I'm hoping that all my blog followers and vlog subscribers are suitably impressed.
If you haven't noticed, I'll blow my own horn with impunity and a total complete lack of humility.
It's another episode of the vlog, and it's landing in your inboxes within something crazy like 48 hours of the previous episode. Believe me when I say that, even a month ago, I would have said that was a shear impossibility.
What changed?
Well, like anything else, it's possible to get to a point where producing a half-decent YouTube video becomes a little more routine, and a little less of an unaccompanied hike in a steamy wild jungle. That's because you begin to learn where the path lies among the myriad complex and bewildering choices you are faced with when you open a powerful video editing suite on your computer.
This episode was prompted by one of the basic things that motivated me to begin blogging in the first place.
You have the need to get something accomplished, like in this case installing an Ikea Godmorgon - Odensvik - Rinnen floating bathroom vanity.
In short order you hit a foggy wall in the plumbing section at your local Rona, Lowes and Home Depot stores, and you don't get any further at a couple of professional plumbing supply houses, and in spite of having Googled and YouTubed for hours, you are still scratching your head stymied in your attempts to solve what ought to be a very, very, very simple task: hooking up the Ikea Rinnen drain system to the drain rough-in that pokes out of your bathroom wall.
Eventually I figured it out, and quite elegantly I have to say, speaking as a non-plumber. More elegantly than some of the examples I found in my online searches, here, and here, here, here and here.
Once all the running around and cursing is done and the job is a success, I for one react this way: "Holy crap, if only I had come across a video like the one I'm going to make explaining how to get from Eh!?! to beeee-you-tiful!"
So there you have it. Another public service like some of the other examples you can find right here in the Gear Guide, and the Touring Guide. Only it has absolutely nothing to do with riding a motorbike. It's about life. Life on two wheels.
My work here is done!
You're welcome!
And now the credits:
The music for this episode is Tribal Song by Silent Partner, a royalty-free selection from the YouTube Audio Library: https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music
In this episode of the vlog, a small band of intrepid scooter desperadoes from the Toronto Moto Scooter Club hits the road bright and early on an impossibly sunny Saturday morning and heads up north, way up north.
This ride was destined to be an eye opener on so many levels.
Wikipedia debunks the myth that Yonge street (where Susan and I live in the north end of Toronto) is the longest street in the world. I generally trust Wikipedia, so when I was about to head back home, and my GPS told me to "turn left on Yonge street" I felt like an explorer discovering something new about the planet. Wikipedia says categorically that Yonge street ends 80 kilometers north of Lake Ontario. Yet here I was, more than 150 kilometers north yet still on Yonge street!! Cool! The thrill of discovery!!
But that's nothing!
Any excuse is a good reason to swing your leg over a saddle and hit the road, destination irrelevant. But what if there was a prize at the end of the road? How about an annual butter tart festival? When I saw that on the club's news letter, I was SOLD!!
The ride up was just what a moto trip ought to be. There were some nice hills to give you that soaring feeling when you cross the ridge line, some really nice twisties that I failed to record, sweeping left and right arcs, and gorgeous green countryside along every mile.
The event in Midland was well worth the trip all on its own, including the guy riding the Emu, not to mention the sinfully good butter tarts.
This one has had a ridiculously long gestation period.
What I needed to express was how I see blogging and vlogging as a form of art. I certainly see my writing efforts as a form of artistic expression. As for my videos... well, there lies a challenge. My technical skills are still very much ramping up, and my ability to tell a story as a video is in its infancy.
Vloggers who are much more talented express the view, with which I agree, that the story is where the art lies, much more so than in the technique of cobbling together a series of video and sound clips. In that spirit, I honestly try not to get wrapped up in the technology more than I absolutely need to.
There will always be better choices in terms of equipment and software, but even the most modest setup should allow plenty of room for creativity and is certainly no excuse for a boring, annoying, or pointless video. Heaven knows there are enough of those.
As I try to transition from blogger to vlogger, the blog suffers, my attention to fellow bloggers suffers, and along with them I suffer too. What I am trying to do in this episode is to express to you how I see this process and how this experiment is having an impact on me. I have literally lain awake at night, nursing the story for this video, imagining what I could do express my thoughts and point of view effectively. I imagined all kinds of fanciful wizardry that is quite frankly beyond my grasp at this point.
As for future posts, there is a club ride tomorrow for what I am told is the epicenter of butter tart magic up in Midland and that will be fun to document, and in early July it's off to tour the Sticks with Steve Williams and Paul Ruby which will be epic fun.
In the absolutely mundane department, I finally completed our guest bathroom update and that involved three difficult days wrestling with the installation of an excellent Ikea floating vanity. I Googled and YouTubed that project to death seeking advice. Given what I found, I am determined to offer the YouTubeOsphere a little ditty on my installation that may just save some future handy men a litany of florid cursing and needless treks to the hardware store.
So stay tuned, there's more in store.
And now the credits:
The music for this episode of Life on two wheels is:
I'm Everywhere Remastered by TeknoAXE hosted on http://www.teknoaxe.com which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
In this episode of the vlog, the first of two parts, I explore the mystery of what drives us to attempt art.
Not everyone develops an artistic bent, but
they are not that hard to find.
In part one you get a glimpse of me helping my dear friend Marc by editing a new book he has written and is busy publishing. It took two very full days of fairly grueling work on my end to deliver the comments that Marc was after, so that his publication target could be met.
As I worked to help Marc, it got me thinking again about what art means to me, and my own artistic process. You may not agree with me of course, but I consider the stuff I publish here on the blog, and up there in the new vlog, to be art.
It's a great conceit, and you may not believe that I am writing this with genuine humility, but when I go back into the depths of this journal's history to re-read stuff I posted a ways back, I actually enjoy what I read. I imagine that others enjoy it too. I think it would be a whole lot more difficult to do if I thought that I was producing drivel that was painful to read and difficult to watch. Well... maybe the videos are painful to watch. I've been learning to write in earnest since... I think grade 5. So those skills have been honed for a decent time. My video editing is in its earliest infancy.
But here's the thing, there's something in it that is very compelling for me.
That's my next challenge. Trying to explain what the blog and the vlog mean to me, how they drive me, and why I think they are art.
If I manage to get it halfway right, it will be art, about art.
I'm curious to hear what my fellow bloggers (who are suffering my neglect as I spend long selfish hours on my 'art') think. Not about the quality of what I do, but about their own blogging (and vlogging of course, if any vloggers happen to stop by).
Speaking of art, the music for this episode of the vlog is Hall of Mirrors by Bird Creek and is available in the YouTube audio library.
In this episode I revisit the place where my life on two wheels began, in Victoria, British Columbia. My experience there nine years ago changed my life in ways it was impossible to imagine. Those ways are all documented on the blog and are well-worth exploring.
The music for this episode is Deep Hat by Vibe Tracks, available for download in the YouTube audio library (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music). Mood music was incidentally provided by talented guy in the video thumbnail.
The detailed narrative for this episode may be found in these posts: The opening post of the blog from March 2010 Getting started... and this post from December 2011 How and Why I got into Motorbikes. Each of those posts provides some key insights into what living life on two wheels means to me. The only way to gain a more complete understanding is by viewing this episode of the L2W vlog, and by exploring this journal. One of the easiest ways to do that is to click on the link above to the version of this journal in chronological order.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Later on in the season I'll have more to say about the mysteries of Vimy, you'll get to tag along as I take a trip south to the sticks of Pennsylvania to hang out with Steve, and there will be much, much more in store.
In this episode you'll hear from Dar Duncan (#MotoDiva) herself. She gives us the inside scoop on what it takes to be a professional motorcycle instructor, plus you get a glimpse of Dar in her star persona on Farkle Garage, and Dar does a great sales job on the Honda NC700SA.
The trip to Victoria was a long one, no doubt about that, but so, so worth it. The view of Mount Baker from Dallas Road all by itself is well worth the visit.
I'll be back to provide more complete show notes a little later on... so keep an eye on this post...
In the meantime, please enjoy episode 8 of Life on two wheels!
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Well that did take some time. The only thing I'll add on this episode is that I'd been wanting to meet Dar as far back as the spring of 2012 when I met up with other moto bloggers on the West Coast. Now at last this episode of the vlog checks that box. Finally!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?"
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.
If you're wondering why I am so excited about participating in the upcoming 2016 Distinguished Gentleman's Ride, feast your eyes on this. If you want an update on how my fundraising campaign is going click on this:
My sponsors stepped up and increased my total amount raised for the September 25th Distinguished Gentleman's Ride by over $600! You will recall that last week I reported on the minus side of the equation that my Vespa GTS, my steed for the Ride, had sprung a coolant leak. Here's where you find out how that tiresome distraction is working out.
When I say art moves me, it's not just painting, it's also music.
I listen to the radio, like most people, I collect CDs, and I purchase songs and albums in the iTunes store.
As with my collection of museum photos that cycle on our television and computer screens,
my music collection streams from our iMac to fill our three-story
townhouse. I use a combination of the following tools and systems:
Art, in all of its forms, moves me. I believe artists make some of the most important contributions to society. They play a key role, yet they are, for the most part, not compensated enough for their work.
There was a cartoon, most likely Dilbert, or the Far Side. Its punch line was '... will work for recognition'. Even on that non-monetary scale, artists are often left wanting. The well-deserved recognition that some eventually earn, only comes when they are dead and long gone.
Susan and I are amateur art collectors. We have a modest art budget, and we agonize over the works we purchase, yet we are slowly but surely running out of wall space to display our collection. This considerably raises the stakes and makes any decision to purchase a new piece all the more difficult. In spite of our limitations, we are always on the hunt.
I've mentioned before that this journal changes so much in my life, for the better.
It teaches me how to inform and entertain. It earns me friendships to treasure. It allows me to speak up when I have concerns great or small. It's a way for me to share life's challenges and heartbreaks. It teaches me how to be grateful and how to pay tribute. It opens undreamed-of vistas. It helps me to adapt to life's constant change with optimism for the years ahead.
Ed Kilner is one of the friends who emerged from the process of this journal. I first met Ed on my grand 2013 tour. I stopped by briefly as I swung through Toronto headed south of the border to meet with up Bob and Karen in Pennsylvania. Then Ed dropped by our home in Montreal on his way to the Maritimes. Once Susan and I moved to Toronto, it was just a question of time before I would hit the road to explore my new home with Ed as my guide.
I owe Ed an apology for this long-overdue account of our rides exploring the country highways and byways north of the city.
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.
