What I did on my summer kind-of-a-vacation

KBasa said:

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That big butt gets around! Think I just saw it this weekend. Ummmm, beer

OK, so let's see. Where was I? Oh yeah. Thursday. We're hanging around the YB tent cuz it's all shady and stuff and once we got Dana's ass out of the cooler, (ya shoulda heard the popping sound that made) it was time to stand around and drink beer. I didn't have anything in particular to do that day, so it was fully rallying operation.

So here I present the future of the club. These two guys, Bubba on the left, and YB Garth on the right remind me so much of myself and most of the folks I hang around with now that it hurts sometimes. They're just like my friends.

Only younger.

And, here again, is everyone's favorite opera singer, hanging with Blake from TN at the H2W booth. Yep. Got the rally swerve on. Staying outta the sun, staying hydrated and staying caught up with some friends and acquantances.

Folks that know me know that I am an unabashed bike slut. I resisted any kind of bike lust during the rally. Got an airhead already, Kbikes of the K75, K11 and K100 and K12RS and GT varieties leave me cold. I was doing pretty good. No lust, no comments from Tina that I should just shut up and enjoy my garage as it.

Until I saw this thing. Oh. My. God. It was parked in the Holt tent, which just seemed to be a place to hang around more than anything else. But holy cow, this bike just pulled me right in.

The color is audacious. The look of the black motor and the green wheels and the wierd little teeny tiny little front end.

I'm sick with lust. It took about two minutes for Tina to fire up the usual comments. "Sit down." "No, I don't wanna walk up there to look at it."

"You're not getting another bike."

Foo. Gurlz.

Everything you've heard about scooter girls is true. How come a girl on a scooter always looks cute?

I'm still not sure what this GS did to its owner to make him so mad at it.

It's a brand new bike, liberally slathered with various shades of OD.

To each his own, I guess.

Names and faces omitted from this "before" picture.

So anywho, Friday morning, we had the Town Meeting, which only seemed kind of like a car crash instead of the train wreck I anticipated and I got installed as the Veep. I got a neat new office, but it was really warm, the desk needed to be cleaned out cuz it smelled bad and the sink didn't have any faucets and it smelled funny too.

At least I can shut the door when I need to get some work done.

So, you mighta heard about the big Rock and Roll Show we had. George Thorogood came out and just rocked us right down to a nub. The boy can still play a guitar, that's for sure, and he knows how to work the crowd too.

It was pretty cool. I was back at the YB tent, hanging around with pilot and we decided to wander down and see how close we could get. It was easy, we just walked right down front. Man.

And look! There's D'Lilah rocking down with her badself! You go girl!

Anyway, I couldn't stop looking at this bike. Looks like just another old R75/7 with some period accessories.

The first time I saw Tina, I was riding one of these. Looked exactly like this one, with the exception that I'd painted the valve covers black and polished the edges of the fins. I was in college, she was just getting out of high school and we rode that thing everywhere when we were dating. I had a string of cars I'd paid $100 for (with my $300 tool kit in the trunk anytime we went anywhere), but this was the bike that really started it for us. We'd pack our junk on the bike, all our camping stuff, including a kerosene lantern we carried in a coffee can and head to NH or VT for the weekend. We didn't have any money, but for $10, we could go away for a couple days and hang out doing the things we liked to do.

I remember standing on a bridge in Ayer, MA by the side of the road with her, next to the /7. It'd been raining all day as we'd been out riding around and we stopped to just kind of warm up and relax for a bit. It was still pouring rain, but I picked her up and gave her a big smooch and I knew, at that point, that I was smitten with her.

So, while some folks see a bike, I see the vehicle that transported us into the life we have now. Riding, camping, hanging with our friends, seeing stuff together from a bike with a roundel on the tank.

We still do all that stuff and we're still nutty in love.

And here we have further proof that Scooter Girls Rock. Scooter. Girl. Rock show in progress.

The prosecution rests.

Despite his continued pleading, we refused to give Rob any more chocolate after the episode on Wednesday night.

Good thing nobody did, either, cuz the batteries in my cattle prod were dead.

So, if you were wondering how all that coffee got made every morning, here's the coffee factory. I think Dana slept in there to make sure all the percolators fired up at 4:30am.

I'd bet that he didn't really need to drink any of that coffee, it must have smelled like a Starbucks version of a meth lab in there.

I think there were ten coffee pots, each of which makes 110 cups of coffee. In the first pass, they could dish up 1100 cups of coffee and about 15 minutes later, they had anothere 1100 ready to go.

Quite impressive, but the YBs are like that. They're like the Seabees with motorcycles or something. They can turn any dirthole in the world into a regular bivuoac.

You go, Moe. Nicely done, homeboy.

OK, I'm gonna be honest with ya. I like art bikes, art cars and all that sort of thing. Stock is cool, but if someone has the 'nads to build an art vehicle, I'm all for it. I keep thinking I'll buy a scooter and encrust it with fake jewels out of the gumball machine or something, but can never get the nerve to do it.

But this, well, this is beyond compare. In a motorcycle culture where people make fun of someone for having the wrong Kbike overflow reservoir, this took some guts.

It filled me with desire and lust. I forced the knowledge that all old BMWs use the same key from my mind.

Marko's hot and I dig his new HD.

See? Those two are probably our longest riding buds. We met them about ten years ago and promptly headed off to Colorado for the TOR rally together. It's been like that ever since. We meet up and just pick up where we left off.

If it wasn't for bikes, rallies and plain ol' good fortune, we would have never met these two, Mark and Nina, and our life would be the poorer for it.

And see, even though they've got an HD again, they're still ATGATT.

Righteous, you guys.

Hiya, Dave! I know you're lurking here. I can see you on the Who's Online thingy.

Nice job on the bike there.