Category: small town

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The Statistics of Fun

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Who would have thought. Who would have thought that an inanimate object could be such an emotional thing? Certain bikers get caught up on fuel economy, horsepower, quarter-mile times and the like but what about the statistics of fun? Sure, horsepower can be good fun. Good gas mileage can be a kick in the pants when you know deep down you are “sticking it to the man” at the pump. But just for a moment, stop and think about the fun you have in between gas stops and those few times when you aren’t twisting the throttle to its stops. Feel that? That, simply put, is fun. You can’t really measure it on a pie graph, and you sure can’t measure it by sitting on the couch. It mostly happens when you can feel the wind in your face and the road beneath your tires. Sometimes it happens when you walk out to the garage and just – stare at your ride.

We often forget “fun” when talking about our bikes. We talk about customization, where we’ve been, how much we have invested in our bikes but rarely say “and I have a lot of fun riding it.” Maybe it’s implied, I don’t know, but you would think it would come up in conversation. I’ve seen motorcycles that just scream for someone to rip it down the quarter-mile. I’ve seen custom bikes that raise the question if it can be ridden at all. I’ve seen a smoky burnout in a cheering crowd that looked like a lot of fun (not on my bike please) but was it any fun riding it there? I guess after a few beers who cares, right?

Could it possible that saying we are having fun riding our motorcycle takes something away from the image we are trying to put forth? I bet those “nice” people on Honda’s are having fun, (you know – the ones you used to meet?) but what about the rest of us. I’ve had a few rides where it wasn’t a lot of fun during the ride do to the weather or something like that, but when I look back on that ride I don’t have much to complain about. And overall I think we all ride for the fun of it –  at least I do. Where are the patches sewn on leather jackets proclaiming “If You Can Read This – I’m Having Fun” or “Loud Pipes – Having Fun.” If you’ve seen one, let me know.

It appears that the culture of riding is based around the lifestyle and attitude of it all. We ride to have fun for sure and I know it goes beyond saying it out-loud, but to measure it like torque, horsepower or gas-mileage isn’t as easy as hooking your bike to a machine. I think, and this is just me, that it all boils down to perception. Fun isn’t built into our bikes, it’s built into us. We determine the fun we’re going to have in anything we do, and its up to me to decide if what I’m riding or where I’m riding to, is fun or not. And it’s revealed in what my perception of fun is compared to yours. It’s no different from our jobs, chores, or life in general, we can either make it enjoyable or make it suck. You decide. Can you measure suck on a pie graph?

 

 

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Ride Like the Wind

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Somewhere in a pasture deep in the Flint Hills of Kansas is a limestone rock standing upright placed there by early settlers. Upon that limestone rock are these words; “Man, the wind sure blows hard in Kansas, hang on to this here rock.” When you’re raised in Kansas it really doesn’t seem that noticeable, but I guess you could say that the wind can be a little stiff sometimes. I often think the barbed wire fences that crisscross Kansas were put there to keep your stuff from blowing more than a mile away. As a kid growing up I don’t remember the wind blowing like it does now, but of course then I was a little closer to the ground and usually preoccupied with kid stuff. At least now I don’t have to worry about the wind messing my hair up.

Riding into work this morning on my Road King it was obvious this was going to be one of those days the weatherman warns about, “wind from the South at 15-20 with gusts up to 30 today,” sounds like a warning to most, but here it’s just like any other day. Now if the weatherman said it was going to be dead-calm today, I would be alarmed as that is out of the ordinary.

As a motorcyclist we often hear the phrase “ride like the wind.” I will tell you that if I rode like the wind today, I would be arrested for assault as the ride in was brutal. Normally heading with the wind isn’t bad, but even that was a handful. Riding West was like my world had tilted to one side with the horizon angled sharply while my shirt collar was slapping my face faster than a hummingbird flaps it’s wings. Okay, so maybe that was an exaggeration, it was more like a meadowlark flapping it’s wings, after all that is our State Bird. But, what do you do? We ride motorcycles and that is just part of it. If it’s cold or hot, windy or raining, we ride – at least some of us do. I didn’t say it was fun all the time, and there can be those days when you just have to convince yourself that even if you would have driven the car, you would have hated yourself. I sure wouldn’t want to hate myself.

So next time you are driving through, or better yet, riding through Kansas, don’t let the wind bother you. It’s going to blow no matter what and there is usually a limestone fence post somewhere to hang on to, so just get used to it. As native Kansans are, we just lean into the wind when it blows; hence the earlier comment about being alarmed if the wind stops blowing. That’s how you determine a native Kansan like myself to someone just visiting – if the wind stops, us Kansas folks fall down.

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Puzzled

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Life happens and as it does, it changes us. Daily. The morning’s ride to work is usually something that is ordinary and uneventful, but as I put my kickstand down after arriving at work, I stopped and realized I couldn’t remember the ride in. Twenty minutes had gone by and although I was coherent and aware of the ride, all I could remember was that two miles of Skiddy where the temperature dropped. The smell of cedar trees and how they reminded me of the pencils my mother would bring home from Anderson’s Lumber and Hardware where she worked part-time. I used those pencils in school and as I was leaving my teeth marks in them during Mrs. Stenstrom’s class, that smell of cedar must have stayed with me. Or was it the lead in those pencils?

I thought about a life-long friend of mine, Russ, who is moving back to Skiddy in the near future and how it would be to move your life back to where you grew up, after so many years of living in Wisconsin. Not difficult in the sense of moving your stuff, but in the emotional sense. I often think I should have taken the chance and moved outside of White City and experienced something else. Sure, the community made me who I am, but would moving have changed me? Again, life happens every day, so would it have been that big of a deal to move? Hmmm. Even so, I thought about those friends of mine that I grew up with and how some have stayed, but most have moved on. I still feel that connection with a few of them and it feels good to know that no matter where someone is in this world, we’ll always have that going for us.

The ride continued past the Skiddy Cemetery and I noticed how the sun was coming up over a bank of dark clouds in the East. The edge of the clouds filtered the sun just enough to make this particular morning look a little different. Or was it one of those life moments when I was changing. To see something in a different light might have a new meaning here. Maybe there is a scientific reason for the different light and how it affects you but I’m betting it’s more of a spiritual reason. The ride continued on, and I thought about how our lives are kind of like puzzles. The big difference here is we don’t know what the finished picture is going to be. Each piece we place in our puzzle of life changes what the picture will be and eventually the outcome, and each piece is represented by those people in our lives, our jobs, our environment, etc. A subtle change is all it takes to completely change the entire puzzle of life. It’s not necessarily a good or bad thing here, it’s just the way it is. As we get about half way through our puzzle, we can start seeing the cabin by the water (or apparently a forest of cedar trees in my case) and the puzzle seems to be falling into place. Then a few more pieces are placed and you realize that this puzzle may be harder than you think. One thing is for sure; those that “fit” into our puzzle will be there to stay. A lot to think about on a twenty-minute ride. Or in this case; what ride?

So I made it to work safe and sound. In summary, science says when you ride into a valley the temperature will probably drop a few degrees. Also, someone decided cedar trees make good pencils, and you must have patience to put a puzzle together. But for twenty minutes I thought about friends that are dear to me and how we fit into each other’s lives. Friends near and far will always be friends, and some are very close to me no matter how far away they are. They are an important piece to my puzzle and without them my life wouldn’t be complete.

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Five-Pound Bag

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There is never enough time in the day. Well of course not, because if there were we would be “all caught up” and that just can’t happen. We need to always be behind and scrambling to fit all that’s on our list of things to do into a five-pound sack. That is to say our list weighs ten pounds, or something like that. It’s crazy how we feel the pressure to do it all to make time for…what? What are we trying to make time for? We have a good idea of what we want out of life, but are we going about it the right way? We spend so much time working and worrying about the small stuff that our lives are happening right before us. Everyone starts each day with an equal amount of time so how do they get it all done when I can’t even fight my way out of this so-called five-pound bag?

I know what you’re thinking – time management, right? What I really need here is to manage finding a little time to sit in the shade. When I say “sit in the shade” I really mean I need to spend more time working on a balance in my life. Of course there is still a list of to-do’s to get done, but once in a while I need to sit and just take it all in. You know the feeling, the sound of “outside” and nothing else. In the sun or in the shade, just taking it in and realizing that I am alive and there are things that I worry about that probably don’t deserve the energy.

There are those people who are very good at taking it easy and there are those people who make it look like they are taking it easy but still manage to fill their five-pound bag. I envy those folks for they are the ones that have truly found that balance I seek to find for myself. But as we all know, there is always something to do or get done no matter how hard we work at it. So when is that moment when you sit down and take it all in?

What we don’t realize is we really are making time to take it all in – a little bit every day in those little things that we find enjoyable. Maybe you find gardening or cutting the grass enjoyable. Maybe its walking the dog or painting. Or in my case, my daily commute – riding my motorcycle to work and back every day. It’s that time when our hands are busy and our mind is clear or we are putting ourselves in a state of meditation to find that peace of mind to relax. That few moments when we are actually doing something all the while taking a moment to breathe and realize that yes, we are alive.

So when you need that mental vacation from time to time and you just want to sit and listen to the sounds of “outside”, remember that as you go through the day you are doing just that. It may not seem like it because we are focused on the task at hand. But with a little effort, stop and look around and you’ll be surprised at what you see. Your life is happening right before your eyes…take it all in and see how fast your five-pound bag fills up.

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Hello, My Name is Jeff

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The world really is a small place. Sure, if you pull back from the surface and look at a map, or take the globe off the shelf and give it a spin, it can look like a pretty large and daunting object. But seriously, how many times have you been miles away from home only to run into somebody you know? As random as it seems there is probably a logical explanation for that. For instance, like-minded people hang out or go to the same places, so it shouldn’t be out of the question that within the realm of travel that someone you know would also be there. Traveling on a motorcycle actually puts you in this position. As riders, we seek out the most scenic routes and the likelihood of running into familiar faces is probably high. Even if we are trying to find the solitude that riding a motorcycle brings, it is inevitable that the moment we look up from the gas-pump we will be faced with our neighbor down the street.

We’ve all been there – pumping gas, oblivious to the world around us, when someone calls out our name. We act like we don’t hear it the first time so of course we seem rude, but the second time we hear our name, we look up and then scramble to put a name to a face. We stammer through the conversation saying everything but the wrong name in hopes that it doesn’t seem obvious that their name has escaped us. “Hey guy, it’s been a long time!” He sure remembers me, but for whatever reason I can’t come up with his name and if I try I’m sure I will be wrong. And just as if it couldn’t get more awkward, his wife walks up and calls me by name as well. What did I do to have such an impact on someone’s life that they remember me? And now I have the opportunity to forget two names as they stand there before me. I can’t get my helmet on fast enough.

 This just became that weird feeling when you get on an elevator and say something to the only other person in the elevator and they don’t say anything back. You know they heard you, but…silence. Oh, and there is a gas-pump in the elevator with us.

The standard biker conversation ensues; how’s the ride going, where have you been and where are you heading sort of questions. But the one that caught me off guard was “when did you get a Harley-Davidson?” I’m confused. Most of the people I know are familiar with what I ride so this seemed like an odd question. They were riding a Goldwing so I felt it appropriate to answer their question with a question. “How long have you been riding a Honda?” Now they’re confused. This just became that weird feeling when you get on an elevator and say something to the only other person in the elevator and they don’t say anything back. You know they heard you, but…silence. Oh, and there is a gas-pump in the elevator with us.

Well it seems that at this very moment there is someone out there riding a Honda Goldwing that looks just like me and his name is Jeff. They realized their mistake and I’m off the hook trying to remember their names. I do have three new friends out of this, only one of which I haven’t met yet. It’s a small world and I wonder if I will ever run into this guy. And what will he say when I pull my helmet off and he sees himself on a Harley-Davidson? At least I’ll get his name right.

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Home by Midnight

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I know since the 1970’s things have changed, but really some things never change. I still live in the same small town, and I don’t really feel different different, so I suppose from the outside looking into my life some would think the opposite. Being a teenager in this mile-long town didn’t require much effort at all. I knew everyone and everyone knew me, so as in many small towns, the news of what you did usually beat you home. For the most part, everyone just got along and we grew up without much drama.

Saturday nights were predictable as you would either have a date or maybe you would just hang out with all your friends in front of the pool hall. Four blocks of Main Street kept the cars cruising back and forth and even though you passed Russ or Richard or any one of your classmates or friends out cruising, you would still give the “country wave.” There was usually a crowd in town on those Saturday nights, and after everyone had gone to the movies or out to eat we would always end up back on Main Street in White City going up and down that brick four blocks. You didn’t want to miss anything so you kept an eye on where everyone was and without the luxury of cell phones, we actually talked face to face with one another-or waved. Go figure…

Once in a while we would head out East to the edge of town and make a U-turn far from those pesky street lights of main. There was a stop sign there and as you turned around you could see my house. That house still stands and it brings me back to a time when life was moving at a slower pace-you know like cruising four blocks in my Dodge Charger and making endless U-turns, your girlfriend by your side listening to Chicago on the 8-track.

But it has to end sometime and she needs to be home at midnight, so using the old math problem “if one train leaves the station at 3:15 traveling at 60 m.p.h. and a second train leaves the station at 4:20…” we hurry back to her house to stay in good graces with her folks. Remember, we need to be able to go out next Saturday night and getting grounded puts a damper on things. We pull into the drive, shut the car off and kiss goodnight, just waiting for the porch light to flash on and off indicating the evening is over, or that my watch was wrong. Just one more minute and one more kiss. It was hard to let go of her to say goodnight even though I knew I would always see her again. I hated the drive home alone but it was always a good night. Sunday, with a little bit of luck, I could find myself at her place to share the afternoon.

Looking back at those days I realize this small town made me the guy I am today. I still do the “country wave” when a car passes by me, whether I know who it is or not, and Saturday nights aren’t quite as exciting as they used to be. I wish I still had that Charger and who knows where it might be. But whoever has it must know that every four blocks that Charger travels it wants to turn around. Some things never change.

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Motivation by Recreation

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It’s been a long time. Years. A certain period of time in your life when the weather was just winter or summer. Nothing in between, just one or the other. We were either going to school or we were out for the summer, and as kids that was all we knew. As we got older, we started to notice the difference in the seasons and that there was actually a clock on the wall. Life was going on around us and we were taking in the view beyond the grasshoppers, mud puddles and those really straight sticks you would find every so often that you couldn’t stand to leave behind. We were growing up.

All of a sudden life became a little bigger. Where you sat in the car became somewhat of a status symbol. Back seat – a friend, front seat passenger side – good friend, driver seat – popular with your friends, and sitting in the middle of the front seat – girlfriend. At this stage we were just trying to figure out what we were going to do next Saturday night, not what we were going to do with the rest of our lives. We looked forward to the weekends for reasons other than getting caught up on yard work. Motivation by recreation.

But we keep getting older and that clock on the wall keeps ticking. It’s funny, as kids we didn’t notice the clock on the wall and time literally stood still. Now the clock is such a big part of who we are and what we do, it demands our attention. Like it or not, it’s ticking. But as young adults we were starting to realize that there was something bigger coming down the pike.

I’ve ridden motorcycles for a lot of years and just like my friends who played sports in school, I found a sport that I connected with. Somewhere in the middle of White City Kansas as I was riding a wheelie through one of those mud puddles, it should have hit me then that this is what I could be doing for a living. At seventeen, having the 8-track stereo in your car and enough money for pizza and a movie with your girlfriend was the depth of my focus, not a career in the motorcycle business. Looking back there were a couple of things I would have focused on more and that could have directly changed my life.

The winding road of life can take you to places you never dreamed of. Sometimes it’s the long way around and sometimes it was the obvious route that our stubborn, teenage pride or angst ignored. Either way, the old saying “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey” holds true. So here I am, fifty years old and working in the motorcycle business, motivated by one of the things I enjoy doing. The clock is still ticking and I’m still intrigued by a really straight stick when I see one, but I’ve learned to leave it on the ground. I’m riding and writing about motorcycles and my life of growing up in a small town in hopes that someone will find a little humor in it. It has taken a few years but it has finally dawned on me that life is as big as you make it. And I’m in the driver’s seat!

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“And Then the Rain Came”

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“And then the rain came.”
Motorcycles and rain…makes you think, doesn’t it? Like a boat without a trailer and Ramen Noodles without that little packet of brown stuff-something’s just not right. Motorcycles, with their lack of all-weather protection, just aren’t for everyone. There is plenty of gear for the rider to wear to help fend off any inclement weather, but that is only going to stop some of the elements. You can bundle up when it’s cold, put on your rain suit if it’s raining, and any combination of heavier or lighter gear as the temperature fluctuates. Sometimes it’s a combination of several weather conditions we deal with at the same time, and that too, is a challenge.

A few years ago, I took a solo ride to Greeley Colorado for a family reunion. The weather man, in his war against motorcycles, was predicting heavy rain on the Friday morning in July I had planned to leave. Normally his ten percent accuracy rating would not bother me, but this time he seemed serious. My morning alarm was a clap of thunder and without too much trouble I could hear the heavy rain as it came down. But we’re riding today, right? Yep.

I had already loaded my motorcycle for the weekend trip, and with just less than 500 miles to get there, I was looking forward to it. I’ve ridden in rain like this before, and I knew getting on the bike that I might get a little wet. My rain suit is on and away I go down the street to the stop sign. Boy, it is raining. For the next 150 miles of interstate the rain would not let up. I’m not uncomfortable riding in this at all, but I think there were a few motorist that were afraid for me. I stopped in Hays Kansas at the Harley-Davidson dealer to take a break and have some coffee. For July in Kansas can be hot, with the rain the temperature was just right.

Any of you that have ever ridden with a rain suit on know that you will still get wet as the rain will creep in around your neck and up your sleeves-and this ride was no different. After thirty minutes or so, I put my rain suit back on and decided to head North to avoid the storm as heading West would have put me in it for several more hours. A few miles up the road the rain suit came off and although a little cloud cover was hanging over me, it had stopped raining.

The rest of the ride was fantastic. Sometimes it takes a storm to put you on the right road-the one you should have been on to begin with. Kind of like “life.” When you’re pushing hard in the direction you think you should be going, and you’re fighting it every step of the way, change your direction.

I ended up taking the back roads through Benkelman Nebraska and Wray Colorado where my folks grew up. We visited these places a lot when I was growing up to see family but I had never been through here on a motorcycle. Kind of appropriate since I was on my way to a family reunion in Greeley. The weatherman was right and I’m glad he was.

 

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A Short Ride

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I’m not sure of the exact moment it happened, but it did. Maybe it happened over time as if the water was contaminated and I was drinking from the garden hose. But somewhere, sometime, that young kid from White City Kansas grew up. I look back at all the time wasted on the small stuff when I should have been looking around right there “in the moment” and taking it in. There is nothing wrong with just wasting the day watching the clouds overhead or throwing rocks in the creek, and come to think of it, we should probably do more of that as adults. What I really mean is there is no substitute for “awareness.”

But as a young boy life is happening all around you and all you can think about is magnifying glasses and BB guns. It was the simple things that kept me occupied. Time flies and the next thing you know, you look around at your life and realize it’s the simple things that make you happy. Family and friends are more important than ever and there are days that go by so fast you can’t keep up.

So what’s this all have to do with motorcycles? Glad you asked. We get so worked up about taking a ride or going somewhere that we forget that it can be a simple, short ride into the country to just get you back on track. It doesn’t have to be a “planned ride” or group ride to make you feel better. Sometimes we have this notion that a ride has to epic to count-it doesn’t. So ride today. Take a 10 mile ride to hear the motor humming and the sun on your face. Don’t forget to stop at that old bridge and throw a few rocks in the creek-it might even bring a smile to your face.

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Snapshot

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The weirdest thing happened to me this morning. I was thinking about the start of the day and I started thinking of small bits of time throughout my life. Just things I remember about growing up. Like a birthday party in the yard or sitting on the back steps of the house with my BB gun. Or coming out of the walk-out basement door. You know the kind where you have to reach up and open it while you were walking up the stairs.  And the old metal shed on the other side of the driveway. It wasn’t used much and seemed real big at the time, but really it wasn’t. The feeling I had at night walking from the barn back to the house and having the urge to run. So many things that came to me like old Polaroid pictures that had to be shaken before you could see them. All are clear as a bell unlike the same old pictures from back then. Welcome to digital.

It’s funny how a mulberry tree in the back yard brings back some old memories or the fact that we raised bird dogs on the side of the barn that was located next to the same tree. English Setters and there were a lot of them. But what fun it was to be tackled to the ground like I had a pheasant in my pants. I’m a pretty likable guy, and it is apparent that is also true in the dog world. Or is it I smell remarkably like a bird?

But what fun it was to be tackled to the ground like I had a pheasant in my pants. I’m a pretty likable guy, and it is apparent that is also true in the dog world. Or is it I smell remarkably like a bird?

Even some of the “snapshots” I could see in my mind were of real pictures that were taken. The first day of school with me and my brother Danny standing next to our bicycles in the front yard. Sun in our faces, and our best plaid shirts on. Thinking about this makes me realize that my mother was standing there taking it as we were squinting and looked less than happy. I actually remember the picture but not my mother taking it. Weird. It had to have been around 1974 and even though we weren’t happy about it, I’m sure mom was ecstatic! After all it was probably a long summer of the screen door getting a work out, sewing patches in jeans and hearing “I’m hungry!”

I know we all have experienced something specific from the back of our minds that takes us to that very moment. It could be anything and anyone we’ve come across that sparks this feeling. I’m not sure what mine was today, but there is something nice about it. It is usually all good and it never fails to make me laugh. I hope today is a day that I can look back on and smile. Hopefully the “picture” in my mind will still be clear as a bell!