Uncategorized

AirHawk 2 Versus Beadrider — Only Your Butt Knows The Difference

By Arlene | Published: October 2, 2012

I don’t know much about the proper way to write a prod­uct review so I’m just going to tell you my expe­ri­ence with two prod­ucts I used recently: the AirHawk  (http://www.airhawk.net/) seat cush­ion and the Bead­Rider (http://www.beadrider.com/).

A cou­ple of weeks ago I rode 3,010 miles from Los Ange­les to Whistler, BC (north of Van­cou­ver, BC) and back in a week. I think with that much rid­ing in such a short time, I have a pretty good han­dle on what does and doesn’t work for your rear end!

ARLENE ON HER KAWASAKI ER-6N

ARLENE ON HER KAWASAKI ER-6N

Now let me say at the out­set, I was rid­ing a sport­bike, a 2009 Kawasaki er-6n, that’s a “naked” Ninja 650 for those of you not famil­iar with this par­tic­u­lar bike. It’s impor­tant that I note the spe­cific bike because I can only com­ment on the two prod­ucts based on being on a sport­bike, I CAN’T com­ment about them rel­a­tive to a cruiser.

So, let’s talk first about bike seats… here’s the deal… with a cruiser, you tend to get a wider seat which means more of your butt has sup­port under it while rid­ing. With a sport­bike, noto­ri­ous for hav­ing hor­ri­ble seats I might add, you have only about as much sup­port as the bones up under your rear end will carry, which means, you’re get­ting very lit­tle sup­port mak­ing long dis­tance rid­ing on a sport­bike, espe­cially challenging.

AirHawk 2 Medium Cruiser Seat Cushion

AirHawk 2 Medium Cruiser Seat Cushion

Enter sup­port for the butt! Airhawk ver­sus Bead­Rider (and per­haps oth­ers but these were the two I took with me).

Now let’s con­sider the first part of my jour­ney… I started out doing the “Iron Butt” Chal­lenge, where you have to com­plete a 1000 mile ride in under 24 hours.  I rode 1000 miles in 21 hours and 56 min­utes, that’s with­out stop­ping to rest, very lit­tle down­time for eat­ing and just stops to fill my tank and clean my visor. As a result, I spent nearly 24 hours in the sad­dle and I can say with absolutely cer­tainty, the only way to do a ride like this is on the AirHawk, at least on a sportbike.

BEADRIDER SEAT

BEADRIDER SEAT

So why the AirHawk instead of the Bead­Rider? I have used both prod­ucts for dif­fer­ent types of rid­ing and the first thing I noticed is the dif­fi­culty in attach­ing the Bead­rider to my bike. I had to remove the seat which is a com­plete pain on the par­tic­u­lar bike I have whereas, with the AirHawk, I just slipped the elas­tic around the seat and I was done. For this par­tic­u­lar ride, I had the Bead­Rider attached to my seat but just put the AirHawk on top of my seat with­out hav­ing it attached, that way I could just switch between the prod­ucts dur­ing my trip.

With the Bead­Rider, I found that through much of cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia and other parts fur­ther north, the roads were pretty rough and given the lack of sup­port and hard­ness of the bike seat, hav­ing all those roller beads under my butt each time I hit a bump and came down on those beads, it was a pretty unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence. On roads where they were smooth, the longest I could sit on the Bead­Rider with­out it becom­ing uncom­fort­able was about 100 miles. I would roll back and forth across the beads just to get my cir­cu­la­tion going, but it still didn’t do any­thing in terms of reliev­ing the pres­sure on my rear end. It def­i­nitely offered a lot in the way of ven­ti­la­tion under my rear end but for long term sup­port and cir­cu­la­tion, the Bead­Rider didn’t get the job done for me.

With the AirHawk, it lifted my rear end com­pletely off the seat with­out caus­ing me any loss of con­trol of the bike in terms of squeez­ing the tank with my knees or push steer­ing. It was lit­er­ally like sit­ting on a pil­low, one that offered con­tin­u­ous sup­port and most impor­tant, when I dis­mounted, I didn’t have the feel­ing of numb­ness in my rear end like I had when using the Bead­Rider or like when rid­ing for 50 miles on that hard sport­bike seat.

The one thing I encoun­tered with the AirHawk was that the shape of the cush­ion, cut for sad­dle and cruiser seats, didn’t fit my seat prop­erly, which of course, just look­ing at the cush­ion, you would KNOW that it’s not going to fit right! HOWEVER, an unex­pected thing hap­pened because when sit­ting on the cen­ter of the cush­ion, it actu­ally forced the air out toward the sides of the cush­ion which meant more of my rear end was sup­ported, some­thing I don’t think hap­pens when you’re using the cor­rect size for a sport­bike. Part of what was great about this was that by get­ting that sup­port under my rear end, I didn’t feel as much pres­sure on my knees and legs because I wasn’t hav­ing to rely on them so heav­ily to sup­port the rest of my body. So, some­times even hav­ing an incor­rect fit­ting prod­uct (I con­fess, user error on my part, I bought the wrong size!) can actu­ally turn out to have pretty great results!

So after spend­ing 24 hours rid­ing a thou­sand miles and then the last two days of my trip, 600 miles and then 700 miles right in a row, the AirHawk pro­vided me with con­stant com­fort, sup­port and no numb­ness. As a result, for all future long dis­tance rides, no mat­ter WHAT kind of bike I’m rid­ing (this includes scoot­ers too!), I will have my trusty AirHawk cush­ion with me and I won’t ever have to worry about hav­ing Iron Butt again!!!

Arlene

 

 

Share
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Shark Tank Aftermath

By Arlene | Published: March 25, 2012

I have started and restarted this blog post about fifty times over the past two days and I STILL can’t sum it all up in 500 words.

How do you talk about how you are on a path in life and a job loss trans­lates into you end­ing up on national tele­vi­sion three years later?

How do you talk about meet­ing with a guy who has gen­er­ated six bil­lion dol­lars in sales and he asks YOU who you want your prod­uct asso­ci­ated with and will pick up the phone and call any­one you want him to and the next thing you know, he’s send­ing you the address of where you’re going to send two jack­ets to a MAJOR celebrity whose name EVERYONE knows?

An hour before our episode of Shark Tank aired this past Fri­day, I got an email from the shark, Day­mond John, in which he said that he had just viewed the entire episode. I asked him how the episode turned out and said: “After get­ting to know you guys, you are way more on top of your shit than your inter­view with the Sharks look like, but other than that, you still end up look­ing great.” Imag­ine my relief and that I wouldn’t have to be walk­ing around with a bag on my head for a month! LOL!

At mid­night, New York time, Sat­ur­day night, I get a phone call from Day­mond, just check­ing in to see how things are going… we’ve had a lot of these calls and emails since last August when we did the tap­ing and it’s been an extra­or­di­nary experience!

Is this a dream? Did I lose my job and wake up in a fan­tasy world where every­thing I hoped for and dreamed of in all this was com­ing true? If you ever wanted a part­ner in busi­ness, Day­mond is the guy! He is the REAL deal and he has a big invest­ment in help­ing peo­ple become suc­cess­ful! He has been helped enor­mously by other peo­ple in his life and he has turned all of that, cou­pled with his incred­i­ble suc­cess, into an enter­prise that is all about help­ing peo­ple. He teaches at Bab­son Col­lege in Boston and spends a great deal of time men­tor­ing entre­pre­neurs. And yes, he still makes clothes! What a dream!

I never set out in life to make pro­tec­tive gear. I never even wore pro­tec­tive gear let alone MAKE it! And yet, here I am, three years out from becom­ing unem­ployed. I had a need, I knew other peo­ple had a need and I just decided to do some­thing about it… and now, well… I have NO idea what is com­ing next but what I DO know is that I now have some­one in our camp that oper­ates on a level that is SO far beyond what I could have ever imag­ined, has access to SO much and SO many peo­ple, that all I have to do is call him and say, “this is what I need”. WHEN in life do you EVER get that opportunity?

You GET that oppor­tu­nity when you have an idea and you do some­thing about it. If it weren’t for a great prod­uct, we wouldn’t be where we are today and wouldn’t have the inter­est we do. THIS is a tes­ta­ment to how you turn adver­sity into oppor­tu­nity and how when bad things hap­pen in your life, like a job loss, you make choices and say I will NOT be a vic­tim of cir­cum­stance or the econ­omy, you defy the odds sim­ply by believ­ing that ANYTHING is pos­si­ble and then do some­thing about it.

My head is still spin­ning and I am going to revel in this feel­ing because it is SO exquis­ite and I just want to feel it for a lit­tle bit longer before more of the hard work continues…

Arlene

PS — I’m going to be post­ing a lot about the expe­ri­ence on Shark Tank and the next install­ment will be about the actual tap­ing and what we actu­ally said ver­sus what got shown on TV! Now THAT is going to be a juicy one! LOL!

Share
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Gut Wrenching Moments…

By Arlene | Published: February 29, 2012

I think I’ve writ­ten about this before, but for some­one who makes safety gear, it is always a gut wrench­ing, sick­en­ing feel­ing when you get an email from some­one who’s been in an acci­dent wear­ing your gear. You hold your breath as you read the email or let­ter or hear the per­son on the other end of the phone and you’re hop­ing and pray­ing that they’re okay and that the gear you’ve made has done its job. I’ve had more than my share of these emails, phone calls and let­ters and I’m always grate­ful that the rid­ers have been okay AND that our gear has done its job.

Here is the story of one such per­son who recounted one of those sto­ries to me in an email. I’ll let her tell you her story in her own words…

——————————————————————————————-

By Eliz­a­beth Lowry

I always won­dered if I woke up in an ambu­lance whether I would remem­ber to say “take me to Har­borview.” After work­ing in health-care com­mu­ni­ca­tions for nine years, I knew that if some­thing so ter­ri­ble hap­pened that I needed an ambu­lance, the only place I wanted to go was Har­borview Med­ical Cen­ter, Seattle’s level one trauma center.

One Sat­ur­day after­noon in August, some­thing did.

I was on my Vespa ET4 in Sodo, an area on the south end of down­town Seat­tle, rid­ing up a small incline on gravel. As I accel­er­ated, the back of the scooter sank into the deep layer of gravel, and my wheels spun with­out get­ting the trac­tion I needed to move for­ward. I remem­ber los­ing my bal­ance and try­ing to brake. The next thing I remem­ber was wak­ing up in an ambu­lance, des­per­ately ask­ing about my 14-year-old son, who had been with me, and telling the ambu­lance staff that I wore con­tact lenses and what med­ica­tions I took on a reg­u­lar basis. Penny, the EMT, reas­sured me son was fine and that we were, indeed, on our way to Harborview.

I couldn’t move my left shoul­der, and I was in excru­ci­at­ing pain. My head didn’t hurt and, and once I came to, I felt alert. But my shoul­der was killing me. I was wheeled into an emer­gency room bay, and nurses, doc­tors and res­i­dents swarmed. The attend­ing physi­cian in the ER, ordered a trauma panel, which included a CT scan to make sure I didn’t have a head injury and exten­sive X-rays to see what was broken.

The last remains of the jacket cut off Elizabeth in the emergency room

The last remains of the GoGo Gear Cafe jacket cut off Eliz­a­beth in the emer­gency room

The staff whipped out some scis­sors and said they needed to cut my motor­cy­cle jacket. They couldn’t take it off with­out mov­ing my shoul­der; and at that point, no one knew if it was bro­ken. I sighed. OK. I admit, I sobbed a lit­tle. It was a brand new black ven­ti­lated café jacket by GoGo Gear with abra­sion resis­tant fab­ric and armor – mate­ri­als that, along with my full-face hel­met, boots, jeans and gloves – pro­tected me in the fall. They cut my t-shirt — which was OK since it was a $5 spe­cial from Old Navy and had a stain on it. “What about the bra?” some­one asked. “Not that,” I protested. “It’s Calvin Klein.” The staff obliged and gin­gerly removed it before putting a gown on me.

After mer­ci­fully giv­ing me some pain med­ica­tion and whisk­ing me away for the CT scan and X-ray, the nurse and the ER res­i­dent read my films. It was a bro­ken col­lar­bone on my left side – not a bro­ken shoul­der and no head trauma. It was the best news pos­si­ble. The treat­ment: wear a sling for com­fort, take pain meds and wait for it to heal.

I left Har­borview about four hours after I arrived. My hus­band and two chil­dren, who had joined me in the ER, took me home. The bro­ken col­lar­bone meant I couldn’t move my arm with­out pain, even with the pain meds. For days I couldn’t brush my own hair or dress myself. A mas­sive bruise extended from the base of my neck to the mid­dle of my chest. I took a week off of work, and made sure I fol­lowed up with my pri­mary care physi­cian, who rec­om­mended I see a physi­a­trist, a reha­bil­i­ta­tion physi­cian who spe­cial­izes in non-surgical tech­niques to pro­mote healing.

Over the next cou­ple of months, I returned to the physi­a­trist a few times. After a month, my clav­i­cle didn’t appear to be heal­ing, but a sur­geon rec­om­mended wait­ing another month to see if the heal­ing started. By the sec­ond month, my X-rays showed that the bone was finally heal­ing, although slowly, and surgery wasn’t needed.

Six months after my acci­dent, my col­lar­bone is still heal­ing, and I occa­sion­ally have some mild pain. An after­noon of yard work leaves my shoul­der and col­lar­bone throb­bing. Advil or Aleve help. I have a per­ma­nent bump on my col­lar­bone at the point of the break, caused by the bone reform­ing. “It makes you look even skin­nier,” my sis­ters said with approval. Yay.

For months, my shred­ded café jacket lay on the floor of my bed­room, untouched since the day of the acci­dent. I had promised Arlene that I would send it back to her so she could exam­ine it for dam­age and see how it had fared. Even­tu­ally, the jacket made it into a box, which con­tin­ued to sit on my bed­room floor for weeks. I can’t explain my reluc­tance to just put it in the mail. Maybe as long as that jacket was around, I could jus­tify my appre­hen­sion at get­ting back on the scoot.

A few weeks ago, I took the box to work, deter­mined to finally mail it back to GoGo Gear. I had pur­chased a new full-face hel­met, and I still had my GoGo Gear trench, the first motor­cy­cle jacket I pur­chased. Get­ting rid of the café jacket that had saved me was the last step.

Once it was in the mail, I got back on the Vespa, which fared bet­ter than I in the acci­dent. Not a scratch on it, just a loose rear view mir­ror. I wob­bled a bit as I headed up my dri­ve­way. I was ten­ta­tive on curves. But I was rid­ing.  Rid­ing with cau­tion, but not fear.  Now, the more I ride, the more con­fi­dent I’m getting.

As for the café jacket, Arlene reported: “There was no evi­dence that any­thing ever hap­pened to it, except of course them cut­ting it off of you. I knew that it would offer you the pro­tec­tion but to not have any evi­dence that you had fallen in it was def­i­nitely a sur­prise to me. I had expected it to be all scraped up, not torn in any way, but just scraped up, but noth­ing! How absolutely won­der­ful!!! I’m going to keep it as a memento, if you don’t mind!!!” I don’t mind at all.

The nice thing about scoot­ers is that they are very patient. They are per­fectly happy to sit in garages attached to bat­tery charg­ers, just wait­ing until the moment we are ready to hop back on and buzz off into the sunset.

————————————————————————-

Eliz­a­beth, I’m so glad that you were okay, albeit with a very sore col­lar­bone and I’m deeply grate­ful that our jacket did its job. You are a tes­ta­ment to why it’s so essen­tial for peo­ple to wear their gear ALL THE TIME! No mat­ter where you’re going, how fast you’re going, or any­thing else, safety gear is what will always stand between us and seri­ous injury if not death.

We ride because it is what we must do… it is part of who we are and as a result, we owe it to our­selves to make sure that every day we go out there and ride, we give our­selves the max­i­mum oppor­tu­nity to ride long into old life!

Arlene

 

 

 

Share
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Counting Back and Forth 10,000 Miles

By Arlene | Published: November 28, 2011
9999.9 miles

9999.9 miles

So, you ride a bike 10,000 miles and undoubt­edly, this leaves you with a few things to reflect on and contemplate…

Never in my wildest dreams did I think rid­ing a motor­bike 10,000 miles would ever be pos­si­ble and cer­tainly not just since last year! I don’t know that I ever had a thought about this much rid­ing, even early on when I bought my bike. I think it’s some­thing that just grad­u­ally came into my con­scious­ness as each mile ticked by.

I remem­ber…

…rid­ing down to Cabo San Lucas from Tijuana, the entire length of the Baja Pen­nisula with four guys I didn’t know in 103 degree heat over five days. At that time, I only had 800 miles on my bike. It was the kind of ride where I didn’t even think about prepar­ing for because all I had ever done on a bike before was ride in urban areas and yet, there I was, tak­ing a long dis­tance trip on a lit­tle tiny bike with­out a care in the world!

Arlene reaches the Golden Gate Bridge

Arlene reaches the Golden Gate Bridge

…rid­ing the Pacific Coast High­way from Los Ange­les to San Fran­cisco with my friend from Brazil, a Harley rider who rode a 250cc Honda Rebel for the trip.

…rid­ing from LA to Reno via Yosemite with my pal from Mass­a­chu­setts who had shipped her big Tri­umph Bon­neville motor­bike out to LA because after rid­ing with me, she was head­ing back to Mass­a­chu­setts alone, some 5,000 more miles.

…rac­ing around the Salton Sea on the heels of nearly sev­er­ing one of the fin­gers on my throt­tle hand and later through Death Val­ley in bone chill­ing cold, com­pet­ing in endurance races.

…the trip back down into Baja and arriv­ing at a place to encounter a rat­tlesnake, a whale and hun­dreds of sea lions in the most glo­ri­ous thun­der­storm, a place where there were no con­ve­niences, the biggest of which was the inter­net and email. Spend­ing a week com­pletely dis­con­nected does some­thing to a per­son… after the ini­tial freak­out upon real­iz­ing one is com­pletely dis­con­nected and there is noth­ing they can do about it, they begin to expe­ri­ence life in a dif­fer­ent way, a way that I can remem­ber from a long time ago…

GoGo Gear baby among Harleys

GoGo Gear baby among Harleys

How many times have I rid­den the Ange­les Crest High­way from begin­ning to end and all the way around again, the break­fasts and lunches at Newcomb’s Ranch and count­less rides to the Rock Store and Neptune’s Nest in Mal­ibu. And lest I for­got… how many miles can be attrib­uted to rid­ing the streets of LA..

And… I remem­ber the life and death moment when I hit an enor­mous pot­hole on the side of the free­way and was air­borne for lord knows how long before slam­ming back down on my bike seat. That was at about 7,500 miles. I’m glad that mem­ory is dis­tant now…

GoGo Bike in Lake Tahoe

GoGo Bike in Lake Tahoe

I remem­ber all of other trips I’ve taken on my bike and again, never con­sid­er­ing what 10,000 miles would feel like, they just sort of passed and there I was yes­ter­day, click­ing over to 10,000 miles.

I remem­ber the first time I saw a ver­sion of the bike I have. It was early 2010 and I was in New York at the Inter­na­tional Motor­cy­cle Show, exhibit­ing our jack­ets for the first time on the East Coast.  I took one look at that bike and stopped dead in my tracks. I had never seen any­thing so beau­ti­ful in my life! I was smit­ten! I was also broke! LOL! It took months before I saved up enough money to buy that bike and I have never regret­ted it since. It is like a part of my skin, a part of my being, a part of who I am… I don’t under­stand how this can be given that it’s a thing and not a per­son but it just is… I think most peo­ple who ride can relate to this about a bike or scooter at some point in their life… THIS was the bike that allowed me to start rid­ing again after 30 years… THIS was the bike that changed my life…

Arlene on the open road

Arlene on the open road

Dur­ing those 10,000 miles, I redis­cov­ered a part of myself that I hadn’t seen for most of my life, the part that craved adven­ture, that yearned to be on a road with no des­ti­na­tion, just being in motion, a lan­guage spo­ken yet unspo­ken among peo­ple who ride, a sense of life that requires noth­ing more than turn­ing the key and going for­ward. This is the sim­plest way of liv­ing and in a world where, espe­cially now as we approach the hol­i­days, peo­ple are beat­ing each other in stores just to get $20 off a video game, I crave noth­ing more than being on my bike, away from every­thing, quiet in the soli­tude that comes from riding…

I have no regrets in life, only a wish that I had started rid­ing again a lot sooner, I would have prob­a­bly had a much less stress­ful life… but I do not need to look back, only for­ward for now, I am able to ride when I want, as much as I want, wher­ever I want. There is some­thing to be said about that kind of life…

Arlene in Baja

Arlene in Baja

As I look for­ward now to my next rid­ing goal, I must con­sider what is pos­si­ble. I am deter­mined to find a way to ride my lit­tle bike across the coun­try. I know it’s prob­a­bly unre­al­is­tic to con­sider such a jour­ney on a lit­tle 150cc motor­bike, but it is the bike I am most com­fort­able on and I will not rest until I am con­vinced that I can­not do it. I guess like most things in my life, I do not believe in the impos­si­ble, I believe that every­thing is pos­si­ble and it’s just a mat­ter of fig­ur­ing out how to do it. I sup­pose defy­ing the laws of grav­ity would be one of those things I can’t do, but short of that, I think that any­thing is pos­si­ble and it’s only a mat­ter of decid­ing that you believe that. I’ve never had a short­age of belief in doing what seems impos­si­ble because what is life with­out a challenge?

10000 miles

10000 miles

And so, I say good­bye to 10,000 miles and look ahead to how many more I will put on that lit­tle bike, to how many more peo­ple I will encounter in this life­time as a result, and to the many other things I will redis­cover and dis­cover about myself in the process. I can­not think of a bet­ter way to live life…

Arlene

Share
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

9,000 miles into Death Valley

By Arlene | Published: November 6, 2011

This is a long blog post so if you’ve got cof­fee, you bet­ter refill it before you start reading!

This story is about what I was doing when the odome­ter on my Cal­i­for­nia Scooter Com­pany lit­tle red rocket GoGo bike turned over past 9,000 miles!

On Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 5, 2011, I joined with a group of peo­ple to under­take what became a 397-mile endurance race! The event was put on by the Motor Scooter Land Speed Fed­er­a­tion which is a very cool group of peo­ple! I com­peted in their event around the Salton Sea early in the year and now it was time to do it again, only this time it was “Hell’s Loop” through Death Valley!

Back when we did the Salton Sea event, I had just suf­fered the near sev­er­ing of the ring fin­ger on my right hand which meant I was wear­ing a splint on my fin­ger for the entire race, not to men­tion no stitches in the fin­ger since I hate nee­dles so blood was gush­ing out through­out but I was NOT about to let the near loss of a fin­ger pre­vent me from being in that race! That par­tic­u­lar race was held in weather con­di­tions that were really only prob­lem­atic because of the wind. THIS event was a com­pletely dif­fer­ent story!

I had checked the weather report the day before the event and it said that it was sup­posed to be between 60–70 degrees that day. So, I packed up all of the gear I would need for that type of rid­ing. Well… on the morn­ing of the event, it was 37 degrees and for the entire day, I don’t know if the tem­per­a­ture ever climbed above 50! If it did, I wasn’t aware of it because I don’t think I have ever been that cold for such an extended period of time!

So, let me just give you the upshot of it all… by the time we were about 10 miles down the road, I knew I was in BIG trou­ble because my hands were so cold they were burn­ing. I had two pairs of latex gloves under my reg­u­lar rid­ing gloves but there is no way that was going to work when you’re rid­ing in below 30–40 degree tem­per­a­tures rid­ing at 65 mpg!

I rode for another 20 or so miles and then had to pull off the free­way because I sim­ply could not ride another mile because my hands were so cold. And of course, once part of your body gets cold, the rest of you gets and stays cold very quickly.

The other prob­lem is that I had taken a dif­fer­ent hel­met this time, one that was lighter than the one I nor­mally wear because 400 miles is a long way to ride with a heavy hel­met on. Another big mis­take! Air blow­ing up inside my hel­met, my earplugs, once in my ears, now gone with the wind at what­ever point I had removed my hel­met. Feet that had decent socks on them but NOTHING that would ade­quately con­tend with the cold. And the list goes on and on of how I was com­pletely unpre­pared for that kind of riding.

For­tu­nately, there were three of us rid­ing in a group because the real­ity was, it would not have been good for me to ride this event alone although some of the other rid­ers did but for me, with no ser­vice sta­tions any­where that you could be towed to and no way out once you were in Death Val­ley but to ride your way out, I did not want to be alone rid­ing and cer­tainly not in such hor­ri­ble weather con­di­tions. And so, one of the guys I was rid­ing with lent me a pair of his gloves which I promptly put over my other gloves. My hands were still so freez­ing that he told me to put my hands under my armpits! No, not in the armpits out­side the jacket, but to unzip my jacket and mul­ti­ple lay­ers and tuck my hands in my armpits! I felt kind of stu­pid doing that but lo and behold, with a very short period of time, my hands warmed right up! I won­dered if there was any way I could do the entire ride with my hands in my armpits! No such luck if you’re rid­ing, unless of course you’re on the back!

Now, rather than go into every excru­ci­at­ing detail of this ride, let me just sum­ma­rize the finer points…

I was car­ry­ing two full gas cans on the back of my bike because we had been fore­warned that there was only one gas sta­tion half way around the loop.
We knew that we would not make it all the way with­out car­ry­ing gas with us so we put the cans on the back with bungee cords and off we went!

Within the first ten miles or so, we had to pull over because the cans were com­ing off the back of my bike. The rider in front didn’t real­ize that we had pulled off the free­way and while two of us left the free­way, he con­tin­ued to ride on. I think he must have fig­ured we would just get back on the free­way right away, but we were off the free­way for prob­a­bly 15 min­utes before we could con­tinue again and so off we went and after rid­ing for about a half hour, we see him com­ing back down the free­way in the other direc­tion but at the moment he is pass­ing us, he is look­ing down at his bike and so he never sees us go by! We ride for another half hour and then decide we bet­ter pull over and call him to see what was hap­pen­ing. Long story short, he was 20 min­utes behind us and so we decided to wait for him to rejoin us and I was more than happy to do so because my hands were get­ting nice and toasty in my armpits!

As the day pro­gressed, we were pulling off the road so many times that we lost count. The other major issue was that my head­light bulb burned out right at the begin­ning of the event and while ille­gal to ride in Cal­i­for­nia with a burned out head­light, the big­ger con­cern was we were now so late get­ting started in the ride that we might end up rid­ing back in the dark which was going to be a very big problem!

So, we’re fully into the ride, stop­ping for gas where we could, pay­ing $5.78 per gal­lon which I was more than happy to pay given we had no choice and needed gas! Encoun­tered a National Park Ranger who was being very offi­cious in announc­ing to us that one of our bikes had a dealer plate on it and there were no deal­ers any­where around there and he could essen­tially con­fis­cate the bike because we were rid­ing in the park with a bike that had a dealer plate. He then wasted about a half hour of our time, inves­ti­gat­ing our bikes and lec­tur­ing us about whether or not we were sup­posed to be on the road and THEN, going on and on about bikes and he was Mr. Know-It-All. I kept my mouth shut and let the guys do the talk­ing and was happy to do so because I couldn’t stop look­ing at the big gun he had in his hol­ster AND the HUGE shot­guns he had in his truck. Nope, didn’t need to shoot my mouth off at THIS guy!

He finally shut up and we were on our way again and con­tin­ued rid­ing for hours! All of this hap­pened before it was even 11am and we weren’t even 150 miles into the race!

The entire time I was rid­ing, I kept think­ing, WHEN is the sun going to start warm­ing things up so I can stop shiv­er­ing but even as the sun was out most of the day, it never got warm enough for my teeth to stop chat­ter­ing. Imag­ine, 400 miles and you have cho­sen to do this! Talk about crazy! Well, yes, per­haps a lit­tle bit!

By the time we go within a 100 miles of our fin­ish, it was clear that our race against time had us in a posi­tion where all we could do was press as hard as pos­si­ble to make it before dark. We pulled into a town called Trona, CA to see if there might be a store that car­ried head­light bulbs but found noth­ing but a huge town that was all but aban­doned. It was a very odd thing to ride through this town and see every house boarded up, every busi­ness closed, an absolute ghost town except for this big fac­tory that was doing some­thing with min­er­als and the only way I knew it was still oper­at­ing is because there was steam com­ing out of the smoke­stacks and there were lights on in the build­ing, other than that, the one gas sta­tion which I’m not sure actu­ally had any gas but was still open. A very strange thing, indeed…

Trona was about 65 miles from our des­ti­na­tion and at this point, the tem­per­a­ture was rapidly drop­ping and I thought, I’m going to die out here from expo­sure! Yes, a bit melo­dra­matic, but when you’re that cold, that’s all you can think. In fact, less than half way through the event, I was think­ing, you know, I could just turn right around and head back to the start­ing point and be per­fectly warm and have a nice day but no mat­ter how uncom­fort­able I was, this was some­thing I wanted to do and there was no way I was quitting.

By the time we turned on to the last high­way, which really wasn’t much of a high­way in those parts, I just thought, I just can­not imag­ine mak­ing it to the fin­ish line and by this point, I didn’t care any­more, all I wanted was to be warm again. And then, the sign appeared that said we were 32 miles from the fin­ish. I tell you what, I don’t know what hap­pened to the three of us, but we were rid­ing so fast into that fierce wind like there was no tomor­row. The wind had been a huge cul­prit through­out the day and bikes that would nor­mally go 70mph with no prob­lem were beaten down to 45 if lucky, but there we were, like we had seen the light from the light­house out at sea and we knew we were almost home and so we rode like mani­acs, me sand­wiched in between both guys because it was now on the verge of being dark and there was no way any­one was going to see me out there and so we rode with com­plete aban­don and finally pull into the park­ing lot, some 9-½ hours later, frozen to the core of our being but we FINISHED!!!

When we arrived, all three in uni­son, the group of other rid­ers and orga­niz­ers were all stand­ing out­side in the park­ing lot, looks of worry and relief on their faces because they had all been through the same thing we had but we were so late get­ting back, the orga­nizer had started mak­ing phone calls to peo­ple we knew just to find out if any of the three of us had called any­one. For­tu­nately, every­one knew the three of us were together so there was some com­fort in that, but still, it’s a pretty har­row­ing expe­ri­ence not know­ing where rid­ers are and it’s dark with no lights any­where in those parts.

We had a huge cel­e­bra­tion among all the rid­ers and tro­phies were given out and believe it or not, the win­ner of the event, beat­ing every­one on big­ger bikes was a guy rid­ing a Kymco 50cc scooter! How on earth he man­aged to beat every­one to the fin­ish line is beyond me but this is the beauty of an event like this, it doesn’t mat­ter what you’re rid­ing, there are things that hap­pen on the road, includ­ing miss­ing exits which result in you going a hun­dred miles out of your way. And for me and my rid­ing part­ners, it turns out that two of us were on the only 150cc bikes in the event and even though we arrived last, we both won in the 150cc class! How fan­tas­tic is THAT?!!!

One thing is for sure, every­one at that cel­e­bra­tion said the same thing, they were cold from the moment they started the race and yet every sin­gle rider fin­ished the race! Some­thing to cel­e­brate, for sure!

The beauty of an event like this is that you get to test your lim­its, you do it among other peo­ple who are doing the same thing and you never know what might hap­pen, which is part of the beauty of the whole thing! AND, you get to tell peo­ple that you did it!

There is a real kin­ship among the peo­ple who have done these events and this is only my sec­ond one, but there is some­thing really won­der­ful about being with a group of peo­ple, peo­ple who are not so much bike or scooter enthu­si­asts as they are peo­ple who want to see how far they can push them­selves! And doing it on a bike is all the more fab­u­lous because who wouldn’t want to spend an entire day rid­ing through some of the most awe inspir­ing places in the coun­try! No mat­ter the cold or wind or weather con­di­tions, there is no tak­ing away from see­ing things that are so spec­tac­u­lar that you think your eyes can’t be see­ing correctly!

This is the kind of rid­ing I like and I espe­cially like see­ing things that are unbe­liev­able! A day of rid­ing like this is like tak­ing an entire month off of work and com­ing back exhausted but so exhil­a­rated that the world seems a bit dif­fer­ent at the end of it all. Of course, it’s not the world, only our expe­ri­ence of it and if I had one dream in life, it would be to ride every day like this!

Arlene

PS – it took me two hours to drive my Jeep home that night with my bike on the back. I had my heated seats on and the tem­per­a­ture at 85 the entire way. It was not until I got home and into the steam­ing hot shower that I finally got warm!

 

Share
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

A semi-truck, pothole, gravel, freeway, ALL at 65 mph!

By Arlene | Published: August 31, 2011

I am writ­ing this, sick to my stom­ach, because of what hap­pened to me ear­lier today…

The per­fect storm hit… and but for the grace of God go I, for I have sur­vived to tell about it.

To make a long story short… I was rid­ing my bike on the free­way this after­noon… even after hav­ing checked my gas tank before leav­ing… I ran out of gas going close to 70mph on the free­way which meant I had to get over to the side of the road as quickly as pos­si­ble… I was on the con­nec­tor from the 57 free­way head­ing south to the 10 free­way head­ing east for any of you who know South­ern Cal­i­for­nia free­ways… a par­tic­u­larly treach­er­ous con­nec­tor road…

A huge semi-truck was bar­rel­ing down on me as I was try­ing to get over and as I man­aged to get on to the side of the free­way, all I could see was dirt and gravel every­where. I am try­ing to slow down and stay on what lit­tle pave­ment exists so I can remain safe from the gravel when out of nowhere is a pot­hole larger than any I’ve ever seen before… eas­ily a foot deep, 18 inches wide and at least a foot across… by now I have slowed to 60 mph but there is no time to react to any­thing, I’m going to hit the pot­hole at 60mph and there is only one likely out­come… I am going over the han­dle­bars, am likely to land on my head or back, will either be killed or par­a­lyzed for life… No, this is not being overly dra­matic, this is a real­ity of how things usu­ally work when you hit a deep and wide pot­hole at 60mph on a bike…

Such a pot­hole could dam­age the frame of a car but imag­ine it on a body mov­ing at 65mph, rid­ing on a lit­tle 150cc motor­bike with 13-inch wheels…

It all hap­pened SO fast as is often the case for any­thing like this when it hap­pens… your brain is pro­cess­ing every­thing that’s hap­pen­ing but you are in slow motion… you know what’s hap­pen­ing, you kind of know what the out­come is going to be, you just sit there rid­ing it out and it’s all hap­pen­ing in a split sec­ond and time slows down as if that were even possible…

As soon as my front tire hit the far edge of the pot­hole, all I know is that my entire body came off the bike, I went fly­ing into the air, high above the bike, where my legs were at this point, I have no idea because it hap­pened so fast, I don’t even know what was going on, I just know that I was air­borne and through it all, there were my hands, on the han­dle­bars, my right hand still on the throt­tle as if I was stunt­biker just doing a stunt where they are doing a hand­stand on the bike… I am still mov­ing at 60mph and the next thing I know, I am slam­ming back down on to the seat of the bike as if none of it had ever hap­pened… I am back on the seat and slow­ing to a stop in the gravel…

I finally come to a stop, turn off the bike, put the kick­stand down, walk around the other side of the bike and stand there, not know­ing how on earth it is pos­si­ble I’m stand­ing there look­ing at the bike…

The next thing I notice is that my entire neck, shoul­ders, back, all the way down to my rear end are shoot­ing with pain, a feel­ing like some­one has punched me in the kid­ney, like my entire body had expe­ri­enced whiplash and indeed that is what hap­pened… I hit the pot­hole with such impact that it was like run­ning straight into a wall at 60mph. I was flung through the air with the same veloc­ity and came slam­ming down on the bike, again, with the same veloc­ity and impact…

I have now inhaled 2400mg of Ibuprophen hop­ing that when I wake up in the morn­ing I will be able to move but some­how I have a feel­ing that no amount of Advil is going to make a difference…

I am numb to what might have been, and per­haps that is why I feel so sick tonight… the adren­a­line got me through the worst of it but now… as I sit safely at my desk, the gnaw­ing feel­ing of what might have been and almost was is creep­ing up on me and it’s a hor­ri­ble feeling…

But through it all, here is what I DO know…

This was not about me rid­ing a motor­cy­cle, this was about a ran­dom event that nearly claimed my life… peo­ple say that motor­cy­cles are dan­ger­ous but in and of them­selves, of course they’re not. This was not an act of stu­pid­ity or some­one tex­ting while dri­ving and run­ning me off the road or some­one swing­ing their car door open as I was pass­ing by, THIS was com­pletely ran­dom and I lived to tell about it, some peo­ple aren’t so lucky…

Here’s what else I know…

I know that I am for­ever indebted to the peo­ple who taught my motor­cy­cle safety class in which we learned how to deal with unfore­seen events on the road… the one thing they taught us is that you don’t panic when you encounter some­thing unex­pected and you DON’T slam on the brakes in an encounter… slam­ming on the brakes is what leads to peo­ple fly­ing over the han­dle­bars and killing them­selves… I know that my dear friend Joe Berk from Cal­i­for­nia Scooter Com­pany, has taught me more about safe rid­ing than any­one else, short of my pal Made­line Velasquez who just com­pleted a 6,000 mile solo jour­ney from coast to coast. These two peo­ple have taught me every­thing I know about safe rid­ing and today, it all came to bear and I have lived to tell about it.

In this sit­u­a­tion, I did not panic… I kept my hands on the han­dle­bars, although how I man­aged that, I have no idea given the absence of the rest of my body which was in flight… I kept the bike mov­ing, not by choice but by instinct, what­ever I learned in that safety class, wher­ever those lessons were in my sub­con­scious, they were absolutely present in this moment because my bike was straight up, no brakes on, con­tin­ued to give it gas and ride through the moment and stay with it what­ever the outcome…

My body is in so much pain right now and per­haps the Ibuprophen will kick in at some point and hope­fully I WILL be able to walk in the morn­ing BUT the more impor­tant point is… I am grate­ful that I am right now typ­ing this instead of being in the ICU at the hos­pi­tal or worse, dead on the side of the road… that was a VERY real­is­tic out­come to this and for what­ever rea­son, today was not that day for me…

The one thing I should note at the end of all this is that… I still had another 60 miles to ride before I got home and I have to tell you… I had a moment before I got back on that bike when I thought to myself… “that’s it for me… that scared the liv­ing day­lights out of me and I’m done…” but that was only a moment out of fear and ter­ror because…  the sec­ond I sat back down on that bike, fired it up and got going again, I calmed right back down, set­tled in and relaxed into who I am…

I am a rider through and through and no mat­ter what hap­pens in life, even those awful ran­dom acts, one thing remains true and con­stant for me… I only feel the whole of myself when I am rid­ing… and I will always ride no mat­ter what.

Arlene

Share
Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

GoGo Gear Hits The Red Carpet With Larry Crowne, Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts

By Arlene | Published: June 27, 2011

Seems like I can’t man­age to get a blog post writ­ten but for once a month! Well, what’s a GoGo Girl to do?! So, why so busy???

GoGo Gear Men's Military jacket

GoGo Gear Men’s Mil­i­tary jacket

Well, we’ve been fever­ishly work­ing to get our first men’s jacket to mar­ket (arrival some­time after 4th of July we hope) http://www.gogogearla.com/pages/Men%27s-Jackets.html, we weren’t able to attend this year’s Amerivespa because we were audi­tion­ing for the TV show “Shark Tank”, anx­iously await­ing word on THAT and tonight (sorry, we couldn’t say any­thing before!), we will be rid­ing with 50 other scooter rid­ers to the Hol­ly­wood pre­miere of the new Tom Hanks, Julie Roberts movie, Larry Crowne. Need­less to say, we’ll be angling to get jack­ets on both of them given that we’ll be rid­ing WITH them down the red car­pet!!!  We secretly flew in four brand spank­ing new men’s jack­ets just for the event so with­out a doubt, there will be “Go” men AND women on that red car­pet tonight!

And, in a week, I’ll be head­ing out on my lit­tle GoGo bike with my pal Made­line to head up into Yosemite National Park where we’ll prob­a­bly log more than a thou­sand miles in a week. My goal is to put 10,000 miles on my lit­tle bike by the end of the year and this trip is going a long way toward adding the miles on! A big thank you to every­one at Cal­i­for­nia Scooter Com­pany (www.californiascooterco.com) for all their help in get­ting me ready for this big ride AND for their amaz­ing good humor each time I bring my bike back to the “spa” because I am still so excited to be on that lit­tle bike that rarely does a month go by that I don’t drop the bike! Go figure!

And on Tues­day, we’ll be attend­ing a debrief­ing on whether or not we’ll be exhibit­ing the GoGo Gear line of jack­ets for men and women, ALL OF THEM, at MAGIC, the most impor­tant fash­ion indus­try tradeshow in the US. We’re con­sid­er­ing pre­sent­ing the jack­ets as reg­u­lar fash­ion jack­ets to expand our reach so this would be a sig­nif­i­cant thing for us if we decide to do it. More to fol­low on this…

And, I’ve been busy work­ing with a lead­ing author of all things Fash­ion on a brand new web­site that is tar­get­ing peo­ple who want to start a new cloth­ing line or fash­ion busi­ness. There are count­less things I didn’t know when I started GoGo Gear and with the knowl­edge I’ve gained over the past two years, I’m join­ing forces with a very sig­nif­i­cant fash­ion indus­try author to bring a web­site to life that will offer all of the insights and tools that I wish I had had when this all started.

What a ride (no pun intended!) it has been some two years now and into this and each day brings a dif­fer­ent chal­lenge and thrill. I never dreamed two years ago that tonight I’d be rid­ing my lit­tle GoGo bike down the red car­pet in Hol­ly­wood to a movie pre­mier with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts nor did I imag­ine I’d have that lit­tle GoGo bike OR that I, for­merly of the cor­po­rate world, would be doing some­thing so incon­sis­tent with my back­ground, pro­fes­sion and aca­d­e­mic train­ing. And here we are, two years later, I see peo­ple rid­ing down the street wear­ing GoGo Gear jack­ets and I squeal with delight, I speak at fash­ion indus­try events about what it’s like to be a startup apparel com­pany, we get invited to present our com­pany to ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, we audi­tion for Shark Tank and best of all, the thing I love the most, is the daily inter­ac­tion I have with peo­ple about our GoGo Gear. I had no idea how many new friends I was going to make as a result of all of this! It absolutely goes with­out say­ing that I am blessed with such abun­dance in my life that has absolutely noth­ing to do with money and EVERYTHING to do with peo­ple. Now THAT is a life worth living!

Arlene

Share
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

America Hits The Road This Weekend and Soon… So Will Someone Else!

By Arlene | Published: May 26, 2011

OK, this post is going to take you a week to read! LOL! So here goes…

On Feb­ru­ary 7, 2010, I received an email that said only the following…

“How much does the Mil­i­tary, Cafe and Racer cost?”

“How can I learn more about the jack­ets liner, mate­r­ial, size and pro­tec­tive gear?”

The email address was abbre­vi­ated so there was no way to iden­tify who sent it and the per­son who sent it did not sign their name.

Now the rea­son I’m telling you this is because in Feb­ru­ary 2010, we had not yet begun ship­ping our jack­ets and pho­tos of our jack­ets had been on our web­site for about five months at that time. For any­one who is in the apparel busi­ness, ques­tions like these lead you to believe a com­peti­tor is try­ing to get infor­ma­tion from you.

I gen­er­ally have very good instincts about things and peo­ple but when it comes to what peo­ple write in emails, it gets a bit more chal­leng­ing. One of the ways my instincts let me know some­thing isn’t quite right is that I’ll read the email and if I instantly get a weird feel­ing about it, I’ll trust my instincts and either not respond OR I’ll do so in a way that gives just enough infor­ma­tion with­out dis­clos­ing any­thing pro­pri­etary. As an aside, the one time I didn’t trust my instincts about an email I received, I ended up hav­ing to deal with an adult film com­pany who decided to use my for­mer vaca­tion rental home to shoot a porno video in! Should have trusted my instincts! But, I digress…

Mean­while, back at this rather cryp­tic email… I decided to go ahead and answer the ques­tions because while I was a bit uncer­tain, I didn’t get one of my usual stiff­ened spine reac­tions and so I replied.

Well, it’s a good thing I replied because what fol­lowed from that first email is the start of a won­der­ful friend­ship and that friend­ship comes in the form of Made­line Valesquez, a Ducati Mon­ster, Tri­umph Bon­neville motor­cy­cle rid­ing instruc­tional tech­nol­ogy teach in a small town in Massachusetts.

Madeline in her GoGo Gear Hologram JacketMade­line prob­a­bly owns more GoGo Gear than any of our other cus­tomers. She is also the most active about pro­mot­ing our prod­ucts to any­one and every­one who will lis­ten. In fact, in May 2010, she harassed a local motor­cy­cle dealer into let­ting me come there for their “Bless­ing of the Bikes” event so that I could show their cus­tomers our prod­ucts. Made­line then went so far as to let me stay at her home for the days of the event and has extended her home to me for any occa­sions where I might be in that part of the coun­try. We have become fast friends and I am grate­ful to call her my friend.

Over the past year that I’ve known Made­line, she has always been a cham­pion of me rid­ing, rid­ing safe, doing every­thing the right way, giv­ing me advice on all things motor­cy­cles and giv­ing me a won­der­ful peek into HER world of rid­ing! This is a woman who ven­tures out with the Latin Amer­i­can Motor­cy­cle Asso­ci­a­tion mem­bers, often being the only woman among the rid­ers, and keeps up with the guys who are fly­ing down the free­way in excess of 100mph. I mar­veled at her rid­ing in the pour­ing rain and freez­ing cold that May in Mass­a­chu­setts at the bike event I attended. I went so far as to video­tape her rid­ing on the free­way with my iPhone! I so admired her abil­ity to do what she was doing and it made me long for the days I used to have of being care­free, being out on a bike and just going wher­ever. It is Made­line who unlocked the door for me in terms of my will­ing­ness to ven­ture and just GO and since that time, I have rid­den the entire Baja Penin­sula, dri­ven the Pacific Coast High­way from LA to San Fran­cisco, com­peted in a 400-mile endurance rally, just recently returned from another ride through Baja, will likely drive from LA to Seat­tle and pos­si­bly Van­cou­ver and one day, I WILL drive across coun­try. And THAT is where this story begins…

Made­line is going to be dri­ving her Tri­umph Bon­neville from Los Ange­les to the East Coast this Sum­mer, alone! She is ship­ping her bike to LA where she and I will ride up the Pacific Coast High­way together, through Yosemite and back to LA where she will then begin her jour­ney eastward.

I asked Made­line if she would be will­ing to write a guest blog post about exactly what she’s doing and why and so here, in her own words is Made­line Valesquez, my friend…

***************************************

Madeline and her BonnieThe idea came about when Arlene kept post­ing beau­ti­ful pic­tures on her blog and Twit­ter and show­ing twist­ing roads in the Cal­i­for­nia coast line.  Those pic­tures on Twit­ter kept call­ing me to ride them.  She tweeted and tweeted and tweeted, teas­ing me to come out and ride with her rid­ing her GoGo bike.  In a very short time, Arlene became a long dis­tance rider and blog­ging about awe­some rid­ing expe­ri­ences. At one point, I tweeted back to Arlene and com­mented, “that’s it, I’m ship­ping a bike out there and rid­ing with you” to which she replied, “bring it on girl”.  Poor Arlene, she had no clue what she had done………  That was the begin­ning of this chap­ter in my life.

I learned to ride motor­cy­cles when my son Miguel was a teenager.  I was rid­ing my lit­tle 4-stroke Honda 100cc until I got too old to con­tinue fol­low­ing a crazy teenager in dirt, mud, water, rocks, tree stumps, old rail­road tracks and trails with very slip­pery tree roots.  I loved every moment of it.  I kept rid­ing with the boys rid­ing 2-stroke engine dirt bikes and lov­ing the thrill of the power those lit­tle things gave me on first and sec­ond gear.  The only thing that stopped me from rid­ing was that I ran out of trails and those old aban­doned train tracks were too much for a mid­dle aged woman on my legs bounc­ing from bump to bump.  After a few years of that, I bought a hor­ri­ble Kawasaki Vul­can and hated the damn thing.  Rode it for a while until I test rode my cur­rent 2000 Ducati Mon­ster 750. It felt like I was back on my dirt bike. The dif­fer­ence now was that I had end­less high­ways and roads that would allow me to ride until I had to come home to walk dogs and sleep to get up the next day to take care of my teach­ing job.   I love being a teacher, but some­times wish that I could change my career to a job where I could just ride my motor­cy­cle.  I go to work dur­ing the fall, win­ter and spring and dream while work­ing and say to myself, “I’d rather be rid­ing”. Yeah, I stole that phrase from the BMW sticker.

Madeline Military DucatiRid­ing with the boys from the Latin Amer­i­can Motor­cy­cle Asso­ci­a­tion taught me how to ride very long dis­tances.  They are very pas­sion­ate about their bikes and have taught me quite a few lessons along the way, par­tic­u­larly how to ride through New York City through those dark tun­nels.  I hope I can carry that expe­ri­ence when I ride through the tun­nels I will be rid­ing through, par­tic­u­larly in Col­orado down I-70. These boys also taught me how to ride in the rain at very high speeds.  I don’t rec­om­mend that type of rid­ing, but that is what I do now. I ride my motor­cy­cle, rain or shine………….

I now love to ride for as long as I can tol­er­ate it.  I think rid­ing solo will be a totally whole new expe­ri­ence and chal­lenge for me.  I will not have those guys to fol­low, I will have to force myself to stay on course and not fall asleep. I will be rid­ing my motor­cy­cle in the heat in July through the Mojave Desert alone roast­ing myself in 110 degree heat or above. I will take off with hopes that I don’t die along the way at the hands of some idiot on the road!  I will be rid­ing my lit­tle Bon­nie in desert heat rid­ing 270 miles from LA to Las Vegas, don’t know what I am going to do there because I am not a gam­bler!  I also hope that those state troop­ers don’t stop me because I plan on rid­ing as fast as I can to get off that high­way and find an air con­di­tioned room in Las Vegas to cool off from rid­ing in hor­ri­ble desert heat.

The ques­tion every­one keeps ask­ing me is, “Why”?  They say, “Are you nuts?”  At times, I ask myself those ques­tions, but the main rea­sons are:  Because I can… Because I need another chal­lenge in my life… To sat­isfy my own desire that I can accom­plish such a goal… I’ve been rid­ing motor­cy­cles for many years and have gained enough courage to do some­thing like this… I JUST WANT TO RIDE AND RIDE AND RIDE AND RIDE AND RIDE SOME MORE AND FORGET ABOUT WORK AND FINANCIAL PROBLEMS AND THE WORRIES OF THE WORLD… And sadly, for my friend Dar­lene, who passed away from lung can­cer. The last time I saw her was dur­ing a very long motor­cy­cle ride and she was very scared as she rode on the back of her husband’s motor­cy­cle. After we got home, she posted a pic­ture and com­mented “an Angel was with us the entire ride and was pro­tect­ing us”. She is now my angel that will watch over me as I ride across our beau­ti­ful coun­try and think of her…

I kept think­ing, once done rid­ing Cal­i­for­nia, a nor­mal per­son would just hop on a plane and fly back home.  Instead, I will mount the sad­dle and ride my Bon­nie home and see more beau­ti­ful roads, par­tic­u­larly in Utah and in Col­orado.  I’ve heard so much about Utah, I can­not wait to check it out myself.  Col­orado is also a beau­ti­ful state and I am look­ing for­ward to spend­ing some time with my friends in Col­orado Springs.

I cre­ated a web­site called www.missrider.com to chron­i­cle my adven­tures and hope to be using a SPOT Per­sonal Tracker to pro­vide my wor­ried daugh­ter with some sense of com­fort.  If I ride off a cliff, not that I will be rid­ing next to dan­ger­ous cliffs, the SPOT tracker should be able to get me help.  If my bike breaks down, I will be call­ing the Amer­i­can Motor­cy­cle Asso­ci­a­tion to come get my bike and tow it to the near­est garage.  Dear God, please don’t let that hap­pen!!!  I am hop­ing to carry a flat repair kit, not that I would know what to do, but rumor has, the world is full of won­der­ful peo­ple will­ing to help a girl rid­ing her motor­cy­cle alone.  So, all of that should help me get through the long haul across Amer­ica. I have a very good feel­ing that I will meet nice peo­ple and have a won­der­ful ride this sum­mer.  I am scared, but will ride to see the coun­try.  See you on the road Amer­ica, in July.

***************************************

And so, to my friend Made­line, I wish you safe trav­els on this amaz­ing jour­ney and I’m thrilled to ride along side for part of your ride. I was hop­ing I could make the ride cross coun­try with you but you have taught me that I must respect my lim­its and so for now, until I feel con­fi­dent enough, I will sat­isfy myself in read­ing your blog each day as you make your way across this amaz­ing coun­try of ours. It is going to be the ride of a life time and I can’t wait and one day, I will show up at your house again and it will be at the end of MY cross coun­try jour­ney! Thank you for being such a won­der­ful teacher!

Arlene

Share
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

GOGO GEAR AND THE CALIFORNIA SCOOTER TAKE TO BAJA AGAIN

By Arlene | Published: April 13, 2011
GoGo Bike on the road

GoGo Bike on the road

Get your­self a big cup of cof­fee, this is prob­a­bly the longest blog post I’ve ever writ­ten! So, here goes!

Suf­fice it to say, I’m pretty crappy about get­ting our blog updated in a timely man­ner and this is no excep­tion! So many things hap­pen so fast around here that I often don’t know if I’m com­ing or going and that’s part of what made this most recent trip to Baja so special…

The Perfect Baja Day

The Per­fect Baja Day

Let me start with the most remark­able part of the trip… for almost a week, we were com­pletely dis­con­nected from the rest of the world. No cell recep­tion any­where and vir­tu­ally no inter­net con­nec­tion. The one or two times I man­aged to get online at the local inter­net “café”,  which was actu­ally a tiny store sell­ing Bar­bies and cloth­ing and had a rotary dial tele­phone on the wall for peo­ple to use and no lights on to speak of, it took me one hour and twenty min­utes to con­nect via dial-up ser­vice. We don’t ever really pay much atten­tion any­more to how graphic inten­sive web­sites are because most com­put­ers are so fast that you just don’t notice but when you’re in the mid­dle of nowhere and you are using ancient com­put­ers and dialup ser­vice, you real­ize just how slow the world used to be. When you’re com­pletely dis­con­nected like this, an entirely new world opens up to you, that is, IF you choose to open your eyes…

So let’s go back to the begin­ning… last Sep­tem­ber, I rode the entire Baja Penin­sula with four ter­rific guys, one of whom was John Welker. Well, about a month ago, John emailed me ask­ing if I wanted to ride down to Baja again because he had a place on the Sea of Cortez and was going down one last time before mov­ing to Florida. I had to think about it for all of a nanosec­ond before say­ing YES, YES, YES!!! The other GoGo Girl, Desiree, decided she wanted to go too so the three of us set off en route to Bahia de Los Ange­les on Sat­ur­day, April, 2nd.

Desiree and I met John at a gas sta­tion just north of the US-Mexico bor­der in San Ysidro. We offloaded my bike, Desiree dri­ving the Jeep with the bike rack on it and John fol­low­ing in his SUV filled to capac­ity with all the things he was tak­ing down to Baja.

We started the drive at about 9:30am and began the slow crawl through Tijuana, down the coast through Rosar­ito, and then down into the ever busy Ense­nada. It took for­ever to get through Ense­nada as this is the place where every­one in the north­ern part of Baja go to get every­thing they need. The addi­tion of a Costco and Wal­Mart have changed every­thing on the Peninsula!

Threatening Skies in Baja

Threat­en­ing Skies in Baja

Once through Ense­nada, we picked speed as the traf­fic tapered off but we were on to the long and very wind­ing roads for the next hun­dred or so miles. At cer­tain points, I was able to travel at 72mph but the sus­tained winds just beat down on us and I was aver­ag­ing about 55mph through the head­winds. As we worked our way down the coast, we hit a stretch where it was cold and rainy, or I should say, misty. It was misty enough that every­one but me had their wind­shield wipers on and since I don’t have any on my hel­met visor, I was wip­ing my visor every few sec­onds. No mat­ter the weather, I couldn’t have been hap­pier because I knew I was going to spend the entire week rid­ing my lit­tle bike and so I hap­pily went along my way. Now keep in mind, there’s Desiree and John strug­gling behind me because they are in cars capa­ble of going a zil­lion miles an hour and they’re stuck behind me on a lit­tle motor­bike, but they were com­plete troop­ers and stayed behind me the entire way.

It's a Baby! The GoGo Bike Meets the Hogs

It’s a Baby! The GoGo Bike Meets the Hogs

After a full day of rid­ing some 320 miles, we arrived in Catavina, the same place we stopped dur­ing our Sep­tem­ber trip. Upon arrival at the small hotel there in the “mid­dle of nowhere” desert, we pull up and see eight Harleys parked in the front way of the hotel. Of course, want­ing to be the cen­ter of atten­tion with my lit­tle bike, I man­age to squeeze in between two of the Hogs and park my bike know­ing that within a short amount of time, a gang of Harley rid­ers would emerge and won­der what the heck that lit­tle bike was doing out there in the mid­dle of nowhere! Well, imag­ine my sur­prise when the Harley rid­ers all turn out to be from Switzer­land and Ger­many! I knew they were the own­ers of the bikes because they were all crowded around my bike so of course, I can’t resist and I sneak up behind them and hear the women remark­ing “It’s a baby!” and some guy chimes in and says “Junior!” I got the biggest laugh as I intro­duced myself as the owner and explained to them that I had rid­den that bike the entire 1,100 mile length of the Penin­sula! They were all shocked, most of all the leader of the “pack” because he had been doing the Baja ride for the past 20 years and couldn’t imag­ine it on such a lit­tle bike! We spend the next half hour swap­ping sto­ries about Baja and then, sev­eral mar­gar­i­tas later, we all retire for the evening, exhausted from the day.

The Cove in Baja

The Cove in Baja

Sun­day morn­ing greets us with yet another cold, windy, cloudy day and we’re up early to get on our way. We only have about 120 miles to go to our des­ti­na­tion but we need to get there early because John has a lot he has to do to get his house oper­a­tional, includ­ing hook­ing up the solar pan­els and every­thing needed to get the water run­ning and every­thing else. He hasn’t been to the house in over a year so there’s no telling what we’re going to walk in and find and much to my dis­may, we didn’t know what we were going to encounter OUTSIDE the house! More on that in a minute…

The 120 miles from Catavina to Bahia de Los Ange­les is long and bumpy and you feel as if your teeth are going to be knocked right out of your head from how bad the roads are but I was just as happy as could be because I was back on my lit­tle bike. I had really pushed it the day before and prob­a­bly went a lot fur­ther than I should have because within about 60 miles of Catavina, every

Cacti on the rock

Cacti on the rock

part of my body was aching from such a long ride and Desiree com­mented that I should have just put the bike on the back of the Jeep but I wasn’t about to give up one sec­ond of rid­ing and so on this day, I was def­i­nitely pay­ing for the plea­sure I had the day before! I didn’t care because this part of the ride is one of extra­or­di­nary beauty because you see boul­der fields that are so enor­mous you feel as if you have entered a land­scape found only on the Moon or Mars. You then come out of the boul­der fields and into an end­less stretch of cac­tus fields that are so tall, they are higher than most houses. It is this part of the Baja Penin­sula that I love the most! It is quiet, peace­ful, strange yet beau­ti­ful and some­thing I will always look for­ward to on each trip to Baja.

Sunrise in Baja

Sun­rise in Baja

Sand and Mountains in Baja

Sand and Moun­tains in Baja

Com­ing up over the hill into Bahia de Los Ange­les, you catch a glimpse of the bay and you are imme­di­ately trans­formed. What­ever stress you may have been feel­ing, instantly dis­ap­pears because you are truly in a dif­fer­ent place, one that is so remote you can’t help but feel­ing like you’re on the TV show Sur­vivor! Now, for many peo­ple like myself, the prospect of being on Sur­vivor is the last thing in the world you want because wired up, plugged in, city folk like me have a hard time dis­con­nect­ing and set­tling down and relax­ing into the rhythm of such a remote place and to be hon­est, I nearly had a melt­down when I dis­cov­ered I didn’t have any cell recep­tion and only inter­mit­tent inter­net access with dial-up! THIS is a prob­lem for some­one like me and also for some­one who is still run­ning their busi­ness while on vaca­tion. Per­haps THAT was the les­son for me from this trip… I don’t have to answer every email as soon as it comes in, I don’t have to return a phone call within five min­utes, I don’t have to get a jacket out the door as soon as the order comes in, I don’t have to respond to any­thing and every­thing the moment it’s hap­pen­ing and yet, that is how many of us have learned to live these days with all this tech­nol­ogy and I’ll tell you what, IT’S EXHAUSTING!

Well, noth­ing shocks you out of your exhaus­tion like an encounter with a rat­tlesnake! And that’s exactly what hap­pened next! Our good friend, Joe Berk, from Cal­i­for­nia Scooter Com­pany and fear­less leader of our Sep­tem­ber trip, sent me an email back in Sep­tem­ber telling me all of the things I needed to bring with me “just in case”. He took great plea­sure in pulling my leg about all the crea­tures I might encounter while in Baja and that I had to come pre­pared for any encounter, includ­ing that of a rat­tlesnake! Well sure enough, we arrive at John’s house, the neigh­bors have come over to greet him and while stand­ing there, some­one makes a joke about rat­tlesnakes and Desiree laughs and says “why don’t you turn over that tire over there, there’s prob­a­bly a rat­tlesnake under there”.

The Rattlesnake

The Rat­tlesnake

So, some “smartie-pants” turns over the tire and THERE lies a rat­tlesnake! I swear to the heav­ens, I never wanted to run for the hills so fast in my whole life yet no such run was going to hap­pen because if there was a rat­tlesnake right there two feet away from me, there were cer­tain to be more of them all over the place and that was it for me! No stay­ing at John’s house, I had to go to a hotel, not that the “hotels” would be any bet­ter in such a remote place but at least I would feel like there was a big­ger bar­rier between me and the snake so off to the hotel Desiree and I would go! I don’t think the snake really got to me, well, yes, he did… BUT, it really got to me after dark that night when we were prepar­ing to leave John and the neigh­bors. I bounded out­side of his house, into the pitch dark toward the Jeep and stopped dead in my tracks because I real­ized I might just step on a snake out there and a 180 degree turn and I was back in that house! Now I was trapped on all sides by rat­tlesnakes even though there wasn’t one in sight and per­haps THAT was the prob­lem! Oh, the tricks the mind can play with you in the dark!

The GoGo Bike Waiting to GO

The GoGo Bike Wait­ing to GO

Mean­while, as I’m hav­ing the rat­tlesnake shakes, we are told by the neigh­bors that all of the whale watch­ing tours ended on March 31st. We had missed it by three or four days and this meant that I wasn’t going to be spend­ing the week rid­ing my bike because we were sup­posed to be rid­ing all over the place to get to where the whale watch­ing tours would leave, so that meant, the rest of the week we would just be stay­ing there in rat­tlesnake cove!

So there I am, hugely dis­ap­pointed at no whales, dis­con­nected from the world, sur­rounded by rat­tlesnakes in my head, and what am I sup­posed to do if I’m not rid­ing my bike the rest of the week?! Well, this is where a per­son either freaks out or they set­tle in to where they are and start to open their eyes and see what the world has to offer and what liv­ing is all about so that’s what I did…

My Corona Beer Commercial Photo

My Corona Beer Com­mer­cial Photo

For the next three days, I walked the miles of beaches just to see what I would see. The one func­tion­al­ity I still had avail­able was the cam­era in my iPhone so I spent the time look­ing for things I might want to pho­to­graph. I guess I wanted to cap­ture this mag­i­cal place in a way that would visu­ally express how

A Baja Tree

A Baja Tree

extra­or­di­nary it is because so much is said about Mex­ico in the media and most of it’s bad and rarely do you get a story or report out of the place that make peo­ple feel like it’s a place they’d want to visit. Now mind you, a trip like this would not be com­plete with­out the req­ui­site mur­der which is, in fact, what hap­pened on the night we arrived!

Low Tide in Baja

Low Tide in Baja

Most media reports of crime and mur­der and drugs in Mex­ico have cap­tions that read some­thing like “Amer­i­can Mur­dered in Cold Blood by Mex­i­can Drug Lords” BUT in OUR mur­der story, it actu­ally goes some­thing like this… “Amer­i­can liv­ing in Bahia de Los Ange­les shoots his Mex­i­can girl­friend in the head, bul­let richo­chets inside her head leav­ing her per­ma­nently dam­aged, leav­ing two sons, aged 14 and 17 to fend for them­selves. Mex­i­can author­i­ties do not pros­e­cute the Amer­i­can, they only make him leave the coun­try and tell him never to come back so he leaves Mex­ico, returns to the US and then turns right around and goes back to Mex­ico only to be con­fronted and killed by the woman’s sons who were appar­ently in a drug dis­pute with the Amer­i­can and, of course, a bit unhappy that he destroyed their mother’s life.” Never a dull moment…

So, of the other sto­ries I dis­cov­ered along my walks were Mauro, the Ital­ian, who had been liv­ing there for almost 20 years and decided to open a pizze­ria, mar­ried a marine biol­o­gist from Ari­zona who was there study­ing the tur­tles and built a house into the moun­tain­side but not before import­ing his nephew from Italy to be the pizza maker, much to the dis­may of the boy’s

No idea what this is!

No idea what this is!

mother. On the evening we had some of this Ital­ian pizza, an SUV pulled across the street in which sat two police offi­cers. I instructed the boy pizza maker to take a pizza and deliver it to the police in the SUV to which they turned on their lights and siren as a “thank you”. One never knows when they’re going to need the local police for some­thing in Mexico!

And of course, there is always rivalry in a small town and this one was no dif­fer­ent. For years, there wasn’t a gas sta­tion for miles and then one day, there were two; one, owned by the woman who owned the “hotel” we were stay­ing in and the other, by the woman who owns the “yel­low store” (the local gro­cery store). The rivalry between the two is appar­ently quite fierce and well

Town cemetary

Town cemetary

known through­out this town of four fam­i­lies and so the story of the “Hat­fields and McCoy’s” is prob­a­bly apro­pos in this sit­u­a­tion! And before we leave the rivalry, let’s not for­get my hav­ing to pay for our hotel room by going to the gas sta­tion! No one has credit card machines in this lit­tle town except for this one gas sta­tion and that’s where all of the credit card transaca­tions are done for the hotel so for future ref­er­ence, if you ever go to Baja, BRING CASH AND LOTS OF IT!  And of this gas sta­tion and the credit machine, we find a young woman of about 20 years old who speaks flaw­less Eng­lish when I present my credit card and I ask her where she learned to speak Eng­lish so well and she says she’s Amer­i­can and from Ohio and the owner of the gas sta­tion and hotel is her grand­mother! Never a dull moment in this lit­tle town of four families!

The estuary

The estu­ary

Now, in the mid­dle of all of this small town drama, I have become sick from eat­ing some­thing one night and am sure I am going to die in the mid­dle of the night. No such thing hap­pened and once every­thing “cleared”, so to speak, I was ready for the next adven­ture which con­sisted of John and I dri­ving along the rock­i­est, dusti­est road known to man only to come upon a small enclave of

A Baja Tree

A Baja Tree

“Grin­gos” (Amer­i­cans) liv­ing in trailer par­adise! Some 54 “houses” right on the beach on the edge of an estu­ary that was absolutely mag­nif­i­cent. As we approached the enclave, we were sur­prised to come upon a guard shack which was manned by none other than “Juan Carlo” which seemed to be just about the only name of every man in town. Appar­ently, the enclave inhab­i­tants had expe­ri­enced some theft dur­ing the year and decided to put up the guard shack and gate and when­ever any­one would approach the gate, Juan Carlo would put down his Cerveza and come out­side his trailer to see who the intrud­ers were. In the same moment, an Amer­i­can on an ATV dri­ves up ask­ing us what we’re doing there. After explain­ing I was on a photo mis­sion to bring home pho­tos of what a beau­ti­ful place it is, he invited us into the enclave and started telling us all of the sto­ries asso­ci­ated with all of the own­ers. Talk about Pey­ton Place!

Mister B

Mis­ter B

Mean­while, “Mis­ter B.” arrives to greet us and show us around. Mind you, Mr. B, was actu­ally a black dog of some unknown vari­ety and spoke no Eng­lish, had the run of the place and lived almost two miles down the beach at the last house in the enclave. Mr. B. and I explored the estu­ary while John and our new best friend, Les, enjoyed a beer. Soon, Juan Carlo joined the beer party and it looked like we were going to be there all night! Sev­eral beers later, John and I headed back to town but not before the sun was going down and our offroad trek became more chal­leng­ing as there were NO roads to speak of out by the estu­ary, only land­marks like bushes and trees. Oh lord, I thought to myself, how on earth are we ever going to get out of here but sure enough, John, a mas­ter­ful nav­i­ga­tor, drove us right out and back to civ­i­liza­tion, such that it was.

Enrique's truck and boat

Enrique’s truck and boat

On the last day, John hired a boat for a four-hour tour of the bay. We were taken to the boat launch by Enrique, whose last name was Dag­gatt of all things. Appar­ently, his ances­tors who founded the town were British and had set­tled there as part of the gold rush in the late 1880s. Enrique and I drove inside the truck while Desiree and John rode in the boat on the trailer! Down the road we went, right past the police who waved as we went by and I won­dered if they and the pizza recip­i­ents were one and the same.

The boat was launched at the dock and Enrique and I hopped in to join Desiree and John. Off we went on our big adven­ture which would include some of the most mag­nif­i­cent sights, not the least of which was the sea lion pod frol­ick­ing in the water and then chas­ing us as we started to leave the area. Nor­mally, the sea lions are sun­ning them­selves on the big rocks but this day, they were all in the water and we got the ben­e­fit of a beau­ti­ful dis­play of syn­chro­nized swim­ming AND, the big moment of the trip came when I just hap­pened to look up

Sea lions with their heads out of the water

Sea lions with their heads out of the water

beyond the front of the boat and out of the water came the back and then… a whale’s tail! As quickly as he emerged from the water, he was back under again, but I had seen it and now, my whale watch­ing tour was com­plete as was my jour­ney to Baja! Noth­ing could have been more per­fect in that moment!

Heading back to shore in Baja storm

Head­ing back to shore in Baja storm

There were count­less other moments on this trip worth not­ing such as the hail that began to fall while we were out rac­ing back to shore in hopes of escap­ing the oncom­ing storm, sun­rises that can­not begin to be cap­tured ade­quately by a cam­era, brief encoun­ters with strangers on the beach and in the streets, hav­ing only one chan­nel on the hotel room TV show­ing an end­less string of episodes of a Mex­i­can “novella” (soap opera) and the only way to change the chan­nel in the room was to go into the hotel bar and ask them if they could change the chan­nel and being glared at because the novella is some­thing every­one is engrossed in there, includ­ing the 20-something Amer­i­can at the gas sta­tion, meet­ing dozens of Grin­gos who had cho­sen to come and live in this place sev­eral months of the year, all mak­ing for the most amaz­ing adventure.

GoGo Bike on the road

GoGo Bike on the road

Who needs the inter­net and cell­phones and email and text mes­sag­ing and noise and busy­ness and tele­vi­sion and free­ways and cars and expen­sive gas when you can get on a lit­tle motor­bike and just drive for a day and end up in a place like this. That’s what I call “living”!

Arlene

Share
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

GoGo Gear and the California Scooter Company GoGo Bike Go 396 Miles Around the Salton Sea

By Arlene | Published: March 29, 2011

I’ve been think­ing a lot lately about the whole idea of “win­ning” espe­cially given all of the drama and pub­lic fas­ci­na­tion with Char­lie Sheen implod­ing right before our eyes. I think every­one has a dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tion for what win­ning is and mine is found in the fol­low­ing story…

The Salton Sea

The Salton Sea

Start of the race

Start of the race

This past week­end, I par­tic­i­pated in a 396 mile endurance rally around the Salton Sea in Cal­i­for­nia. It was pro­moted as a “rally”, not a “race” because it was a test of each person’s abil­i­ties and endurance to be able to cover this many miles in one day. Of course, “rally” or “race”, didn’t mat­ter what the word was, I saw it as a “race” because all of us were there for the same rea­son, to com­pete, to test our­selves and see what the out­come would be.

Splint on Arlene's cut finger

Splint on Arlene’s cut finger

When I first approached the Salton Sea on the drive in, some 230 miles east and south of Los Ange­les, I thought I had lost my mind because it was SO huge and I couldn’t even imag­ine rid­ing around it once let alone three times and yet, I had com­mit­ted and all that was left was to do the actual ride. Com­pound­ing that was the fact that ear­lier in the day, I had severely cut one of the fin­gers on my throt­tle and brake hand, so much so it required three stitches which I, being the scaredy cat I am when it comes to nee­dles, just told the doc­tor to put a ster­istrip on the cut to hold it together long enough for me to par­tic­i­pate in the rally. There was no way I was going to miss this rally and I was NOT going to be some­one who com­mits to things and then doesn’t fol­low through at the last minute, so onward and for­ward it’s time to race!

I don’t know what I was expect­ing but once the race started, it became imme­di­ately appar­ent that it was going to be a gru­el­ing ride, not because of the dis­tance but because of the wind. I can’t tell you the num­ber of times I was nearly knocked off my bike by the wind, espe­cially as trucks would pass by. I had one instance of a wind gust that was so strong it pushed me off the road from the cen­ter of the lane! I just pic­tured myself sprayed across the pave­ment and how ridicu­lous it would sound to have to tell peo­ple the wind did it!

The east side of the Salton Sea

The east side of the Salton Sea

Once under­way, I think we all kind of set­tled in to the rhythm of the ride. The first of the three laps was unevent­ful and I fin­ished in about two and half hours. We had dif­fer­ent require­ments that had to be ful­filled as part of the race, some of which included get­ting our rally pass­ports stamped at the con­clu­sion of each lap, a stamp on the pass­port at the Salton City Cham­ber of Com­merce that also appeared to func­tion as the local flea mar­ket, drop­ping off a post­card in a mail­box along the way and obtain­ing printed gas receipts, all of which had to be turned in at the end to ver­ify that each of us actu­ally com­pleted the race per the terms of the race rules.

The sec­ond lap became a bit more chal­leng­ing because I stopped for only about four min­utes between lap one and two and by the mid­dle of the sec­ond lap, my rear end was aching, as were my legs. By this time, I had already logged almost 200 miles. As the sec­ond lap came to a close, the guy I was rid­ing with was on the side of the road with a car­bu­re­tor man­i­fold prob­lem and that was it for him for the race so I con­tin­ued on and com­pleted the sec­ond lap.

Upon get­ting my stamp at the end of lap two, the rally orga­niz­ers told me I was in third place over­all, so I excit­edly got back on the road and began rac­ing into a 40mph head­wind that was so strong that sev­eral times I was nearly knocked off my bike. Every­one was expe­ri­enc­ing the wind prob­lem but the peo­ple on the big­ger bikes of course had a bit eas­ier time get­ting through it and before long, a guy on a 175cc passed me and there went third place!

Given the power of his engine, I knew I wasn’t going to catch him so I thought I was more than con­tent to come in fourth because all of the other bikes ahead of me were all big­ger than mine so I thought it was a suc­cess to be com­ing in right behind them with a smaller bike. Well, imag­ine my delight when I dis­cov­ered the guy who was now in third place had stopped at a gas sta­tion to refuel. I glee­fully charged down the street think­ing that if I could just get far enough ahead of him, I might get to the fin­ish line before him. It was all a ques­tion of how much time he would make up using a 175cc bike com­pared to my 150cc. Before long, sure enough, he caught up with me and off he went, into the dis­tance, cer­tain to cap­ture third place. So, I con­tin­ued on, try­ing to catch him know­ing that it was not even pos­si­ble but it was still a fun goal to have and I pressed on with a vengeance!

Half of the 70mph 186 foot skid mark

Half of the 70mph 186 foot skid mark

About seven miles before the end of the race, I spot­ted “Mr. Third Place” off in the dis­tance but he wasn’t mov­ing. The closer I got, the more I thought that maybe he had run out of gas but as I approached, it was clear that some­thing was very wrong. He was vis­i­bly upset and when I asked him if he was okay, he pointed behind me and told me to look at the street. There before my eyes was a skid mark that later mea­sured 186 feet. The chain on his bike had bro­ken and wedged itself between the tire and frame, result­ing in a back tire that refused to move and this was all hap­pen­ing to him at 70mph. He mirac­u­lously stayed upright on the bike while he skid­ded for 186 feet at 70mph. This is one of those moments in life where the phrase “but for the grace of God go I” becomes very rel­e­vant to a person…

He told me that his bike wouldn’t move and that he was going to need some­one to come and get him. I told him I had a trailer back at the hotel and that I’d go get it and come back and get him. I also told him to just sit down and take a deep breath so he could recover a bit from what had just hap­pened to him. He looked like he was in a com­plete state of shock, prob­a­bly because he knew how unlikely it was that he didn’t come off his bike in that skid and end up with seri­ous injuries.

The finish line

The fin­ish line

I con­tin­ued on the last seven miles and com­pleted the rally/race with the orga­niz­ers all excited about my third place fin­ish but I had other thoughts in that moment. I ran to get the trailer and drove back to get Ryan, the guy with the big skid. We got his bike on the trailer and drove back, all the while him talk­ing about the expe­ri­ence of what had just hap­pened. Once back, he went inside and sat down for while just to calm him­self down and when I returned from park­ing the trailer, I told every­one I was going across the street to get a mar­garita. Ryan asked if he could join me and we spent the next two hours, just talk­ing about every­thing in the world. After fin­ish­ing our sec­ond drink together, we went back in for the tro­phy ceremony.

Third place trophy

Third place trophy

After the first and sec­ond place tro­phies were handed out, they called me to come and get the third place tro­phy. I told them that the tro­phy wasn’t mine and that it was Ryan’s because it wasn’t his fault that the bike broke down and there was no ques­tion had it not, he would have fin­ished in third and I wasn’t about win­ning by default. I remem­bered back to a time dur­ing a Tour de France bicy­cle race in which the lead­ing rider crashed on his bike and all of the rid­ers behind him stopped where they were to allow the front run­ner to get back on his bike and take the lead again. They too didn’t believe in win­ning by default or win­ning because they were able to cap­i­tal­ize on his mis­for­tune. That may be the way of com­pe­ti­tion for some, but it isn’t for me and so I handed over the tro­phy to Ryan and then col­lected the tro­phy that truly belonged to me, first place in my 150cc class. THAT was a tro­phy and win I could be proud of.

Now the story could have ended there, but it didn’t…

Being as exhausted as we all were, I took leave of the group and headed back to my hotel but not before stop­ping at a con­ve­nience store. When pulling in, I hap­pened to notice two cats in the alley behind the store. Clearly they were rum­mag­ing through the garbage try­ing to find some­thing to eat. I stood there watch­ing them for a while then went inside to get some water. While inside, I grabbed two cans of cat food and waited in line to pay. I stood there day­dream­ing from the exhaus­tion and then refo­cused on the dis­play of scratch off lot­tery tick­ets and thought to myself, if I won the lot­tery I could buy a bunch of cat food and so, I bought a ticket. Out­side I went with the food and lo and behold, the two cats had turned into five! I opened the cans and they all came run­ning, gob­bling up every bit each could get from the can. As I watched them eat­ing, I thought that per­haps there wasn’t enough food for all of them so back into the store I went for another two cans. The guy at the cash reg­is­ter asked me if I had cats, I said “no, not here but YOU do and there’s five of them out­side behind your store and you should feed them!” Although he looked shocked, appar­ently being the cat owner him­self, he didn’t just dis­miss me as a freak ani­mal lover who’s try­ing to save the feline of species!

So, out I go, feed the cats the other two cans, stand back, snap a few pic­tures and head back to the hotel. Once all set­tled in for the night, I pull out a penny and that scratcher lot­tery ticket. One after the next, the num­bers are exposed and when all was said and done with the scratch­ing, I had won $15!!! I felt like I had won the $300 mil­lion some­one else had a few nights ear­lier! That $15 paid for the lot­tery ticket, all the cat food cans AND a bite for me to eat the next morning!

I felt so good and yet it got even bet­ter because when I went back to the con­ve­nience store for gas and water the next morn­ing, what do I see but a large alu­minum tray very near to where I had left the cat food cans. Some­thing tells me the cat lov­ing night clerk left those cats some food…

And so, I left the Salton Sea a win­ner in more ways than I can count and I am for­ever enriched by the lit­tle things that hap­pen in life where we have the oppor­tu­nity to make deci­sions that have a real impact on peo­ple or other species and every­one is left the bet­ter for it. THAT is my def­i­n­i­tion of win­ning and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Arlene

 

Share
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments
Pages: 1 2 3 4 Next
SEO Powered by Platinum SEO from Techblissonline