cowpuc

:sign busted:In a bold but yet humble effort to redeem myself from yet another blunder let me say,, I am a non discriminatory motorcyclist with only a slight touch of hi-jackerititst. I love the bike that Eck pointed out as the topic of this thread. Further more, I would ride that gorgeous Honda with a on my face. :lightbulb:I would also like to add though that, after looking it over more closely, I do think my beat up old V-Max named Crud would not be that far behind that great big 6 cylinder Honda beast in a flat out race to 135 (right where Crud needs to be shifted into 5th gear) and that maybe,, just maybe, that 6 popper would actually be behind us,, me an Crud - we aint skeerd!!

Ahhhh,, but the story is just getting started!! One never knows if/when or how the mysterious snowman may still appear.. I may have to appeal to my lop eared varmint companions for that to happen though because,,,,, HEY,, wait a minute here,,, cant be jumpin pages in the book now you tricky lop eared snowmakin varmint:big-grin-emoticon:...

It felt so good to have the wind in my face again, even riding the congested roads on the east side of Michigan was a real treat. Steve's RSTD seemed like it had a really good fix on finding its way into Ohio so Tweeks and I just sat back and followed the pretty trailer that the RSTD was pulling perfectly behind it. We crossed into Ohio and were soon headed easterly on a back country road across the Buckeye State that would lead us to our destination. After a short stop at an abandoned store to check our loads, we went right back at it, just a little farther and we would hopefully locate Don's place. I was actually getting a little concerned about our arrival time as there was suppose to be a dinner later in that day at an abandoned Lube, Oil and Filter joint not to far from the Maintenance Day shin dig. I had been picturing a large group of lop eared Venture Rider Club varmints gathered around a grease pit filled with firewood and a pig being rotated above the pit on an old car engine stand and I REALLY wanted to see if any of my visions of the party were accurate. Steve had told me that he had one of those fancy GPS systems that was programmed to locate large gatherings of motorcycles all over the world and that he could lead us directly into Don's place with no problem. As we were mounting our scoots at the abandoned store somewhere on the outskirts of a town called Oberlin, I thanked my new friend for his guiding abilities and gave him the nod to lead on - he grinned at me as if to say he understood exactly why it was important that he be the leader during this phase of our journey. A short while later and we pulled into someones beautiful home out in the middle of nowhere that had obviously been taken over by bikers,, lots and lots of BIKERS!! Someone had obviously spent an enormous amount of time mowing the surrounding acreage that sculpted a perfect setting for what was to become one heck of party! The place wreaked of biker heaven, it was tucked back into an area that had plenty of room for camping which was steadily being filled with biker tents and campers. It also had a large swimming hole with a sign out front of it warning swimmers to beware of some strange critters that this particular group of riders call "Pond Monsters". I also noticed a plastic outhouse which I would later learn was for men only - pretty cool setup!! As I surveyed the premises with anticipation of locating a quiet spot to begin setting up my own quiet spot for camping I noticed something really strange.. There, standing right in the fork of the driveway that divided the beautifully manicured lawn stood a SNOW MAN!! I did a double take and asked Tweeks if she was seeing what I was seeing. Here it was at least 80 degrees outside and there stood a SNOW MAN!! All of a sudden it dawned me,,,, this had to have something to do with a club member known to all as "FlyinFool"... Most folks who have ever read any of my more recent writings about my perspectives of living on a motorcycle know that I am a member of a motorcycle club known as the VentureRiders. As in most biker clubs, there are always people who are just fun to harass and tease. For some reason, a couple of years ago I noticed this member, known as FlyinFool, lived on the other side of Lake Michigan from Tip and I. His home is in Milwaukee Wisconsin while our home is in Muskegon Mi. Both of our demographic area's are known for getting their fair share of lake effect snow fall. One year we ended up getting over 10 feet of snow and I started teasing FlyinFool about him being responsible for terrorizing us with the nasty white stuff. One thing led to another and it wasn't long before it became a known fact within our riding club that FlyinFool had a machine, known as "The Wisconsin White Washer", which gave him advance powers to control the weather. Mr. Fool had always seemed to take the teasing I dished out in stride (and was VERY good at passing out his own tease) BUT,, I had never actually met him in person (always wanted to) and upon seeing the Snow Man located on the finely tuned lawn there in Ohio I knew I was about to find out just how congenial the inventor of the Wisconsin White Washer was in real life. All that thought had just finished being processed in my mind when out of nowhere came a chap with a great big smile on his face,, I knew right away that it was FlyinFool himself! A short introduction with Jeff (FlyinFool), some talk about the weather, the snow man and some great laughs over the fun that we had had over joking around about his White Washer while playing in the Watering Hole (its a forum at Venturerider.org) and I noticed another smiling character with a shirt on that matched the one I was wearing. If you were to have looked in my cluttered man cave during the summer of 2014 you probably would have seen a really neat old Harley Davidson World War 2 bike. Its a long story that I wont bore you with here but I had ended up having the privilege of procuring the old girl from the son of the original owner of that 1942 Harley WLA. Having fallin in love with yet another motorcycle, I had written stories about and posted pictures of Olivia (the name I had given the WLA) in the same forum's that a lot of my biker friends on Venturerider hang out in. Here is a link to an introduction to Olivia if you would like to visit her http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?85507-Come-go-for-a-ride-on-a-1942-Harley-if-you-dare&highlight=olivia Our club (VR) is attended by some of the internets most gifted and interesting biker people known to man. Many, if not all, of those fine people share in a deep love for motorcycles and a deep interest in World War 2 memorabilia too. I remember back when I was posting about my experiences with Olivia, I had received an E-Mail from one of these folks with a screen name of "Tooch". Tooch mentioned his appreciation for our Veterans (he is a Canadian and deeply interested in keeping the memory's alive of what we, as Allies back then, were able to accomplish together for Freedom's sake). He explained that he had access to some "shirts" that were being sold to support a movement that was getting the Allied World War Two Memorial in Normandy completed. Tooch said he had purchased one of these shirts for me to wear when I rode Olivia and wanted to send it to me - AMAZING!! When I received the shirt that had a picture of Olivia with the word's "Dispatch Rider" written upon it Olivia and I made a short video skit for Tooch and that can be seen here in a video included with this story. I knew that smiling person standing behind FlyinFool wearing a matching shirt to the beautiful "Dispatch Rider" shirt that I was wearing HAD to be none other than Tooch himself!! I shook his friendly hand and hugged him while thanking him once again for his thoughtfulness and kindness of sending me the shirt. Because of some medical bills associated with stuff that had happened thru the past winter, I had to find Olivia a new home earlier in the spring and Tooch was aware of this. He was also aware of who I had sold Olivia to and that Olivia's new owner had promised to bring Olivia to the abandoned Lube, Oil and Filter joint turned eatery where we were going to be going to for dinner in just a few moments. Dave asked me if I thought the guy would show up cause he was REALLY looking forward to seeing Olivia in real life. I told him I had hoped so too!! Than it occurred to me that, thanks to EagleEye's great leadership ability, we had made it to Maintenance Day in Oberlin just in time to go find out whether or not getting to see my old War bike was gonna happen!! My stomach was growling and Tweeks was tugging on my pant leg so I knew it was time to go in for a Lube Job! We all got in line for the journey to the Lube joint which was supposedly located in the town of Vermilion Ohio. I had gotten side tracked in the greeting process of putting faces with names at Freebirds bird coup and hadn't had a chance to file a claim with the local County Clerk's office for my little Blue Menard's motel (my tent) so I had to leave the little motel mounted on Tweeks seat for the ride into town. Tweeks and I both REALLY enjoyed the moment we had to share some road with this AWESOME group of lop eared varmints and KNEW that more fun was not to far away! Checking the load!! 'Fool on the right, crazy on the left! Or did I get that backwards.... LOL OH MY GOSH WE HAVE MATCHING SHIRTS!!! THANKS AGAIN FOR THE SHIRT TOOCH!! Now lets go see if we can find Olivia!!! THE GORGEOUS CAMP GROUND AT M.D. IN OBERLIN OHIO!! THANKS FREEBIRD!! Headed in for a Lube job!!

Funny you should ask that I made a boo boo by clobbering a stock Night Rod Special V-Rod pretty good with ol Crude on his first :stickpoke:Cha.. This was not my buddies bike though. My neighbor has piped, installed a tuner and dynoed tuned his V-Rod which added about 16 horse to his. I have all but BEGGED (ok, even done some of that) him to line em up but to date, he wont do it.. We have played around a lot together on the two bikes though and I gotta hunch the ol V-Max will have another notch in his belt when we do:stickpoke:!! Maybe 2016 will be the year we find out!!

and it appeared it was headed toward the Airport that Don and Eileen would be departing from. Security was tight when the massive gathering pulled into the airport. The Detective flashed his badge to the guards at the gate and was able to clear the group until a varmint named Raggy started to pass. The guards signaled him to pull to the side and they began to

One never knows Cha,, one NEVER knows!!! I actually grabbed it to see if I could put a whoopin on my neighbors new V-Rod.. Thing is a BLAST!!

Best be hoping Fool don't see this,, that lop eared varmint is always lookin for a challenge..

I have had stuff walk off and leave me for years and always blamed in on the kids, dogs, neighbors or even the products inability to understand directions and wandering off into oblivion. I always thought having a senile moment meant you couldn't remember WHAT you bought and didn't have that much to do with stuff getting lost. Now I find out that I may have spent 60 years of life living in a state of senility - kind of disconcerting when eye (couldn't find my "I" key) think about it.. Hey Jack, something that has worked for me.. Go see if you can find the tools you may have used to do whatever you did with whatever you bought (dont forget to look in your tool box - sometimes those tools like to visit their home) - this has worked for me several times in life. I have always been amazed at how attached stuff can get to the tools needed to install what ever it is.. Oh yea,, when you find what ever it is your looking for,,, probably would not be a bad idea to :photographing::photographing: and post em here.. That way if they ever wander off again you at least have some pics in case you do have an actual case of senility!

After they got the ship properly docked, Tip and I waited for our new friend who we had never met in person to come rolling off the boat. We started getting a little concerned as a whole bunch of people had disembarked, no one had even looked at us like they might know us and, quite frankly, no one looked like a biker either.. I noticed that the employee's who worked for the Badger boating company were driving travelers vehicles off the ship and I asked one of them if they also had to do that with motorcycles. I was glad to hear him say "NO WAY,, I wouldn't trust my bike to a stranger and I certainly would not expect anyone else to do so either" - GOOD NEWS!! After a short discussion of concern for his where abouts, a smiling lop eared biker looking varmint riding a GORGEOUS Yamaha RSTD with a trailer in tow came cruising up to us and we KNEW our new friend had found us!! A howdy hug of a first time greeting (see video) and a little small talk and we were on our way back to our home followed by our new friend from Wisconsin, The EagleEye had landed and SPRING WAS LOOKING UP!! Tip, Tweeks and I led Steve and his RSTD onto some of the prettier back roads that led to our home in Muskegon. We were in no hurry, we stayed off off the Interstate and just enjoyed the peaceful back country of West Michigan's Lake Shore. When we arrived at our home our new friend presented us with some AWESOME home grown chicken eggs and some OUTSTANDING cheese that he had brought just for us all the way from a far away land known as Wisconsin!! Tip later said she thought Steve was a perfect gentleman and an excellent house guest - I told her I didn't know nuthin about all that but I could vouch for his taste in motorcycles n cheese and that he was an EXCELLENT egg picker upper - definitely my kind of varmint!! Steve and I sat out front of our home talking motorcycles and making plans for our ride that would take place the next morning. He also shared with Tippy and I about his trip across Lake Michigan on the Badger. Neither Tip nor I had ever been on that boat before so we both got a first hand account of what the Badger had been in its early years and what it looked like on its interior. I would invite @eagleeye, or others reading this who have had the wonderful experience of spending some time on the Badger (I believe @Hoss and his wife also crossed Lake Michigan on the Badger when they visited us later in the year) to share any part of the experience with us - sounded like a LOT of fun!! Early the next morning I was awakened to a brand new VentureRider.org friend ready and raring to head to Ohio. Steve gave Tip a hug and thanked her for her hospitality and promised he would keep an Eagle's Eye on me as we traveled to Maintenance Day. I hugged and kissed Tippy and told her I would take it easy on this maiden voyage of 2015, Tweeks cheerfully honked her horn in a farewell salute to Tip as we headed Southwest on the prowl of looking for new and old friends in a place called Oberlin Ohio. Another great season of Chasing The Wheel had begun and EagleEye, his pretty RSTD, Tweeks and I were on our way find those friends and fun we were looking for!!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72ariReLgao

which caused the monster to slither back into the pond from whence he came. The Detective twisted the happy grip on ol Blue and soon found himself back at the front of the pack leading them to

Problem solved David,, note my comment in the edit comments

Walk out to the bike house, stand in the doorway and make the announcement that your headed to Don's and that your looking for a trust worthy steed to accompany you. Start pressing ignition buttons - first one that starts and acts like it wants to go along - TAKE IT!! Be pretty neat to see you pull in on a 250 Enduro or something:big-grin-emoticon:

STICKER?? DID SOMEONE SAY STICKER? AWESOME DOUG:thumbsup:!! GORGEOUS SCOOT!! :cool10::cool10: Tip n I have "lost" Tweeks a couple times thru the years,, thinking those flashing lights hooked to some kind of a remote control would be the cats meow for main street Sturgis on a Friday night. No more whistling and screaming "TWEEKS,,, WHERE ARE YOU!!" GOOD JOB DOUG!!

Me too Raggy!! That Eckster sure knows how to get the ol biker blood churning dont he? Went out and showed the pics to old Crude, he shivered out of a hibernation sleep and said "wake me up in a couple months and we'll talk about it then":rotf: Man I miss summer!

WOW ZZZZZZZZZZZZ WOW WOW WOW = GORGEOUS SCOOT DJ!!! Glad you found one that fits you and your wifes needs - may your miles of smiles be plenty and the road be blessed for the three of you!! Mother Yamaha,,, hope your listening and dont :draming:for to much longer cause:

Yea,, I wouldnt stay there,, I think thats the place where it started raining on us Michiganders last year!!

OUTSTANDING and CONGRATS JEFF!! Thoughts and Prayers Up brother as you continue mending!! Glad your desk was happy to see you and had some paperwork to distract you from the,, you know what.. You dont need to think at all about the, you know what, any more this season and you can now focus on healing, getting your desk work caught up and getting ready for Maintenance Day!!

and trying to catch itself a Yamaha Venture.. Peeking back in his rear view, the Detective could see that the slower 2nd Gens were having a hard time getting past the slimy Pond Monster so he motioned for the bikes following him to continue their forward trek toward the Airport while he swung the gorgeous Blue 1st Gen around and headed back to

Back when I was a very young man of 40 years of age I worked for a man who was in his late 50's. Tip and I had gone to the home of this fine man and his wife's for a Christmas party which included a large group of other Management persons who also worked at our plant under my Boss's excellent leadership. We were sitting around playing this game that involved stealing each others Christmas presents. The place was dead quiet and covered with a wide eyed group of other Managers and some Supervisor's glaring at me for having had the nerve to "steal" my Bosses wife's Santa Clause Cookie Jar that she had just opened and was showing off to all of us - my boss looked at me and grinned from ear to ear when he noticed their responses. As Linda, my bosses wife, bent down to retrieve the box the Cookie Jar had came in she let out a moan as she rubbed her lower back. We all stared at her in helpless wonderment and asked if she was ok. Her comment in retort of the many hands reaching out to help her is one that has stuck with me in both the memory of her accurately spoken words and actual happenings to my own body that started at the end of 2014 - she said "I was healthy like you youngsters just a few years ago and when I hit 50 years old, health issues started plaguing my body and everything changed - these back pains are relentless!! I encourage all of you to enjoy your youth while you can!". Tip and I made it successfully to almost to our 60th year of a wonderful life by listening to Linda's advice of enjoying our youth before her prophetic words started to ring true for us. After spending those years leading up to late into 2014 enjoying our summers chasing the front wheel of our 1983 Yamaha 1st Gen Venture named Tweeks all over the country (a couple short stories of those years of fun can be found here starting in 2013 = http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?80470-on-the-road-again followed by a short ride story about 2014 here = http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?94309-Ahhhh-the-summer-of-14-ADVENTURE-SERVED-UP-GORMET-STYLE!!!!&highlight=summer+2014 ) before Linda's prophetic words did indeed begin to catch up to us. I spent the winter of 2014/2015 chasing around from one doctor to another trying to figure out exactly what was happening to my body. After a couple of really scary findings including discovering I had a Meninga Seal leak, a bad signal to the bottom part of my heart, and case of Prostate Cancer, the doctors still could not find the issues causing my symptoms of extreme fatigue and mental confusion. In the early Spring of 2015 an Emergency Room Doctor was attempting to rule out some Stroke symptoms I was displaying and, among a fairly large grouping of other weirdly named drugs, he had given me a high dosage of Prednisone to get some blood vessels in my head to react for testing - Prednisone is an artificial adrenaline I was told. While discovering I had not had a Stroke (thankfully) we did discover that the Prednisone produced a positive effect on the symptoms I had been battling for the last several months. My family doctor then placed me on some small dosages of Prednisone in an effort to get me back to being somewhat functional while she sought to get me in to see an Endocrinologist to see if he could figure out what was happening - the Endo Doc was a critter who had a 4 month waiting list to get in to see!! Thankfully I responded positively to the small dosages of Prednisone and I found myself no longer needing to sleep 20 hours of a 24 hour day. The timing for this could not have been more perfect. I have a friend that lives on the other side of Lake Michigan who I really enjoy sharing stories with and even teasing from time to time. His screen name on VentureRider.org is @Flyinfool (the man LOVES flying!!) but his real name is Jeff. Jeff, like many other people in our Club of lop eared gifted varmints, is a very talented individual both mechanically and electrically. Fool's demographic location and his love to tinker inspired me to start harassing him about owning a machine now known as FlyinFool's Wisconsin White Washer. The make believe tease is that Jeff owns a machine that produces snow and he is now pretty much the turn to guy in our club for any questions concerning where/when and how much the weather is going to keep us VR Riders from riding our bikes. Ironically, the story goes that Jeff had actually shut the White Washer off about a month before the Prednisone episode began so Tip and I KNEW something good was about to happen.. Follow this story in the upcoming days if you would like to meet the White Washer himself as I believe I have a picture of him in here somewhere that I will share!! Shortly after Fool had decided to shut down his infamous White Washer for the season I noticed that a VentureRider.org gathering known as "Freebirds Maintenance Day" was posted on our Clubs calendar. Tip was aware of how badly I had always wanted to attend one of these awesome Freebird's M.D.s as I had never had the honor of actually meeting our clubs founder and the master intellect behind our band of misfits getting to know one another and I had always wanted to meet this amazing varmint, plus I LOVE meeting face to face with other members and this outing would definitely be a good chance to do so. Tippy began encouraging me to saddle up and go have some fun with some old friends of ours and maybe even meet some of those new ones. As the date for Freebirds M.D. drew closer it occurred to us that I would probably end up having to make the ride alone - just Tweeks and I. Soon after the discussion of this foreboding topic had taken place, I received an inquiry from another VR Club member from Wisconsin named @eagleeye (aka Steve). EagleEye wanted to know if I had any information pertaining to places to camp in the Ludington Mi area and any entertaining roads to follow from Ludington that would lead him to the Maintenance Day rally being held in Oberlin Ohio. Steve was going to make the trip across Wisconsin to a place called Manitowoc, a town in Wisconsin that is home to a cross lake ferry known as the Badger. He was then going to take the Badger over to Ludington Michigan and proceed toward Don ( @Freebird ) and Eileens home in Oberlin Ohio where the Maintenance Day rally was going to be held. In the process of processing Eagleeye's route it occurred to me how much fun it would be to trick,, I mean to see if I could encourage Steve into traveling down to our home in Muskegon after he departed from the Ferry and spend a night with my wife, Tip, and I and then maybe ride down to M.D. together - NEAT IDEA EH? Our soon to be house guest and riding partner liked the idea and accepted the invitation!! He gave us his ships arrival times and I proceeded to clear a spot out in our garage to house his bike and trailer. Tip, Tweeks and I talked about it and decided to ride up to meet Steve and his gorgeous RSTD at the Badger in Ludington. It was really fun watching the Badger come into port. Apparently the ship is to big to turn around in port and we discovered that the only way the ships crew can turn the ship around is by dropping the anchor while the ship is in motion, let the anchor hook onto the bottom of the channel and then letting the weight of the ship turn itself about - WHAT AN AMAZING SITE!!! I had seen this done in the movie "The Pirates Of The Caribbean" but had no idea this could actually be done with such a HUGE vessel! Come to find out - its done all the time up there in Ludington Michigan - wayyyy cool!!

the Detective announced that it would probably be a good idea for anyone that wanted to go to the airport and wave bye - bye to Freebird and Eileen as they flew off to explore Paris to head that way. He pulled the Blue 1st Gen forward and turned on his police lights. The masses formed a two by two line behind the Detectives bike and then they all

11th sounds good! Thinking our little blue motel room will be thawed out enough to be able to unroll it by then!!

I tried to tell ya Dan O',, I tried to tell ya!! That Fool is a sneaky feller, looks like he found the spare batteries for the remote control for his White Washer cause we got another inch or so last night too..

Been thinking about M.D. a LOT too Randy,, Tip, Tweeks n I are hoping to make it this year. Cant wait to see everyone again - both old friends and meet some new ones PLUS Tip didnt get to meet all the new friends that I did last year so this year we got some making up to do in that regard, I think I left half of a Pulled Pork sandwich and some baked beans sitting on a chair behind the Black Harley that was in the garage last year that I have to finish, I have to see if I can find my lost 4 gig SD Card on Don's lawn - shouldnt be to hard to find - been thinking about it and I think it will be right next to the imprint in the lawn of that kickstand plate that FlyinFool gave me, I never did get to see no pond monsters cause I was to busy filling up the new 16 gig that I went and bought cause the 4 gig ran out of space so I gotta go looking for Pond Monsters, gotta go ride around the neighborhood and see if I can find the little bridge again that I kept finding when I was lost trying to find my way back to M.D. from buying the new SD Card at Walmart - been thinkin there may be several little matching bridges - a TRUE mystery. Oh yea, I also think I may have some left over tickets from last years drawings that I was saving for this years drawing, if they dont produce this year I may be willing to sell them for half price if anyone is interested.

as the color of the Blue 1st Gen now displayed boldly on Freebirds chest. The Detective dusted the Hot Dog area for prints with the Blue dust but found no prints. He then pulled another package out of his kit that had these letters stamped in the top of it - I.M.F.H.D.A. (Impossible Mission Force Hot Dog Analyzer). The crowd watched as the Detective removed a simple napkin from the package, placed it around his neck and began professionally testing the Hot Dog by

which was kind of strange because under normal circumstances, a left over Hot Dog at a Venturerider.org gathering is a very rare occasion. The Detective was called to the table to investigate this malady. First thing he did was tape off the area with yellow police tape, then he broke out his crime scene investigation kit and pulled a chair up to the table near the beautiful Hot Dog. Wondering what was in the kit, the crowd gathered around to watch the Detective in action. As he opened the investigation kit, they were all surprised to see