buckle-up

Standing in the checkout line at a CostCo this week, looking around at the patrons emptying their carts, Margo turned to me wryly observing that this is now looking more normal. Yes, our favorite brand of TP was readily available. And yes, the passage through the checkout stations and then on through to the exit for a final count of items, there was little acknowledgement that anything other than a kind of normalcy had returned. Yes, there were still a strong contingent of naysayers on social media dwelling on the downside of this global pandemic but to anyone living in Northern Colorado (NoCol), observing the bare minimum of social interaction anyway, it meant that well, it was getting harder by the day to see anything having changed at all! During my early trips to Tokyo, Japan, I have to admit I was taken by surprise to see passengers on commuter trains and buses wearing masks. Turns out that for Tokyo residents, waking up of a morning with a sniffle meant that out of common court...

  Almost identical except I added frame sliders for track days, right!   It was the very year I married Margo that, together, we went for our motorcycle licenses. Somehow, with one weekend of training and a few dropped bikes, we managed to become licensed motorcyclists with that magic M endorsement affixed permanently to our regular Colorado driver’s license. At first, we didn’t pursue riding but in 2001, off to the show we went and bought a pair of bikes. In no time at all, we moved up the ranks to where we both were driving Yamaha V-Twin Cruisers – mine a 1600cc Roadstar and Margo’s, an 1100 V Star. Pictures of these bikes have appeared in multiple posts through the years but as a reminder, you may want to check out the photo atop the post of September 2, 2018, The bikes are gone … However, these were relatively sane acquisitions and we both enjoyed Saturday afternoon rides around the front ranges. What could be clearly classified as being insane was the addition ...