Our plan was grand: my cousin and riding buddy Dave “White Girl” Wensveen and I would tour Yellowstone, Beartooth Pass and Glacier National Park in one giant sweep, gathering them all like kids plucking pastel eggs from the green grass on Easter morning. We crammed White Girl’s Dodge diesel pickup camper full of provisions, stowed our twin VFR800s in the trailer and pointed the Dodge’s hood east. Things went wrong as soon as we left the driveway.
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It’s a side of motorcycling easily buried beneath the glory of dream tours, record breaking dirt jumps and lurid track lean angles: people get hurt in this sport.
Other drivers, weather, wildlife and pilot error can instantly change your day or permanently change your life. Accidents happen anywhere from suburban intersections with help minutes away to remote mountains or deserts hours from assistance. How prepared are you?
Man’s function is not to survive but to live, to put life in our years not add years to our life. The world belongs to those who regard their life loosely while holding their dreams tightly and at our passing, as our life plays out before our aged soul, we will contemplate a life fully explored or squandered in safety.
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September in the Pacific Northwest is Gods gift to motorcyclists. Cool air descends from Cascade Mountain crests chilling the warm valley floor like God’s own air conditioning, as select leaves turn colors, giving a preview of the fall to come. Crisp water from the appropriately named Icicle River dribbled to our left, foaming over smooth boulders as we rode.
So I celebrated the priceless moment by goosing the throttle, letting the rear step out in a slow, steady dirt drift while ahead of me Donni Reddington did the same, only in a much better way since she coaches dirt riders for a living at Skool Of Moto. If you asked either of us we would tell you, life will never get better than this, or more strange. I never thought I would be doing this on a Harley. But is it really that surprising?
Fall came today like always does in the Northwest, like a light switch flicked by the finger of God.
Yesterday, smoke from forest fires hung in the air perverting the sky sour and sunsets blood red, lingering in the air with depressing tenacity, draining spirits and permeating pores until residents could scarcely remember a day without the smoky blanket of depression draped over them. Then today, the unofficial first day of fall up here in the PNW, God cried “Hold. Enough.”
This one goes out to the man I never met, to the man who read my stories, loved my work and now is gone forever. Your name was Robert Terrance Brooks Sr. and you were my editor Rob Brooks’ father.
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No two forms of art blend so wonderfully as photography and the beauty of the sideways motorcycle. Difficulty in properly capturing the elusive bike in the passing drama makes motorcycle photography equal parts technical challenge and craft developed over time.
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I purchased the Cardo Pactalk Bold before my cousin Dave “White Girl” Wensveen and I left for our two-week trip to cover the MotoAmerica races at Laguna Seca and can summarize this review with two words: buy one. It paid for itself in the first minute I had it.
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Deposited like an ambulance delivering two terminally ill patients, a pair of ancient Honda Trial 90s were dropped off in front of my house silently; no fanfare, no excitement, no hurry or joy, unloaded quietly, then slowly rolled into my garage, their future operating room. Last licensed and running when President Clinton was entangled with Monica Lewinsky they languished outside for dozens of years worth of northwest sub-zero temps and triple digit heat. Decrepit and decaying, my job was to get them running. I promised their owner I could. I opened my mouth again.
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