A New Addition to the Family

Suddenly, we find ourselves with our 1st-generation kids grown, and us now totally free of our exes.  We already know how good we are together, and we are looking forward to spending the rest of our lives inseparable.  We also know that the time is getting short.  We are in the prime of our lives, and from here our opportunies for many things gets only dimmer.  Right now, our financial situation is sorting itself out nicely.  Our health is still good.  So we've been thinking.  Donna asked my opinion, and together we decided it's time to make a move.

You gotta admit, those Softail Customs are some hot-lookin' bikes.  Kind of like my late-model Mustang, where I knew the first time I laid eyes on it that it would be my next car whenever that day came.  Donna had that same reaction when the FXSTC was introduced, and the urgency was ratched up when was the model was discontinued in 2010.  We make most of our purchases in the used vehicle market, and we know you can't order your color, your options, and nothing is in mint condition anymore.  Mileage can be low, high, or off the chart.

We've been doing our homework, we accidentally (we swear) ran across a number of used ones that made us pause, she even test rode one, but due to circumstances nothing made Donna pull the trigger.

Saturday, she did.  We were at the dealership where I'd volunteered to help park cars for a show, when there in the showroom, glowing like the sun among weeds, was The Bike.  Literally.  Limited-edition Golden Glow paint, 3,900 miles, six-speed, and even a new set of tires.  For all intents and purposes, it's as close to a new bike as you can get, and she negotiated a price that was better than less-desirable examples we've seen.

I stopped trying to dissuade her.  If you're ever going to do it, you're going to settle for something less, look back at today, and realize you blew it.  Carpe Diem!

We still have no place to put it long-term, but at least we know where we are with the kids, etc., and hey - they got nice graduation presents, right?  We stacked up some stuff in the shed, made just enough space, and rolled her in.  The kid can't get the lawn mower out now, but what the hell.  We'll work it out.
You didn't really think we were having a kid, did you?  We're bold, friends, but not stupid.  We solved that problem long ago.

Pomp and Circumstance

We're 4-for-4 !

With Southern Lehigh's graduation on the 17th, all of our kids are now officially edumicated to the extent prescribed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  Courtney and Garrett are now just weeks away from being legal adults, and Katrina already was 18 when she wore the tassel on the 9th.  Jesse graduated last year, and is already halfway through his sophomore year at Penn State.

Funny how things went from one extreme to the other by age.  Jesse had a year's worth of college credits by the time he was out of high school.  Katrina was always in the clear, but could not afford to have anything go wrong in her last semester, or she could have ended up in jeopardy.  Courtney contracted Senioritis and made it more of a question than it should have been.  And Garrett?  He had to hit home runs in May and June.  It was dicey to say the least. His status turned to green the day before caps and gowns went out.

But he did it, and we're so proud of all of them.   Being a parent of a teenager (or any age, I guess) is not always a barrel of laughs.  But graduation is a great, great moment for a parent, and we're happy for our kids.  Each faces a different future, and although we can conjecture, nobody ever knows for sure.  All we know is that our kids are no longer children.  A page is turned, and a glass is raised...

Rain Man

Monday morning, we left the luxurious Hilton Garden and walked across the street to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. A sharp contrast to the rustic patina of Wheels Through Time, the NHOF is a sparkling $190-million showpiece packed with all sorts of high-tech interactive wizardry. Yes, the past is prominently displayed with the reverence due it. (And, yes, there is a functioning moonshine still.) But it is very much a grand showpiece, and worth more than the 3 hours we afforded it. We stopped by the equally modern racetrack outside of town, and hit the spit-polished race shop of Roush Fenway before pointing the bikes north for the ride home. We did catch some of the Blue Ridge Parkway on the way up, convenient as both the shortest route to I-81, and the smoothest, fastest section of the 469-mile road. We made good time clipping along at 55, until it started to...

Yep. At least it was almost the end of the day when we ended up suiting up. By this time, Bryan should have been about home having headed his own way when we left the Hall. The downside was that it was dusk, and the deer were getting restless. We ended up riding the last miles in the dark in the rain, which sucks as badly as you might imagine. We went to bed with one day to get 400 miles, and a forecast that couldn't be much worse.

We opted immediately for the direct route, and set out with the rainsuits on in a light drizzle. Well before we ran out the first tank (only 125 miles or so on my bike, which is the weak link) we found ourselves in a steady downpour. The kind of rain that defeats even the best rainsuit. Parts were getting wet and cold, and it was looking like a long, long day.

Then it got worse.

About 80 miles out, it started coming down in torrents. So hard, in fact that we were actually passing cars that were pulling onto the shoulder and stopping. And they are the ones with windshield wipers. The sky started to flash. Not looking good for the home team.It was time for even stubborn people to let discretion prevail.

On bikes, however, stopping on the shoulder when visibility is zero is generally a bad, bad idea. You lose track of where you are in your car, and we don't have crumple zones. Lightning is also a very good motivator to get off the road and to shelter. We reached the next exit a few miles up the road and found that shelter in a travel center / Burger King.

We got off the bikes and sloshed our way in, through the quickie mart and over to the BK. All eyes were on us as we stripped off all our gear and revealed ourselves basically soaked from head to toe. We took over two tables, and soon the manager sent out a kid with a mop and a yellow wet floor sign. We sat down with a cup of hot coffee, surveyed our sorry scene, and laughed uncontrollably for a good 5 minutes. It was hysterical.

We contemplated what time Judge Judy came on, and if there was a liquor store near the closest hotel, and then eventually got about the business of getting back out there. The frightening part of the storm had passed, and we were back to your garden-variety downpour.

When we stopped again for gas 2 hours later, we were in Pennsylvania, and the rain was finally starting to give us a break. From there we were a couple miles short of making it home on gas, and I dug out a dry shirt and sweater from the bag. We never did get completely out of the rain, but it was light and intermittent enough that the dry shirt stayed that way. One more gas stop, and we were home free.

Looking back, the weather ended up pretty much as advertised: wet every day. We were grateful that the two days we spent down there were the drier ones, and in fact got a glimpse of blue sky there on Sunday night. I guess it could have turned out to be 4 days of slogging through the rain, which would have made it a total loss, but in my experience that never really happens. Look out your window the next time there's a rainy week and you'll see what I mean. It just doesn't pour for 96 hours straight.

So we got it about as bad as it gets, survived, and proved that age-old maxim yet again: the worst day on the bikes is better than the best day at work.

See you next time.

Good Ole Boys

The concept for this trip was hatched over the winter by Dad, who wanted to take a couple days to ride to Charlotte and take in the brand-spankin'-new NASCAR Hall of Fame and museum. I don't think of us as rednecks, you might disagree, but we do like the simple things. And bottom line, we're gearheads. We love to ride, we love to drive, and we love to take stuff apart and make it better than it was. The only thing that kept us us from being racers ourselves is pictures of Ben Franklin. We don't have enough of 'em.

Anyway, he invites us along, and immediately I add a day to the trip and a bunch of stuff to the itinerary. I wanted to ride some of the Blue Ridge Parkway again, and see the Wheels Through Time museum in Maggie Valley, NC, and take Donna on the Tail of the Dragon (as seen in prior blog linked at right.) We didn't have enough time for Dad to get the Dragon on the itinerary, but he did a great job of laying out an awesome ride.

After a 500-mile day on the Interstate, the morning agenda was an invigorating ride through the serpentine roads sprawling the hills of Appalachia, headed to the antique museum in Maggie Valley.

Moonshine country.

The roads were awesome when not wet, which was only about half the time. The other half was spent gingerly negotiating hairpin turns and scanning the asphalt with unbroken focus. We made it to the museum in late morning and unsuited.

Wheels Through Time is awesome. Dale Walksler and his son went right to the top of my list of coolest people I've ever met, and I could listen to them talk for days. That is, when I wasn't listening to their toys run, which is the whole point of this place. Every car and motorcycle runs, and they happily fire up whatever visitors have an interest in. A place like I have never seen before, in a part of the country unrivaled for motorcycle riders. Paradise.

We stayed longer than planned but less than we wanted to, and headed over the ridge one last time towards Charlotte. Dad was devastated that the BBQ pit he'd read about was closed, and we swung and missed a second time before lucking into a decent joint a half hour short of Charlotte. At least we hadn't had the rainsuits on since leaving Maggie Valley, and in fact I put on a dab of sunscreen before leaving Bridge's Red BBQ. We got to Charlotte, showered, and hit the town. A round of top-shelf tequila for the boys, a couple margaritas, and some nachos, all enjoyed on an outdoor patio downtown. This is livin'.

Nothin' Could be Finer

...than to be in Carolina in the morning. At least, that's how the folk song from elementary school went. Or were we the only ones that learned that song?

So it was that we took off with Mom and Dad for a ride to North Carolina, by way of Tennessee. To really sweeten the pot, my brother was going to head west out of Richmond (yes, Lydia, I know you live in Chesterfield. I'm generalizing) and meet up with us on the way down for what was expected to be a long weekend full of good times.

In the week leading up to it, however, we were beset by a progressively worsening cascade of maladies starting with a miserable forecast, and culminating in Donna's emergency root canal 20 hours before our scheduled departure. She walked into the house wacked on Vicodin and unable to move her jaw. By then the forecast was 4 straight days of rain. Disappointed, I reluctantly called Dad and cancelled. It was his trip, and he was more disappointed than either of us.

Donna, being the most stubborn person I ever met, called him back 10 minutes later and said, "mmph rrph erbim glurbin rurrer," or words to that effect, which it turns out translate to "don't listen to this idiot, we're going. See you at 8."

We got exactly one block before pulling into the repair shop behind our lot to put on our rainsuits. At the other end of the state, it was pouring as we pulled in for our first gas stop. We did actually have them off when we met Bryan in Virginia, but it wasn't long before we found ourselves under another gas station canopy, joining a few other groups of riders in an impromptu rain gear fashion show. It's also where we had a good laugh.

One of the things I love about our family, and that definitely includes Donna and by extension her ex's Dad, is that we're all motorcycle people at our cores. We understand what it is to be exposed to things that most people never will, and it's part of us. When I rode up to their house to work on Katrina's car, and a thunderstorm had just rolled through as I was packing up to leave, my Mom didn't freak out and tell me I was crazy. She said, "Be careful. Do you need to borrow my clears?" Of course, I had a pair of clear lenses with me and off I went. But that's how we are. So, there in a rainstorm off I-81 in Virginia, when Bryan opened his "rainsuit" bag to find... his bike cover, it had been a long time since I saw Mom laugh that hard. Priceless. We'd do what we needed to keep him from freezing to death, but that moment was a family heirloom.

We did ultimately make it to our planned stop in Johnson City, TN late in the day and just in time to see a rainbow arching over our hotel. As we got off the bikes, you could see the street beyond us dry, and actually see the line where the rain behind us caught up and stopped with us. When we get old, we will have a lot of stories to tell.

Preoccupied

...with 19, with 19, with 1985.


Yes, those are song lyrics, and yes, if you know your Bowling for Soup, our kids in high school do tell us we're uncool.


The Friday after Thanksgiving has become the universal day for class reunions, now that in this day and age, people scatter across the globe, and Thanksgiving is the best shot at catching the most people "at home." And so it was, that the mighty Whitehall Zephyrs Class of 1985 had assembled once again.


We got maybe 40-50 classmates out of a graduating class of 100-some, which ain't bad. KevAndDonna had to bail out kind of early (see below) but it was really a great time catching up with folks not seen in many, many years. We had people from all over the map, including Jill Weaver who made a trip in from Hong Kong! I have to admit, most of us looked pretty damn good for as far past our prime as we are. Good times...


Some of those folks actually follow this blog, and over the last couple weeks we've been told by more than one person that we've been, to borrow a phrase, "falling down on the blog." Indeed, we posted nothing about the charity rides we've done, a couple group rides to check out some cool old-time machinery, the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, a wild time at DelMarVa Bike week, our second Nickelback concert, and the crazy story of how we ended up in VIP seats at an Eddie Money concert.

Oh yeah, and the Penn State game the morning after the class reunion.

So, yes, we've been a little preoccupied. We'll get to most of that stuff ASAP, I promise. But not this Saturday; we'll be in NYC enjoying the festive hustle and bustle, the tree, the skaters, and all the stuff that goes with it.


I was going to put a teaser picture of each in this post, but in the process, I ran across a picture that we took while actually doing work on the house earlier this summer. We don't think we keep up with the neighbors, and in fact we live pretty modestly. We do, however, like cars. And motorcycles. Between us, we insure seven cars and two bikes, but aside from the family bus, the rest are being slowly inherited by kids. Anyway, when we had to move them all around to get at the garage ceiling, the place looked like a used car lot, but for cool stuff only. So, we took this picture. I feel kinda sheepish showing it, and I am acutely aware that pride comes before a fall. But it makes us appreciate what we have, and why we work so hard. Come see us at East Penn Automotive!

CHOP Toy Run

OK, so we are way behind on the blog here. Instead of letting our stories continue to pile up in our photo folders just to keep them in order, we're going to have to put up this post while it's relevant, and then go in and sneak the others in between where they belong. Whenever that happens...

The annual ride to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia is supposed to be the largest rolling toy run anywhere. We've each wanted to take the cold ride to Philly for years before we met, and in fact, as seen below in Previous Adventures of KevAndDonna, we had taken a PTO day last year a few days in advance to ride down and evaluate the situation. I forget exactly why we didn't end up going, but I suspect weather.

From CHOP Toy Run 2010

Anyway, this weekend worked out well for us. The weather was going to be cold, but sunny. It was also Katrina weekend. Trina has done the Allentown toy run since she was old enough to hang on, and I was thinking she had liked the idea too. But damn, November gets cold. Allentown, you can see from the house. Philly is an hour on the turnpike.

It got almost to freezing by the time we got layered up, and off we went to meet the 'boys.' We were by far the last ones there, as expected, and had just enough time to plow through breakfast before heading for the turnpike. We could still feel all our parts when we put the kickstands back down, and from then on, it was pretty comfortable. After a quick warm up in Dave and Buster's, we wandered around until noon.

The ride to the hospital is on the other side of the city, and they shut down the Vine Street and Schuylkill Expressways

From CHOP Toy Run 2010

to get the thousands of bikes through. You're directed into the parking garage, which is a cacophony of loud pipes, the wailing car alarms they set off, and over-rich exhaust fumes. From there, it's a short walk to the main entrance. Where if, like us, you have never experienced it, you will soon be deeply humbled.

Biker people love the image of being hard core folks with kind hearts. Even though it's kind of a cliche, and there is at least some element of Wild Hogs thrown in, there really are biker clubs showing in numbers, from the serious to the truly nefarious. Ultimately, it is exactly what it looks like: real people from all circumstances, trying to do good for whatever their own reasons are. And when they see kids who are living in circumstances much worse than their own, for reasons undeserved, looking down on them through their windows, it's a lot of emotions. In the bright, airy lobby, dozens of kids are waving, clapping, making music, and making us feel a whole lot more important than we are as we walk through their lives. We realize that, as we climb aboard our toys and head back to our own lives, they go back to their rooms excited for only the little that we've left for them.

From CHOP Toy Run 2010

Back on the bikes, we decided to leave the group and head back across the river to South Street for a cheesesteak at Jim's. It was pretty early yet, and we figured if we stayed away from the stadium, we'd avoid the Eagles crowd before kickoff. The ride over was easy, and we found a place to park, but the line was around the block. We didn't wait in it for long before choosing one of the less famous places to be voted "Best Cheesesteak in Philly" by someone. By the time we got back on the Schuylkill, the sun was getting about ready to close up shop, and it was quickly getting pretty damn cold again.

From CHOP Toy Run 2010

Sometime before our exit, 106 miles from breakfast, the motor went silent , telling me it was time to click the gas tank over to reserve. When that happens in the passing lane at 75 mph, you start getting slow really fast, so that's something you want to be good at doing efficiently. We really had to get home, plus neither of us had clear eyewear, so I crossed my fingers as we sped past the gas station and made a beeline for Coopersburg. The only other gas station is 3 blocks from home. I don't know if there's enough left to get me back there, but there was enough to get me here.

From CHOP Toy Run 2010