I don't really have a lot of material for this section, partly because I never documented my road trips, and I didn't take any pictures of my bikes until I shot the pictures to sell my most recent bike (but hopefully not my last), so there is no link; all I have on biking is right here. I bought my first bike in England in the fall of 1967. I was working as a teacher in a boarding school named Earnley School in the countryside of Sussex, about seven miles south of Chichester, 50 miles southwest of London, and a half mile from the Channel coast. The bike was a 250 CC 1957 BSA thumper, and at that time and place 250 CCs was ample for runs up to London or to visit friends in Oxford, or to carry a passenger around locally. 250 CCs would be sneered at today, but that bike was my pride and joy. Sadly, I had to sell it when I returned to the States, because there was no way I could afford to ship it home. In 1970, when I was living in Gaithersburg, Maryland, I bought a 1963 650 CC Triumph Bonneville. This was the state-of-the-art high-performance bike for most of the 1960's. I bought this from a patch club rider; it was chopped and fitted out with a teardrop tank, although the forks were not extended and it had straight handlebars. I loved this bike for cruising the back roads along the Potomac and out to Sugarloaf Mountain. I had to sell this one when we formed Whetstone (see my musical biography) and I needed a van to haul equipment. In 2001, as I was preparing to move to North Carolina, I bought this bike, a Honda Shadow Spirit 750, and customized it fairly extensively. You can see the faux ostrich-skin seat with the inset purple flames, straight pipes, lowered shocks, forward controls, luggage rack for my camping gear, and tiny indicator lights, all of which replaced the stock equipment. This bike was just loads of fun and it was my dry- and warm-weather daily transportation. I rode it back and forth from Winston-Salem to Rockville, MD, to collect the rent and check on conditions until I sold my Rockville house. I also took some lovely weekend camping trips on the Blue Ridge Parkway and spent a lot of afternoons running the twisties around Pilot Mountain and Hanging Rock State Park in the foothills of the Appalachian Front. Above is my "fleet", as of 2004, shortly before I removed the "stink box" from atop the van. I had a single ATV ramp that I used to roll this bike up into the back of the van, so when I needed to take the bike or the van in for servicing, I had my alternate transportation right there with me. I was particularly sad to sell this bike, but I had no garage to store it in, so I kept it inside the backyard gate with a bungie-corded cover. In the winters I drove my MR2 Spyder as my winter ride. Then I found myself getting lazy, and even in good weather it was just so much easier to jump in the little car, drop the top, and go, than it was to wrestle the cover off the bike and haul it out of the back yard. Here is the Spyder: When I retire at the end of 2016, if I move, as I expect to, I will buy a house with a garage, or at least a carport, and buy the last bike I expect to own. Finally, here is my friend, boating buddy, and Swiftwater Safety and Rescue mentor, Jeff Davis and his wife Marilu. Jeff retired from his job, retired from boating, and he and Marilu (who never had a driving license!) became road warriors. |