "able to leap buildings in a single bound!" Good motorcycles provide the illusion, at least, of total freedom and power... You can change horizons as fast as you can twist the throttle; you can cross continents, rolling across borders like an unstoppable storm; you can literally extend "yourself" for hundreds and hundreds of miles.... Thousands, really, to be honest.... Those of us born to the wheel know how addictive they are, and we are good with it.

The photo below, taken on the Seward Highway in Alaska, 2005, our second trip up, is kinda how I feel about all motorcycles on nearly all days! I love the damn things; I will ride them until I die, or until I can no longer hold one up....and then I'll bolt on a sidecar and ride until I die! If Heaven hasn't got good motorcycles, than why is it called Heaven? I pity people who don't ride...how do they live, and why?  Rubber down, my Buckoes!  And keep that white line running!

Becoming a motorcyclist...

Becoming a motorcyclist

was the best decision of my life, and I was fortunate enough to make it early.  Notice I said "motorcyclist," and not "biker."  I don't collect, build, sit on, trailer or show "bikes."   I ride motorcycles... long and hard and often.

 A modern motorcycle, ridden correctly, is one of the most freedom enhancing machines ever devised by human beings.... continents, mountain ranges, deserts and plains.... they all go  much better with a motorcycle! I am so thankful that I was given the freedom and opportunity to spend much of my life on a series of powerful and affordable bikes....

I was born free, lived free, and -- God willing -- I shall die free, and no one could ask more from life.  Freedom is my most important, over-riding value, and nothing lends itself to freedom as much as a  motorcycle.

The greatest impediments to human freedom? At least in this society? Are the restrictions and fears generated in your own mind.... Don't let your dying words be, "I wish I would have....."  Regrets on the deathbed are to be avoided at all costs.
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I'd rather......

...live my life in the wide open, crossing at my will the high, cloud-draped mountains and the long deserts that fade off into blue, than to live forever in a palace of granite and gold strewn with pearls....

I'd rather live with my wife, she with her eyes and cheeks bursting with health and laughter, than with any slender, high fashion model with nothing but a deadness behind her eyes....

I'd rather be a "patch of sunshine fading on the grass," and disappear forever, with my ashes dancing away in the wind, than a centuries old, tight-wrapped mummy hidden deep in dark vaults of limestone.... with only the silence of cold stones above my dead bones.....

A quality motorcycle, an uncrowded road, and the freedom to ride it... and my gentle, brave and always smiling partner on the back.... a quiet place to pitch our tent at night.... That's all I need; and that's all I want.

And I have it in abundance....

We go fast and free and far.....

saying words to each other through our headsets that only we, and God, can hear.....

I grew up pretty much alone....not much adult supervision. It's because of that, I believe, that I can only endure many people around me for only so long... then I must be alone for while, or only with my beloved wife, to recharge my "social" batteries. Motorcycles are good for this...... a bike allows you to flow through the world without much impediment .... or so at least it seems. Probably why so many loners are bikers.....

Anybody can ski downhill.....

Here's old CJ "skinning up to the Bump Shack at Summit at Snoqualmie ski area, Washington State, with his cherished one and only close behind snapping her pictures..... Great three shift weekend wearing the red jacket... at two different ski areas...did two backboards, two knees, and taught some rescue tobogganing skills to some eager-eyed young recruits.... I have a full life. With something important to do, the winter flies by, and I'm as happy in my life as I have ever been, even at seventy long years. I believe more than ever that we must find something important to do, something that is seen by others to be important, to maximize both the length and quality of our lives. For you flatlanders ............... (A bump shack at a ski area is at the top of the hill, where the toboggans, trauma packs, traction splints, and spine boards are kept, along with a patroller ready to be dispatched to any area of injury.....the term evolved from the time when the ski patroller simply stood at the top, and would be "bumped" off by another patroller coming up the lift. After about a half century, somebody got the bright idea that a shack in which to keep out of the weather might be nice! "Skins" are long pieces of nylon with a one-way nap that are applied to the bottom of the skis in order to allow climbing up rather than sliding down. Red and I try to climb up the hill at least once during my shifts, to give the heart and lungs a therapeutic workout.... Thus ends my mini-ski patrol lesson........! ) I love skiing and I love ski patrolling, but Friday I spent some time with my motorcycles, both of them silent, still, hooked up to their battery monitor IVs, and the Great Plains of America are beginning to call me again..... "Come! Come, my child-man! My flowers will soon be blooming, my grasses swaying... Come! Come and let us once again visit the prayer wheels of the Northern Cheyenne!" Soon I will be longing for summer, and for the plains of North America, plains once crossed over in covered wagons by my ancestors... I believe

I can do one more crossing! At least one!