Cool Neighborhood Encounters
Thursday, March 11th, 2021
This was just about the coolest thing I’ve seen in quite a while.
I was walking through the neighborhood when I saw the coolest thing. There was this kid in the street on some three-wheeled thing doing 360s and all kinds of really fun-looking stuff. I had to stop and watch him. Then I noticed his dad working in their garage–which was packed with a big Jeep and a Ural sidecar rig, a big BMW adventure bike, and a couple other motorcycles.
OK, I thought, I’ve got to talk to this guy.
His name is Eric and yeah, he’s totally into motorcycles. He has a few more besides all these. He told me a story about riding the big beemer with a buddy going over Engineer Pass. Very narrow much of the way, with no choice but to keep going because there was no way at all to turn around. Number one on his mind was what in the world they would do if he dropped that big thing. As it was, in some places one bike would park so both riders could navigate one bike ahead, then get parked so both riders could get the second bike through that spot. But they made it.
And of course we talked about a lot more. Meanwhile, this thing his son was on . . .
Eric had a couple of these in the road for safety for his son.
But riding it in the street? That’s certainly an issue, although we always did when we were kids and we’re still alive. But Eric had a very good approach. He had two of those “Children at Play” child silhouette signs parked in the street on both sides of their house. He had them actually way out in the street so no driver could possibly miss them. In fact, you pretty much had to maneuver around them, so I suspect they’re pretty effective. Plus, their street, like ours, is very low traffic. So we’ll see.
Biker Quote for Today
If you can still hear your fears, shift a gear.
