January 17, 2009

Flutter & Max Immortalized as Art

Last night I attended an art showing of my good friend Terri Willits. Terri has such great artistic vision (she has an outstanding vision with life as a whole, I am very envious!) I am in constant awe of her work. Her encaustic style is so beautiful and serene.

Her showing was at Crave Coffee House near SLU Medical Campus. Crave is located in an old city church. The setting was perfect for Terri's work.

When I arrived Rick and Bobby were there. We chatted a bit and I got up to look at Terri's work. I knew she was doing a piece on Bobby's scooter and I was very excited to see the piece. I found it on the wall. I was so taken with the theme and the colors. Bobby and I talked about his scoot and my eyes started wandering to the other pieces in the group. I looked up and thought, umm there is Max (Pete's scooter) and UMMMM there is Flutter (my Scooter).

It took my mind a few seconds to wrap around the fact that I was looking at Max and Flutter as a piece of art. There was some writing above Flutter. It was from a blog writing I made when Flutter turned 10,000 miles. At the time I had Bella as well, my second bike. I was writing about how Flutter would always be my first love. Above the bikes and the writing were pictures of places to ride and things to see.

The painting was entitled First Love. So perfect. The piece conveyed three First Loves: My love for Flutter, my love for Max (which of course is my subliminal love for Pete) and the love Pete and I share for riding.

Terri will present me with the piece after her show! I can't wait to go back and see the painting again and again!

Terri, thanks so much for the piece, I am deeply touched.


First Love




El Gallo Azul and First Love
on display at Crave STL




Bobby's El Gallo Azul

January 15, 2009

Now this is a Polar Bear Ride

Last night at our St. Louis Scooter Club meeting, Steve (Snake) and I started talking about how cold it was to be the following morning. I said, I would really like to go get a picture down at the Commerce Bank with my scoot when it hits single digits. Steve looked at me and said are you nuts?? I was like well yeah....

He said, I think I will try to ride as well. I said sure Steve... Now one would think a dude named Snake is mean as well a snake right? Well Steve is the rider that complains it is cold when it is 65 degrees!! Plus Steve is retired and NEVER gets out of bed before noon. So I blew off his insane thought of riding in the cold until my phone rang at 9 this morning.

Maggie? Yeah? It's me Steve, I am up and I am going to ride.... Yeah right!?! No really I am...

Here is Steve's trip report:

At the meeting last night Maggie and I were talking about how cold it was going to be this morning. Since I am usually a fair weather rider, I thought it might be fun to just see what it was like to ride in really cold weather. So I had two challenges today, one was to get up before noon and the other was to ride in really cold weather. I was out for about 20 minutes. The only problems I had were my glasses fogging, so I had to keep the visor up a little and when I took off my gloves to take the pictures, well then it was time to go home. If I had Kevin's electric heated gloves I would have stayed out a little longer. The weather channels web site for the Ballwin area stated it was 1 degree and the banks sign stated 5 degree, I am going with the weather channel.





Dude, you are Steve the Snake!! I bow down to ya!

January 6, 2009

1st Ride of '09

New Year's Day 09 was a beautiful day to gather with friends and ride, ride ride!! ETS has had a New Year's day Ride for a few years, last year they were not able to put on the ride so we were all about helping get their tradition restarted!

We met at ETS where Bill graciously opened the doors for some warmth and bathroom comfort! Thanks Bill!!

I sat on the Versys :) Great bike... we shall see. Pete was not crazy about it!

Bill lead us on a great ride over to Forest Park then Noel lead us out of the Park over to the Coffee Cartel! We even saw the two other scooter clubs preparing for their New Year's Day ride! To bad there was not enough room to stop and say hello... but as they say the show must go on!

After warming up and enjoying some great company we headed down to the Riverfront. The Arch was still there and we headed south to the graffiti wall. Seems we should have pre approved our ride with the other club as they took umbrage that we rode the same ride they did.. strangely enough I did not see their route posted. Oh well I will get our Valentine's Day ride approved so we don't hurt their sensitive feelings. Because they care they really do....

FTR, these are
MY opinions not the opinions of the SLSC, so stay off that board and talk to me in person if you got an issue, capisce??

I owned a small bike before the 650 and urban riding was all I did for a year a lot of ottoman riders seem to forget this... having been on the levee road to the brewery many times I thought it was time the rest of the club had the experience. I am please to report all survived.