Cheryl: It’s Wednesday already and the concourse (display of bikes and awards) will be in downtown Buffalo this afternoon at 3:00 p.m. The Wyoming Chapter organizers have planned a car show alongside the bike display, so it will be a terrific place to take photographs.

Yesterday afternoon we thoroughly enjoyed the field events, including the motorcyclist-slow-race, passenger-pin-the tail-on-the-donkey-while-blindfolded, passenger-grab-three-different-hats-from-hay-bales-and-toss them-in-a-ring, and motorcyclist-ride-the-planks-on-the-ground. Not to mention the find-your-own-boots-in-a-pile-of-boots-put-them-on-jump-on-your-bike-and-ride-across-the-finish-line race, which I totally missed seeing (the sneaky trick with this race is finding and tossing your buddy’s boots 20 or 30 feet away so he has to run to get them). Not a single person suffered an injury and not one bike went down because the events at the rally are planned for safety and carried out on a field of grass. Hopefully we’ll be able to post a video with this post so you can see some of the action.

Life yesterday can definitely be termed GOOD with chocolate ice cream and a cookie for dessert up at the campground office last night, Frank entering the slow race for the very first time, visiting the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum in Buffalo in the morning (Gatchell was a pharmacist among other things, traded with the Indians and started a huge collection of items donated by them and others for his kindnesses), and Frank giving a tech talk, about installing an electric starter in place of the kick-starter on his Norton, for 50 or so people in the big tent at 8:00 p.m. while I vegged out watching Walk the Line on our brand-new trailer TV/DVD player. Good, yes, incredibly, good!

I feel blessed at age 68 to still be out enjoying life in spite of the annoyances of aging. I’m inspired by all the 60 and 70-something men and women riding super-human miles on motorcycles to get here. It’s hard to complain about our cushy mode of travel after seeing them arrive all smiles and proud of themselves for the feat! 

Ride on!

Frank: Equation:  Bucket List=Bucket List-1.  Yesterday I reduced my Bucket List by one item.  I have wanted to try the “Slow Race” for several years and this year I took the plunge.  I had a theory, and it went like this:  Most entrants used the “rev the engine real high and slip the clutch” method to make the bike move slowly.  I have always felt that it would be a better technique to simply keep the engine turning over at idle or close to it and allow the bike to creep forward by itself.  I thought that would give better control.

I was completely wrong.

I “DQ’d” the first time by riding outside the lines of my lane, and in the second run lost to the other ride in my heat by about a ba-zillionth of an inch at the very end.  The guy who did win was so good that he simply rode his bike a few feet from the start and then stopped all forward motion, balanced the bike by standing up on the pegs, and waited for his opponent to DQ or complete his run.  Then he simply rode up the finish line.

On the other hand, the Gatchell Museum was really slick.  It’s bigger than it looks and is full of interesting artifacts and historical information.  I really enjoyed it.

As Cheryl said, I gave a tech-talk on the electric starter kit I installed on my bike.  Since I have a complete backup of the database from my home computer here with me I spun off 15 photos of the installation process onto a USB thumb-drive and had them printed up at a small shop downtown.  Then when I got to the presentation area I found they had a digital projector available so we projected the photos and passed the book around in the audience.  The talk was pretty well received, which was nice as I was asked to do it just the day before when one of the rally organizers saw the starter motor on my bike.

Ride On!

Frank