Motorcycles, friends, and trips

I’ve been so busy this week that this is the first chance I’ve gotten to post a picture from my adventure last weekend. After my motorcycle safety course, I was all fired up about getting on the road and honing my skills, so I rented a Harley Davidson 1200 Sportster for the Memorial Day weekend. I was just gonna tool around my neighborhood, but I ended up putting over 300 miles on the bike before I returned it on Tuesday morning. I took off on a road heading south out of town where I met up with a few other bikers at a gas station. The only leather jacket I own is my Navy flight jacket, so I wore that. Since I like my skin attached to my body, I wore it in case of an incident during my first rides on 600 pounds of motorcycle. One of the guys I met up with recognized the patches and started telling me stories about when he was a flight engineer on P-3s in the 70s! Man, it’s a small world! Anyway, I ended up going to a biker rally in a town called Salida and then making a 250 mile road trip with these two guys. They were old rodeo buddies who switched from horses to motorcycles a few years ago. They were both in leather, fringed cowboy chaps and brightly colored cowboy boots, how could I say no?! It was great fun riding through the canyons and plains and then over Wilkerson Pass (about 9500 feet in altitude). It was a great weekend that left me anxious to get my own bike!

Fast forward to this weekend where I met up with an old Navy buddy I haven’t seen in about 5 years. This isn’t the greatest picture, but it’s of me and Neon taken today. Neon and I flew together back in VQ-2 a few years back. He’s the one who taught me how to rock climb and with whom I made many climbing trips in Spain, Greece, and Tennesseee, trained me as an EWOP aircrewman, and got me a tattoo for one of my birthdays. He’s been like a brother to me for many years, in and out of the Navy, so it was great to get to spend the afternoon with him here in Colorado Springs while he was out visiting his folks. If you’ve ever met this guy, you’d understand his callsign of “Neon.” This man is always excited about life and ready to jump into some adventure. He’s always so wound up that the geedunk (snack stand) at the aircraft hanger in Rota, Spain was not allowed to sell him Mountain Dew!!

So now it’s time to pack – I leave for the big backpacking adventure with Andy and Alexis on Tuesday morning. I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to post from internet cafes along the way, so stay tuned for our journey. . .