So that was good.

AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days: This is a vintage motorcycle swap meet, the largest in the country, and it's where I spent last Thursday through Sunday. MUCH fun. Really hot, & I spent more time manning my sales display than cruising the cool shows, races & events, but very very much worth the investment.

The primary goal of course was to sell some weenybikes and start a Realbike Fund. I also brought a bootyload of MC crap and Honda paraphernalia that was taking up space in the garage. While ultimately neither of the 2 weenybikes I brought sold, I did come home with almost $450.00 and that looks to me like the start of a Realbike Fund. It's not as motivating as the $3K I'd hoped to have by now, but it's a start.

Another goal of this adventure was to see just how much of what kinds of motorcycle things still light my fire. It was a bitter divorce, my parting with Honda, and I've left a great deal of my enthusiasm & passion behind. Going on 2 years now, I've felt some of the old riding pangs come back. Curiously, they are the same pangs that got me into bikes way back before I went into the industry: must leave, must cross state lines, must smell foliage and hear wind while doing it. Well I learned something along these lines as well, attending AMA VMD: for me, riding is as much about the people I ride with/to as it is about the riding. Seeing my old friends and making new friends really was the highlight of VMD, and motivates me even more to get the Newbike Fund growing. On The Newbike, I will follow my friends on adventures and I will see my friends at my destinations. HUUUUGE part, apparently, of what its all about for me.

Lux Graphics: Things were slow & I was pretty happy about that before VMD. The love was gone, I just couldn't light those creative fires. I'd been struggling with a new technique called "Trueflame" or "Realfire" or "ReallyRealCombustoBody", in which a car is painted to look like there are real flames instead of stylized traditional hot rod flames. Very frustrating, but one of my top clients ordered it so I couldn't put off learning the technique any longer. Now I'm back, and it was VERY therapeutic to not read e-mails or even handle an airbrush for almost a week! The orders are coming in again, I've finally made some progress with the new technique. . .

. . .and I seem to have gotten my groove back. The writing gig that I had seems to actually be happening now, my first Lux Graphics Wheelchair Things are almost done, and other avenues for revenue are opening up regularly. So, you know, that's good.

FREAKIN HOT: That's what it is here. Strangely, it doesn't make me wish we'd serviced the AC. I don't think the coolness we'd feel would be worth the cost of it, believe it or not. It's possible to acclimate to heat (I SUCK at it, but at least now I recognize it's a possibility). Cool showers and remaining as motionless as possible can go a long way. Fans are good. Cooking is an issue, but AK cooks on the porch grill a lot and that means we eat outside a lot and aside from the gnats (which, lets be reasonabe here, are NOT MINNESOTA MOSQUITOES) what could be more neeto? Oh. . .

VEGETABLES are pretty neeto. I've gone on record for 36 years as a staunch Veggiephobe, but fresh garden veggies can even change my mind. Wow! As I type AK is making sweet pickle relish, which is unfortunate since it involves boiling and lots of heat. But it makes the downstairs smell like fresh cukes and the upstairs smell like easter eggs (vinegar) and those are much more fun to smell than the stale humidity that normally greets me at the door. We had a parent conference in the kitchen just now and downed a whole jug of lemonade. Punchy dehydrated parents sing. . .

"With the lemonade, she wants more, more more

'till the pickles are made, she cried 'more more more, more more more. . . '"

Here is a photo of The Twinkies after picking a particularly Larry-Boy-like cuke from mommy's garden. . .

Babies looooooove cucumber. Cucumber love babies?