Sierra Blanca Checkpoint

East of El Paso on Interstate 10, the daytime legal speed limit is 80 mph. There's not a whole lot of traffic, it's flat, desert, no one seemed to go over 85 mph. I watch what other drivers are doing; I try not to stand out. So I went with traffic, kept my sped down to around 83, and cruised past few sneaky patrol cars, speed traps, just waiting to accelerate out onto the super-slab, and nab some law breaking speeder. Forty miles west of Van Horn, all traffic was funneled into a Border Patrol checkpoint. The officers looked very serious, and had serious looking military style equipment. There was one man in the booth, one man standing near the side of the lane with a short barreled assault rifle, and one man holding a vicious looking dog on a short lead, all at the ready, and very serious. No smiles, here. The dude in the booth, he asked me a question, but my hearing was all shot to hell from all the wind noise of high speed riding, and the roar of the engine. On a good day, my ears still ring from Vietnam. But I could see his lips moving, but I just couldn't hear a fucken thing he was saying. His lips moved again. "WHAT", I yelled. Rose leaned forward, cupped her hand, and yelled in my ear, "... they want to know if we are citizens." The soldiers were waiting for my answer. Very serious. Yeah…I nodded affirmatively. The lips moved, and I accelerated hard, brought that bike fast up to 90, made some thunder blasting back out onto the highway, then dropped her back down to 83 mph, and cruised. Willie Nelson got busted there, when they found something illegal in his tour bus. So did Snoop Dogg. A few more miles down the road we would turn the clocks ahead…Central Time.

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Motorcycles and Photography

Motorcycles and Photography: Always liked both, so when I started going to rides and events it clicked. The photo above is of Skinner and Kitty on route to Marcus Dairy. I made my darkroom in the space near the oil burner. It had a sink, a red light bulb, beer and rock and roll. The oil burner would come on loud for heat or hot water and I would have to turn up the music and drink more beer. It was kinda like my own little private party developing pictures but I think the music might have woken my sleeping family upstairs, so I'd turn off the oil burner to be more quiet, then forget to turn it back on and we'd all wake up in the middle of the night freezing. I spent a lot of time under that red bulb developing, making prints and breathing fixer fumes but it kept me out of trouble, somewhat. Most of my riding shots were taken with a 28mm wide angle lens, at f8 or f11 set for hyperfocal distance. EASYRIDERS, IN THE WIND, BIKER, and more. Here's a complete list of my published...

Whoda thunk: Lake Michigan

Fifteen Dollar Piston

That's Paul Riding My Old Ironhead With The Fifteen Dollar Piston Blasting over the mountain, I was giving her the gas, full throttle, right against the stop, passing all the cars. That's when I heard the bang. BANG . Sounded like a 12 gauge , and the Ironhead starts losing power. Cars that I passed, start to pass me. And I notice that she’s smoking some. Well, something ain’t right; I’m turning around, I'm heading for home… And by the time I get home…I’m limping, mostly running on one cylinder. FUCK! I think that was the word out of my mouth. And I’m laying down serious smoke . The trouble was the front jug. Front one is easy to take off, so I pull off the head, and loosen the cylinder, start to slide her up over the piston. And here, is where I actually showed a lick of sense: Before I pull the jug all the way over the piston, I put a clean rag around the connecting rod, under the piston, to prevent broken metal from falling off the piston, into the crankcas...

Motorcycles Bartenders F-Bombs

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