Motorcycle Culture
Staying Smooth And Relaxed
Like the lessons we’ve talked about in previous Riding Skills Series stories, remaining relaxed and smooth on a motorcycle is something that sounds easy in theory but proves difficult in practice. Being relaxed is the body’s natural state but when we’re riding a motorcycle there are any number of distractions and concerns that cause...
Cool Runnings
Many of us in the generation of twenty-somethings, arbitrarily assigned the letter "X" for a generational nickname, sought out other cultural identities to fill the void that letter symbolizes. One of the most popular of these subcultures has been the Jamaican folk religion of Rastafarianism. The counterculture of the sixties seemed to be manifested...
Ducatisti
It was the sound of tuned exhausts echoing from ancient walls that did it. Until then it was just another great ride on another great motorcycle. Riding down that steeply pitched, much too narrow, ancient Etruscan street I was captivated by the Ducati mystique and it’s been with me ever since. Ducati began as a high-tech, cutting-edge firm, a...
Château Morrisette, Virginia
Given a map of the world and a handful of pushpins most wine lovers would locate their favorite vineyards by punching holes in a series of valleys – Napa Valley, the Sonoma Valley, the Loire Valley, the Rhine and Rhone Valleys. But many in Virginia and North Carolina will hover above the Blue Ridge Parkway and firmly place their dark-red pins...
Highway 50 - Coast to Coast
As the days of my retirement drew closer, the most asked question by my co-workers was "What are you going to do when you retire?" My standard answer, "It's not what I'm going to do but what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to take the interstate anymore." After years of racing back and forth across the country on the interstate to fix airplanes,...
