Motorcycles Bartenders F-Bombs

                     The Dude rode from his house to the farm market, on the crude, mud spattered Ironhead Sportster, with only a backpack with which to carry home his produce, and a big backpack it was, because he would buy enough for the week. The Dude, as usual, was doing his grocery shopping, mostly all at the farm market, except for the bread, and his bakery of choice happened to be in an old neighborhood noted for street gang hoodlums. The Dude, tall and lanky, was for the most part, a vegetarian.    But now, I must step back, to the incident of last week. He’d parked on the street a few doors down from the bakery. When he came out with two still warm loaves, he saw some young street punks around his bike, and one of them was even sitting on it, posing, like he was riding. There were three of them, altogether, brazenly watching him as he approached. Two more stood in a nearby doorway, looking amused, and smoking f...

  We rode around Ranchos de Taos with flimsy directions looking for Dennis Hopper. A dirt road led back to Jesus Nazareno Cemetery: a carved wooden cross, loose stones, an American flag, a blue glass bottle. Born in Dodge City, died of prostate cancer. Rebel Without a Cause. Easyrider. We rode away, stopped in front of nearby Paul’s Bar. It looked like Hopper's kind of hacienda.

I'm glad the tequila is gone.  Said goodbye to Mike and LuAnn and headed south into the Black Hills:  Custer State Park.  Rode the "Wildlife Loop" and saw a couple of antelope and buffalo.  Rode through the town of Custer:  a clusterfuck of tourists, traffic, bikers, and folks dressed up as pioneers. Hah…folks dressed up as bikers. I waited for the same traffic light four times!  Glad to get out of there.  Gassed up in Newcastle, Wyoming, and took route 450 to Wright, desolate, nothing but antelope for 70 miles, and hot ninety five degrees.  Made it to Casper just before the rain.   Had a dream my tooth fell out.  Woke up and it was still there.  Route 220 out of Casper, lots of antelope, and 287 to Rawlins, where we found I 80 west.  Crossed the Continental Divide three times:  once on 220, once on 287, and once on I 80.  Temps. on the high prairie ranged in the high 80's, but once we descended into Salt Lake City,...

  Some of the best rides in New York State, in the 1980’s were the ABATE sponsored helmet protests. There was usually a designated camping area and riders made it a weekend event. The pack, consisting of several hundred bikes would meet on Monday in the huge parking lot near Taft Furniture,  and the helmetless parade would ride Central Avenue into Albany, the capitol, where speeches and meetings with politicians took place. The whole event had a festive mood; I never saw animosity. After the event, folks put their helmets back on and rode home with a feeling of accomplishment and camaraderie.

It was our first ride to Sturgis on the new Superglide and we rode through torrential down pours, truck gauntlets, Chicago traffic jams, unrelenting midwest sunglare and crossed the mighty Mississippi. We’d set our daily limit at 500 miles per day, an easy goal west of the Mississippi; we spent our first Sturgis night in Wall. Badlands was spectacular, but hot and dry, so we headed west looking for a bar. In New Underwood, we found “The Worlds Smallest Biker Bar,” a friendly place where the bartender held coins between her cheeks and dropped them into a cup.  

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...