Rider profile: Dar Duncan

Name: Dar Duncan
Find me on Earth: Victoria, British Columbia
Find me Online: Scootermayhem.blogspot.com, @Moto_Diva on Twitter and Instagram, @Motochat and #motochat also on Twitter, and on Farkle Garage, a motorcycle show broadcast on Shaw cable TV and available on the Farkle Garage channel on YouTube, and at farklegarage.tv. Finally see Dar's Life on two wheels interview
Interview Date: Saturday, April 15, 2017
Interview Location: Victoria, British Columbia

Life on two wheels: When did you start riding, how old were you?

Ken Wilson and the Oyster Tour wrap up

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Yes! It's another episode of Life on two wheels.

In this episode you get a short and sweet interview with Ken Wilson where you find out what makes him skip, tick, and talk.

The musical selection is Acoustic Blues by Audionautix courtesy of the excellent YouTube audio library.

Peering into my looking glass into the future, I see a meet up with a moto blogger on the west coast, and more insight into my "Is it possible?" puzzle.

Stay tuned, there's more to come folks!

Is it possible?

This is the year I celebrate my 65th birthday.

It's a milestone like few others.

Turning fifty was a major event, so was 21. But 65, that one really does loom large. This may be the season for something big. Perhaps something really special.

These past few weeks I have been thinking a lot about my grandfather. He was my mother's father, Georges Terroux. He was in the Canadian Armed Forces and he fought in World War I. His fight ended in a fog of mustard gas. He was lucky. Lucky because he didn't die, and lucky because he met the love of his life in England, my grandmother Margaret, his war bride.

Truth

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When I was a kid, truth seemed simple. Over the last sixty years I learned that truth is not really simple at all. Truth can be surprisingly elusive, and finding it can require a whole lot of intelligence, energy and time.

Some devote their entire lives to finding truth.  They search for decades in the hope of discovering the truth about tiny slices of our reality. Think of astronomers, particle physicists and cancer researchers. Some philosophers have devoted their careers to thinking critically about the very meaning of truth. Those explorers are the vanguard in the quest for truth.

For most of us truth is more mundane than the study of cosmology and the meaning of life. "It's raining"; "I'm hungry"; "that shirt doesn't fit me well"; "it's dark out". Statements like these are easily verified. We measure truth with our eyes, our gut, our skin.

When it comes to things that others tell us, truth is more complicated, though we can usually verify what we are told. I test your honesty when you tell me "It's raining". Your coat is wet, I see the rain, I know it's true. As I learn that you speak the truth, I come to trust you. Once I trust you I simply accept what you tell me in the same way as when I see the rain myself. The truth we speak, and the trust we earn and share, are the bricks and mortar of our society.

How is the truth complicated?

The people you meet

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That's right, episode 5 of the vlog has landed.

Here are the show notes:

Unexpected recognition: Top 100!

I received word over the weekend that Life on two wheels was recognized, based on social media metrics, as one of the top 100 motorcycle blogs.

I can't begin to express what a pleasant surprise that is.

Coasting for oysters: Lostboater's Oyster Tour

I know some of you have been anxiously waiting for episode four of the vlog.

But first I have incredible news!!

On Monday, February 27th, 2017, I rode my Vespa all the way to the south western end of greater Toronto to fetch some parts for our living room lighting. That was a first. I feel almost bullish about global warming (no, not really).

Well back to the matter at hand. Wait no more, here is episode four. If I were a more proficient producer, director, editor, sound man, camera man, script writer, and cinematographer, episode four would have landed in your inbox yesterday.



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Hangin' with legends

Thanks for your patience.

Here at last is Episode 3 of Life on two wheels, the vlog.



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In this episode I meet up in northern Florida with three Vespa legends. Ken Wilson, Jim Mandle, and Bill Leuthold.

Rider profile: Bill Leuthold

Name: Bill Leuthold

Find me on Earth: Jacksonville, Florida in the historic neighborhood of Avondale.
Find me Online: Rocket and Me
Interview Date: Thursday, February 9, 2017
Interview Location: Cedar Key, Florida

Bill near Klosters, Switzerland

Rider profile: Ken Wilson

Name: Ken Wilson
Find me on Earth: St. Petersburg, Florida, sometimes
Find me Online: lostboater.com, Motorcycle Men Podcast interview and the Life on two wheels YouTube channel tnterview
Interview Date: Thursday, February 9, 2017
Interview Location: Cedar Key, Florida

I hit the road, Jack

At long last, it's episode 2 of Life on two wheels, the Vlog.

I has been a long day folks.

Episode 2 crashed my iMac, at least twice.



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As promised I returned and added some show notes, useful links, a hint or two about what I'm up to, a list, and some other stuff too.

Leap of faith

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This is a first, and you are witnessing history.

Last week I got a little lift courtesy of Ted Kettler's Motorcycle Men podcast when he interviewed me. I say a little lift because that interview took me from publishing my thoughts here in writing to sharing my thoughts in audio on his podcast.

I have had to scramble the rest of the way up to the windswept pinnacle of video blogging (or 'vlogging').

Let me know what you think.

I am brimming with a few vlog topics so this may not be the end (unless you are particularly cruel, in which case I'll take you on in a Twitter duel).

Finally, in response to David Blackburn, here are pics of those business cards. They are hot out of the mailbox:

 

So what the hell am I up to?

That's what Sonja asked a few days back. But so much more politely, I hasten to add.

I feel that I need to say something to break the suspense, you all deserve some kind of an accounting.

Things have been hectic and I have had my hands full (Christmas and the holidays, professional stuff, estate settlement tax reporting stuff, the stuff below (read on), and on, and on.

31 days...

... hath December.

This is the second year that December sees me still in the saddle. My last jaunt on the Vespa in 2015 was on the 8th of December.

On Thursday the first of the month I rode downtown for a fruitful meeting at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.

Scribbled - Voting in a Democracy

Susan is a little concerned. She may be right.

Lately I have taken to sending e-mails to Toronto Star columnists. I have also written to the Prime Minister on two or three occasions.

We're not talking about angry Tweets, or dozens of e-mail messages, or about indiscriminate rants, much less unpleasant ad-hominen diatribes aimed at reporters and politicians. Still, Susan's concern is certainly warranted (she doesn't want me morphing into either Statler or Waldorf, those angry old muppet men).

That said, I may be done with the few topics that recently prompted me to take to my keyboard.

This morning I was ingesting my daily ration of news (Toronto Star, New York Times, and Quartz) and found it largely indigestible. This is a steady diet of worrisome stuff, after all. I can't write letters every time I read an item that rattles my cage. I'd spend my days doing nothing but. I certainly shouldn't devote too much time airing my concerns here, right? Who cares what I think, anyway?

So that may be it for a while.

Let me say this though.

PMS

We humans are ruled by hormones, pheromones, and craveomones.

Many years ago we were sitting around the kitchen table. We were eating something good, but it couldn't have been entirely healthy. The kids began to read the ingredients on the labels of the jars and other containers on the table. That's when someone discovered that one of the condiments claimed it contained "flavonoids".

It only took mere fractions of a second for us to invent "tasterenes".

In that same vein, yesterday I discovered that craveomones were ruling my body.

Life after snow?

Winter is here.

I was rummaging in the storage locker today. For a brief moment I considered the Vespa's winter storage cover. Then I tossed it back on the shelf.

Snow, shmow. I'm in no mood to close the book on riding for 2016. It might happen, it might not.

The truth is that Toronto is new to me. I'm pinning my hopes on the lake effect.

Fall riff

Summer lasted forever.

And then there was fall. As often happens, when summer ebbs and leaves us contemplating the looming winter, life gets busy.

What have we been up to? We've been busy.

In mid-October I joined fellow members of the Toronto Moto Scooter Club and headed northeast towards Georgian Bay.

This is the ride that marked the arrival of fall.

Requiem for an epoch

My life began as we emerged from horrible decades of genocide, world wars, and depression. The lessons we learned at unimaginable cost gave rise to an era of stability, growth, and prosperity accompanied by unprecedented international cooperation.

Today we stand at the edge of a precipice. A very dangerous time in history.

Canadians are a rare breed

If you are not yourself Canadian, the best way to understand what it means to be Canadian, is to study the ways of a quintessential Canadian.

It's a little like birding. You need to learn the habitat, haunts, and habits of the quintessential Canadian.

Scary story

The most remarkable totally scary thing is happening right before my eyes.

It's one of those massive fog-bound freeway pile ups in slow motion. It's a system with the rules tossed out the window. None of the usual strategies like steering or braking apply to ward off disaster.

Except it's not traffic that has me mesmerized like a King Cobra's afternoon snack.

A place to call...

A place is just a place, until it becomes something more.

It remains only a place until you find meaning there.

Meaning is a peculiar brew of knowledge and feelings. Isn't that the same basic recipe that defines every single one of us? Without that combination of knowledge and emotion, a person is not really a person, and a place is just a speck in the universe.

The stronger the emotions and the deeper the knowledge that bind us to a place, the more meaning we attach to it.

When the tug of emotion is strong, and the place is familiar, our bonds grow, with the most important places eventually looming large, punctuating the landscape of our feelings like so many villages, towns, and cities.

Ultimately, a place becomes home.

It's a simple four-letter word. Yet it means so much.

Leaving home is one of the most important transitions we make.

Leaving our parents' home, finding a home of our own, leaving our own home behind, and eventually finding another. None of this is easy, and it takes time.

It hasn't taken that long, all things considered.

Toronto is beginning to feel like home.

Eureka!!!

Toronto is not Montreal. I suppose that's painfully obvious, and it's a really good thing that that's the way it is. If Toronto were just like Montreal, that would mean be one less place worth visiting, and how sad would that be?

Wouldn't it be great though, if a passionate ex-Montrealer could get some really good Montreal comfort food in Toronto? 

That's how I came to my quest to find Montreal smoked meat in Toronto good enough to justify going out of my way to get it. A wiser more realistic person (not to say a pessimist) probably should have said to themself "if you really want good smoked meat, GO TO MONTREAL!" But I'm not one to give up quite so easily. That's why Susan and I headed to Caplansky's Delicatessen.

Rider profile: Steve Liard

Name: Steve Liard
Find me on Earth: 43.6532° N, 79.3832° W
Find me Online: Aside from this interview and my Toronto Moto Scooter Club profile you'll have to find me on the road
Interview Date: October 10, 2016
Interview Location: Toronto Moto Scooter Club ride to Wasaga Beach

Free lunch, of a sort...

That's the way Ed put it, when he sent me a link to a call for participants in a 'popular Canadian culinary competition'.

They were looking for eaters not cookers, hence the 'free lunch'. I've been training for a chance like this three times a day for more than 60 years. You can imagine how quickly I took the bait.

Scribbled - Vespas hauling stuff

Let's say you ride to the hardware store because, Vespa.

Well actually because you need some stuff to remediate the drippy thing that disposes of condensate from the heat exchanger thing-a-ma-jig on the home comfort system.

And let's say that you decide you need a four or five foot long piece of PVC. You kinda know you chose the Vespa over the SUV, but you feel that you need the PVC pipe, and so, what the hell, you buy it, because, well, Vespa.

Riding home I thought, what if I decided I needed an eight or even ten foot long section of PVC? I would have gone vertical.

You can haul telephone systems too. Oh, and by some accounts, Christmas trees.

Aliens among us!

It was late on a balmy summer evening. I was fifteen years old, hanging out with my friends and neighbors' kids on the street. The day's light was fading fast. Soon it was too dark to continue playing catch.

Someone glanced at the darkened sky "Hey guys, what the heck is that?"

An eyewitness account of Toronto's 2016 Distinguished Gentleman's Ride

If you need to raise a significant amount of cash to fund research and treatment, year after year, after year, you have to get creative. It's simply no longer enough to knock on doors and beg.

Getting it done means seizing the public's imagination.