Surfing a wave

Picture this.

It's Monday and I'm in Whistler, British Columbia. God's country.

Days like this come along, but only so often. To be truthful, a day like this has never happened before. I am surfing a magnificent towering wave.

Parking, starting over from scratch

When I was living in Montreal (which was my entire life prior to April), I had a really good grip on parking.

You'd think that parking in a big city was merely science. Ha!

The 2016 Distinguished Gentleman's Ride

This is exciting. Don't believe me? Would I stretch the truth? See for yourself. I've added some amazingly cool videos at the end of this post.

It promises to be a brand new experience for me. The exact opposite of riding with all the gear, all the time. Well, not the exact opposite, because the exact opposite would be to do that whole Lady Godiva thing, and well you didn't think I'd be up for that, did you?

Please read on. Your curiosity will be rewarded. This is another kind of 'evergreen' post that I continue to update until I post a follow up post once the 2016 Distinguished Gentleman's Ride enters the record books.

Garbled - No longer!

Relax. I have no intention of foisting another annoying category of blog post on you. This is not about that.

Scribbled - Corner office

Do I want one? Do I want any office? Do I want a job?

Pesky questions.

Elmhirst's resort

I decided at the last minute.

There is still so much to do to get our new home to where it needs to be, and Susan and I don't want the work dragging on forever. That why I was reluctant to set out to join fellow members of the Toronto Moto Scooter Club for what was billed as a day long ride. When Susan said I should go, I threw my hat in the ring. I was lucky there was still room for me on the ride.

Scribbled1 - Alternative PokéGame

That's right, it's a PokéCraze. PokémonGo.

Let's say you want to join in the fun, but don't feel like walking around like a zombie with your nose in your phone. Here's what I recommend. It is (so far) endless fun.

The Quest

A deeply rooted part of us is programmed to seek out and explore new worlds. That aspect of our humanity dreams of setting off in search of distant new places, even when they may, or may not, exist.

When the quest is very long and expensive, and the time comes to render a satisfactory account of the adventure to an overbearing potentate with a fickle disposition, we don't hesitate to lie in the most mesmerizing way. And that's how the Montreal suburb of Lachine got its name. When the impassible eponymous rapids brought the early French explorers to a full stop on the new continent, they named the place where they hit the wall "China  - La Chine". There you go King Francis, mission accomplished! Finding a new route to India was another major 16th century mission foiled in large measure because the new world turned out to be not even remotely close to India. And that's how the native people of North America came to be Indians.

It's a small world, after all

It was 1964. I was twelve.

It just occurred to me that if I had been the same age then as I am now, I would have been born in 1900. Now that is weird.

We were in New York City for the World's Fair. That's where the future as I know it (which is now) coalesced.

Smoque N' Bones

Graffiti off Queen street in Toronto

 One of the many perqs of being a father, is Father’s Day.

We deserve that day.

I say that because by the time our kids are grown and off on their own, our hair is gray, our joints sometimes fail to cooperate as they once did, and we don’t always hear every little detail going on in our surroundings, we have long since become accustomed to putting our wives and kids first.

This past Father’s Day those I put first, put me first.

How so?

Rider profile: Ed Thomas

Name: Ed Thomas
Find me on Earth: Toronto (Leaside)
Find me Online: No website or blogs.
Interview Date: June 2016
Interview Location: Cyberspace

Copyright - Stephanie Yue

Inspiration

This is just a quick little post for a few things that bear mentioning.

Rachael recently mused about the phrase 'where are you headed?' It's a nice little gem, like most things that Rachael writes about.

E.M.

Saturday night we got together at Jonathan and Vicky's to celebrate all the family June birthdays over a barbecue, some wine, beer, burgers, grilled chicken, snacks and deserts. The weather cooperated and even after the sun set, the air was warm, humid, and fragrant.

As often happens, the boys gathered on the back porch huddled around the grill as Jonathan performed that ritual guys do of charring all the delicious savory things in sight. The girls were in the living room in a circle around the coffee table. Heaven only knows what the gals were chatting about.

Weird, peculiar, puzzling stuff rattling around my brain

They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. By that truism, I should be like one, or both, of my parents in more ways than not.

Of course, it's only a truism, which means that, scientifically speaking, the truism will likely often prove false. Still, we don't call them falsisms do we? That's because they do ring kind of true.

My father was, to those who knew him well, a devout Catholic. My mother was also in her own way devout and went to some significant lengths in the exercise of her Catholic faith. I paid a steep price for their devotion, when the most important decisions in my life flew in the face of that faith. For the longest time, I have declared myself to be a non-religious person. In fact, while I will defend the right of any human to practice their faith, subject to the usual democratic limits, I personally take a dim view of all religion.

I visit a wizard, and go for a second group ride

When I interview you, one of the questions I ask is whether you are a solitary rider or don't mind riding in a group. It seems like a simple question, yet for a rider, it makes all the difference.

Group riding is a special kind of riding that is as different from commuting or fair weather solo pleasure riding as can be.

For one thing there is camaraderie, but that is not the key difference. The key difference is that riding in a group requires discipline and organization. Think Canadian Snowbirds (no, not Florida couch potatoes), or those group parachute jumps, or synchronized swimming, but not quite so demanding. Yet, for most more or less ordinary folks, group motorcycle riding is about as complex and demanding a road adventure skill as they are likely to encounter. It's a little challenging for humans. Oddly, insects, birds and fish do the most amazing stunts of coordinated flying and swimming and no one seems to get hurt. And yet we routinely disparage them (bird brain!). Silly humans.