Dropping a Ducati

Changing Someone's Riding Plan

Riding Off To A Better Place

Rides Stimulate More Rides
I took a ride Sunday with one of the newest members of our riding club, Jack. Actually, he and I rode last Thursday, as well as Saturday.And after the ride, well into the evening, each of us rested in our homes and chatted together on our cell phones."Do you realize we just did 330 miles of riding today?" he asks."Was it 330 miles?" I answered."330 fricken miles!" he says.Jack went on to say how this whole week has been awesome, starting with a short little ride on Thursday, a ride up to Joshua Tree National Monument on Saturday, and a ride out to the Salton Sea on Sunday. I could hear the satisfaction in hi

Riding the Roads Less Traveled
"Where do you want to ride?""I dunno, where do you want to go?""I dunno."Our riding club is rather unconventional in that it doesn't have a leader. We have some founding members who make sure the club is moving in the right direction, but as far as taking care of the day-to-day, week-to-week duties of planning rides, meetings, events, it's up to anybody to step up and make something happen.So Thursday I met up with a fellow member (see yesterday's post about running out of gas) to head out on a weekday ride. We only knew that we're going to meet up at 9:

Besting the Motorcycle Demons
Had a lucky moment this morning at the gas station.As I left home, I knew I needed to put gas in the tank really soon. As I approached the main road, the engine already started sputtering. "Come on!" I said, imploring the bike to just get me a half-mile further to make the gas station.The night before, I left home with "161" reading on my odometer, on my way to the tavern to hang out with some friends. It's about 15 miles from my house to the tavern. So that's 30 miles round trip. I knew I usually get about 200 miles on a full tank of gas. So I knew I didn't have to stop at a gas station that evening.But after leaving the tavern, I went to a friend'

Patience in Buying a Motorcycle
All this year I've been blogging and talking about wanting to buy another motorcycle, and yet still haven't done so.I have my eye on a Yamaha FZ6, or some other similarly equipped and styled standard that I can throw around in the twisties.Another guy in our riding club wants something sportier as well, and he's had his eye on the Triumph Speed Triple.So we've been talking together about it a lot, just like little boys talking about getting a Wii versus an Xbox, and then standing

Apathetic Motorcycle Riders
What does it take to get motorcycle riders to come out for a bike night?That's the question one guy asked today.Mike runs a motorcycle meetup group of his own, similar to the one I run, and both of our meetup groups are focused in the same town.So last week he posted a "bike night" at a local biker hangout. This hangout started doing bike nights a few months ago. I went to the first one after hearing about how good the tri-tip was, and how passionate the owner was in trying to start a new bike night tradition.When I went there, there were only about 20-30 bikers who showed up, which is actually a paltry number compared to the several hundred