2018 Isle de Wolfe Scooter Rally

At last! A major motion picture from Life on two wheels studios!

This is it! The long-awaited world premiere of the Life on two wheels Isle de Wolfe Scooter Rally movie.

There are stars, breathtaking action, traffic jams, Lambretta meltdowns, howling wolves, daring inter-continental and pan-continental adventurers, a dog in doggles, treacherous ferry crossings, the heart-stopping pop-pop-pop-pop staccato of vintage scooters in heat, massive clouds of blue poisonous smoke, and much, much more.

Come with me as I saddle up and head out to the very border of Ontario, to the DMZ separating us from mighty Trumplandia, the US of A, on isolated island straddling where the inland sea of the Great Lakes meets the mighty St-Lawrence.

Quick, grab the popcorn and the diet Coke, click on the video, and immerse yourself in a true summer action blockbuster!

Did I say it was free? IT'S TOTALLY FREE FOR THE WATCHING! Amazing.

Life on two wheels studios, making Canada great again, one video at a time.

Editor's remark: there is a second version of the video that repairs a minor glitch, no harm in leaving both in the channel.

A heartfelt apology

I need to apologize to my friends and readers, in no particular order...

Sonja, Richard, Dom, Steve, Karen, Bill, Peter, Jim, Michael, Brandy, Kathy, Ry, Ken, Mike... I have been mostly absent here, and on your blogs. Partly it's a busy-ness and time disruption, partly it's a cycle and habit disruption... but whatever the root external excuse may be, it's really just me not being here for you.

It doesn't help that Google has chosen to cease sending email alerts when new comments are posted. But that's just another excuse, after all...

What I need to do is to work adapt to the changes, and just do it, as Nike used to encourage us all to do.

I was shocked this morning to find your comments piling up on recent posts, with me thoroughly distracted and unaware.

I am going back to respond to each and every one.

I am also hoping to change my lifestyle to more fully adapt to my new reality. It's easy when you make huge changes in your life to just go with the flow and let the big events you set in motion carry you along on the current.  The risk is that as you float along like a cork in a stream, you don't realize the things that are no longer there. It's remarkably hard to spot things that go missing. Like the dutiful butler answering knocks on the front door who simply vanishes one day without a sound, who knows when.

It's me, not you, dear friends.

Let's see if I can make amends, shall we?

Warm regards to each and every one of you, you are important to me.

Playing with fire!

This episode is about big challenges, self-therapy, and what it means to live my life.

To understand the relevance of the title, my decision to qualify for the Ontario Bar was not imposed on me. I undertook to do it because it would allow me to practice law in Ontario without artificial constraints. I knew it was going to be demanding, but I know I didn't appreciate the scope of the challenge and the demands it would place on me.

I still don't know the results of the second exam.

It was tougher than the first, not because the subject matter was more difficult or more alien, but because it naturally lent itself to inherently wordy and somewhat convoluted questions along the lines of "Amy, a lawyer, is consulted by Darrin who is considering an appointment as trustee to his friend Fred's estate. Fred's partner Arnold owns the matrimonial home as a joint tenant with Jessica, Fred's estranged sister..." The mind reels and spins trying to keep track of the fictitious people you were introduced to mere moments earlier and to make sense of their peculiar relationships as the question unfolds before your eyes like origami in reverse. The question finally pops at the question mark, and the four possible answers shimmer before you, as all the while a tiny obsessed corner of your brain reminds you in a nervous twitchy way that you only have one minute and forty-five seconds to process the question, and to pick the correct answer, and it's already taken you 52 seconds to read the question, read the answers, then re-read the question. This is question 56, and there are 184 more questions to go. Ughhhh!

 In that sense, I was playing with fire, all day long, all week long, for months on end. It was like trying to digest an encyclopedia.

The silver lining came in the form two quick breaks and a life-changing gift. The breaks happened before each of the exams, one in February when Susan and I took off to L.A. and San Diego to visit with family and very dear friends, and one in early April when our immediate family flew to Vancouver to be with our kids Andrew and Anuschka for the birth of Kaia, our first grandchild. Susan and I arrived at the hospital early on the day following Kaia's birth. It's difficult to express how special that was.

These past six or seven months marked a second fracture in the rhythms of my life. First the move to Toronto after a lifetime in Montreal, then the Bar Exams. It feels like a lot to process.

On the occasions when I felt I was hitting a wall, I promised myself that if I pushed on, when that last exam was behind me in June, I would find a field, lie on my back, and watch the clouds drift by until I felt redeemed. and that's exactly what I did. The jet threading a contrail straight as an arrow high above the wispy clouds was an unhoped for sign that the time had come for me to get back on my feet and launch into a slightly belated summer of fun and relaxation.

In a nutshell that's what I attempted to do with this video, to explain as best I can what I have been through and get beyond it. At least emotionally. Those results still loom over me though. What if I flunked? I don't know what the answer to that last question is.

I may never have to answer it.

Thanks for sticking with me as I work all of this out. It means a lot.

Wrapties are here!

A while back (like months ago I think) I got an unsolicited email from Australia from Mark Blackburn wondering if I would consider doing a review of some newfangled tie down straps.

At the time I was up to my neck studying for those pesky Bar exams. I warned Mark that I would not be able to devote any time to his request until mid-June at the earliest.

Some weeks later I received a package with two 180cm Wrapties. They sat idly in the envelope until I was done with the last exam, and then for another two or three weeks while I dealt with a backlog of stuff that was similarly on hold while I devoted 100% of my time and energy to those demanding exams.

When I was finally able to tackle video production once more, the first project had to be those Wrapties, I owed Mark a review and I had to deliver.

I have to confess that the Wrapties took a little getting used to. As with most things, you need to get your hands into the equation and handle them, apply them to a task.

In that spirit, we had some unprecedented winds a few weeks ago, and our home sits in a kind of wind tunnel. Instead of taking the planter that sits on a table on our balcony into the house, I grabbed a Wraptie and in a wink I lashed the table to the balcony railing. The winds came, they felled trees, they blasted our courtyard, the trees swayed and tossed to and fro, but... our lightweight folding tables stayed put, never budged. I was impressed.

In this episode of the vlog I share two other uses for Wrapties. In an upcoming episode, I will provide an account of their performance on last weekend's 250 kilometer expressway ride to Kingston Ontario where I participated in the Isle de Wolfe scooter rally. The Wrapties performed flawlessly.

Among the benefits: there are never any loose ends to flap in the breeze, and the design made it a snap to stow my riding jacket that I ditched for a little Friday night rally challenge on an isolated dead-end country road. It was hot and humid, and riding in my T-shirt was a welcome relief from a long hot day in the saddle. All I needed to do to secure the jacket on top of my dry bag was to release the extra length of Wraptie that would otherwise have been a loose end, stretch the Wrapties over the jacket and let the velcro do its job. Easy peasy. I think that little unexpected trick is what really and truly sold me on the Wrapties.

Check out the video I linked above, I think you'll be impressed too.

I you want some Wrapties of your very own, check out their website: www.wraptie.net.

The music for this episode of Life on two wheels is Safety Net by Riot, made available courtesy of the YouTube Audio Library.

Thunderbird takes a wing

At long last, I am surfacing from my six-month self-imposed exile. It was a nightmare of grueling study, eleven and twelve hour days, seven days a week. With a little luck I passed the final Bar exam. I won't really know for another couple of weeks. I have to be philosophical in spite of the massive effort. It will be what it will be.

Moving on... It feels so good to get back to other things. Even doctor's appointments and lab tests, and tackling chores around the house is a kind of liberating joy. A real deliverance.

Speaking of moving on and liberating things, it's time for Thunderbird to move on too.

Sonja and I are on the same page and the result is that Sonja's beast of a bike that I christened Thunderbird, the 2003 Honda Shadow VT 750 American Classic Edition is now on Kijiji.ca looking for a fresh adventure and a new loving caring owner.

Check out Sonja's blog here.

Sonja's 2015 Maritimes adventure begins on her blog here.

Here is a post from Life on two wheels that explains how to purchase a far-off motorcycle for touring.

The music for this episode of Life on two wheels is Bleeker Street Blues by Chris Haugen, made available courtesy of the YouTube Audio Library.

I've got a backlog of videos screaming to be released so please stay tuned, there's lots more to come.