The Ride Report

I’ve been riding for about 25 years now and I like to think I’m a good rider - skilled, smart, experienced, safe(ish), etc. But there’s a saying about riders like me with years of experience under their belt, that those years don’t necessarily mean you’re a better rider. Are you a rider with [...]

I happened to glance at my rear tire today and realized I was down to nothing on it. Some tread was left on the chicken strips but the middle of the tire was a slick. Since the forecast calls for possible rain and I’m riding down to San Diego tomorrow to do a [...]

“Gross” is grabbing your helmet and putting your thumb firmly into a glob of some kind of glue or resin that’s really sticky, licking your thumb so you can wipe the glue off on your jeans, and then looking at the helmet and realizing that the glue is actually the juicy remains of a large [...]

I almost killed myself and crashed my motorcycle last night, and the engine wasn’t even running.
I’ve been working in the transportation department on a low budget movie the last couple of days, towing the wardrobe trailer and the honeywagon to and from the shooting locations. This show is so low budget they don’t have [...]

I was lanesplitting my way up the 101 freeway yesterday through unusually heavy traffic when I caught up to a tow truck angling over to the inside lane where there was a car stopped. That explained the back-up — I figured it was either broken down or an accident. Then I did a [...]

I was meeting some friends today and I decided to do a nice thing and bring a couple dozen donuts. I got a nice assortment: glazed and jelly-filled and maple bars and etcetera, and I learned something when I took the two boxes of donuts out to the bike: Donut boxes don’t fit in [...]

I’m strictly a street rider at this point in my motorcycling career. My first taste on a motorcycle was off-road in a farmer’s beet field, but since that day back in about 1975 the only non-pavement riding I’ve done is on gravel stretches of roads being repaved. Homey don’t do dirt.
My daughter, on [...]

I’m a new member of Motorcycle Bloggers International (MBI), “…an informal association of people who ride motorcyles or scooters and write about it,” and one of the requirements of membership is that I point you toward their annual Rider’s Choice Awards and encourage you to vote in them. I’ll do it because I like [...]

This is the goofiest thing I have ever seen. A cage on a motorcycle to protect the passenger — with seatbelts, fer fux sake. WTF? Just take the damned car if you’re such a puss — and sell your bike, because you don’t deserve it.

In the seafaring world, the passage of time is marked by ringing a bell every half hour. Starting at midnight, 00:30 is one bell, 01:00 is two bells, 01:30 is three bells, and so on. This progresses up to eight bells, marking the end of a four-hour watch for the crew, then it [...]