Barrett-Jackson 2016 Photoblog

Yesterday I drove to Scottsdale with three friends (Ed, Chip, and Loren) for the annual Barrett-Jackson auto auction. My friend Dick Herman, who lives near Sacramento, California, was also there. We set up a rendezvous by the food stands and spent about an hour together, making plans for future visits back & forth. In the […]

Tuesday Bag o’ Motorcycle Mania

Sunday felt like a motorcycle day, so I grabbed the GoPro and went for a ride on two of my favorite local roads, Arizona Highway 83 and a curvy section of Old Spanish Trail. The first order of business, however, was a freeway truck stop breakfast at the Triple T. Fortified with eggs and bacon, […]

Thursday Bag o’ Cautious Optimism

Parents of adult children should be able to relate to this: our 40-year-old daughter Polly left her boyfriend in late June and moved in with us. It’s just until she gets back on her feet, we told ourselves. Since then she’s been employed three times: once for two weeks, once for two days, once for […]

2016: Is This All There Is?

Donna, bless her, gave me a GoPro camera for Christmas. Naturally, I checked it out that very day, so I’d know how to work it on New Year’s Eve, the day my son and I planned to ride to Globe, Arizona. Here’s a short clip from the New Year’s Eve ride: it shows Greg and […]

Smile!

I posted this vintage Christmas card to Facebook to amuse my friends. The kid’s woeful expression prompted a few comments. Really, though, if you study 19th and early 20th century portraits, photos, and illustrations, unsmiling faces were the rule rather than the exception. People always looked somber. I started to wonder why that was. Well, for one thing, […]

Friday Bag o’ Motorcycle Madness

Yesterday Polly and I visited our friend Ed’s garage to do some cosmetic work on the Ducati. Ed, as regular readers know, is not only a friend but my motorcycle maintenance guru. With his help, we put on new clutch & brake levers, bar end mirrors, and front turn signals. The bike’s still a little rough, but there must […]

Black Friday

Black Friday is a tawdry commercial invention and I won’t give it the dignity of calling it tradition, no matter how many years it’s been going on. A tradition I endorse, on the other hand, is the Black Friday horror story. Another tradition I endorse is avoiding human contact by shopping online. But in a fit of […]

Squeezing Ambergris

The new trailer’s home, parked behind the new fence we had built to screen it from view. I’m fighting the urge to hook it to the new truck and drive around for no reason. There’ll be plenty of occasions to use it, and soon. Donna says I’ve had my birthday and Christmas, not just this year but all the […]