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.