Taking a break

Out hiding somewhere....

I haven't been sending out updates since my last infrequent posts haven't had anything to do with traveling. I've been to a couple more funerals, and started to write about those too, but never got to a spot I was comfortable with.

Pop, my 90-year-old grandfather died, and then Ruth, his 2nd wife, died a month later. I went out to Kentucky to bury Pop and Granny at the family graveyard in the Appalachians. Granny was his first wife, my grandmother.

Kentucky is nice because once you have the death certificate, the body is yours so having a graveyard at your family farm is fine. The family graveyard is out on a hilltop and we put Pop & Granny in between Pop's parents and Pop's sister Josephine who shot herself on Valentine's Day when she was 18. Way back in 1933, I think.

My sister Cary has some of Pop & Granny's ashes that she's going to bury and plant a Granny Smith apple tree. We can sit under the Granny Smith apple tree, eating Granny Smith apples, while thinking about Granny Smith. Intelligent, hillbilly and crazy. That sums up my family.

Which means, I like to practice my final words. I figure once you're at that point, you probably won't have long to say anything so you need to be ready.

I assume I'll die in a car or motorcycle accident when someone (hopefully not me!) does something stupid. I figured I'd say to some kind soul witness, "Tell my wife I love her" and they'd get choked up. They'd tell my family I said that, and they'd laugh -- in that tension relieving laugh -- and say, "He's not married". But then I went and got married for health care, so that takes the fun out of that one.

I think I'll gasp out, "What are you eating under there?" or mumble, "Moron says what?"

Here's one I heard which I might steal. I'll get myself bronzed and incased in glass. I'll have an alarm set up where when someone touches the glass, an alarm will sound in my voice, "Damn it! Don't touch the glass!"

If you have any good ones, please post 'em.

I was going to do the Alpine 500 with another David in his Fiat, but that's when Pop died. I went to a sidecar rally at Lake Berryessa a couple weeks ago with my friend Skipper. It seemed to us they thought we were gay (maybe it was Skipper's orange hair) and we were given the impression at the entrance that we weren't wanted.

It was great seeing a ton of sidecars and when I went to work that night, I found out that Joel and Hillary, a married couple I'm friends with, were given a Moto Guzzi with a Jawa sidecar. It's perfect set-up. Maybe I'll buy that from them if they want to sell it.

There's a few events I plan on doing, so I'll post about them if I can make them.

June
- Poinsettia - a ghost town in Nevada that's been adopted
- BSAOC - BSA Rally in NoCal
- Moto Melee pre-1970 ride around Northern California

July
- Horizons Unlimited in Colorado. HU is a bunch of kooks who ride motorcycles through other countries and round the world.

There's another HU event in Mexico in October. I'm hoping some of us HU types can organize an event in California in late September, so if you have any ideas, let me know.

Other July events:
- Moto GP
- Velocette Rally at Diamond Lake, OR

And there's the Giro d'California. It's a "Golden State" tribute to the Giro d'Italia Motociclistico (a.k.a. Motogiro). I've got a Monkey Wards (aka Benelli) 125cc 2-stroke for that one.

Next spring, I plan on riding back to the Kentucky Appalachians to visit family. Hopefully on a Ducati 350, but maybe if I can get a certain Moto Guzzi with a Jawa sidecar, I'll take that.

There's some other events I want to do, but I don't have the info handy.

I hope to start my RTW Round 2 April of 2007. Melbourne to Darwin. Then through Asia (I'd love to ride through Burma but doubt that'll be possible) and Europe. I'd like to make it to the Italian Motogiro and to the Isle of Man events. Then ride back across the US. When I get back, I'll get myself a pre-war British motorcycle and ride from Alaska to Argentina.

In the meantime, I'll try to post more often when I go somewhere. I should make a separate blog for the random weird things I sometimes do.

Here's a link to the first page of Round 1.

Posted by DaveSmith at June 3, 2006 09:51 AM