Dangerous Curves at Love Ride 13!

Me at Love Ride 11-my FIRST Love Ride!

Yes, we made it! I was a bit worried, since I had a new bike which was a little taller than last year and Ron was riding on the back, but except for a little overheated oil drip once we got to Lake Castaic, Ron and I had a great ride with 25,000 other bikers, AND raised $245 for MDA. I have some great polaroids scanned in here, but more are coming. I found my scanner didn't like the thick polaroid paper, so I'm getting enlargements of the best shots on regular photo stock.

Love Ride morning came early, and proved to soon be a hot one. Some of my LABiker friends gathered together to ride in to Glendale Harley Davidson to sign in and turn in the donations. Dan "Red Duc" Wang, my newbie rider neighbor Ingrid (riding my old bike), and Ron and I got it all together in Pasadena, took pics, and then swoooped down on kEN Colburn's house in Eagle Rock where Kevin Kivikoski and Yves Bolomet already were waiting for us to arrive. My next-door neighbor Ingrid had just passed the motorcycle safety test only two months before, had ridden once with me, once by herself on Saturday (yes, the DAY BEFORE), and then completed the WHOLE LOVE RIDE!! Of course, the Savage had been twice before so it knew the way.

Anyway, the group got it together and took off for the madness around Glendale HD. It got hot real quick, so hot that after we left the check-in mob and got on Highway 2 to go to Castaic, we soon got in a jam of traffic that was bottlenecked by a flaming bike in lane 4 (as I'm passing it, I'm thinking, DAMN, why don't we have the CAMERA OUT???). That's a helluva beginning, especially with me struggling along trying to split through the traffic mess with Ron on the back (Later Ron said, "You know, there were times when I thought my knees were going to hit some of those cars you passed!" "Well, you should hold your knees IN!").

Man, there is no comparison to leaving the sign-in area early. This was the first year I managed that, and the snailspeed, clutch-hand-killing parade off the freeway was not as arduously slow as the last two years. Still a challenge, but we did in 7-8 minutes what took 15-20 minutes last year and year before. We did have the leisure to see one sight: two 400-pound-plus Jabba the Hut wannabe's (man and woman) riding a long-raked out motortricycle. Holy shit! Yves said it all when he wondered aloud if that was the chicken or the egg: whether they bought the machine because they were huge, or they had the machine and just got huge cause they could.

So finally came that wonderful moment (at least for me) when you're off the bike and you know that everything is literally downhill from then on. The virago got a small oil leak that spilled on the exhaust pipe and started the bike smoking as soon as I was off it. I was really grateful that I DIDN'T have the slower approach, since it overheated like that. I had just got an oil change 2 days before, but others around me said it looked like no big deal. But besides that, I was happy as hell that I'd got Ron up there without a problem. That had been the big question, and I was sure relieved that I'd been able to do it again on this bike too.

The food seemed better this year, and the Victor Maclauglin or however you spell it trick riding fake cops were good too. The little dog who actually rides with the one guy for a little part of the show is getting older and I got a great pic of him on his daddy's bike.

Here's us on grass at the Lake (for some of us, literally). Yet another great Yves pic, here he's wearing the T-shirt, "Love Never Dies." Ingrid and I decided that next year we are going slut clothes shopping: we want to outdo all them Harley bitches at LR 14!! But I think the only way to do that would be to ride naked. It will be hard to beat some of those outfits.

The highlights of the concert were seeing Doctor Demento (above) and Crosby, Stills and Nash (picture below). No matter what they say about David Crosby, it was so good to see them still together and him still alive (In the picture below, that's him on the far right, Stills in center and Nash on far left). Yes, David Crosby looked pretty damned happy to be still with us.

I wish more of my deadbeat LABiker friends could have come along on the Love Ride, but there's always next year! And thank you to ALL of you wonderful people who helped Ron and I raise $245 for Muscular Dystrophy!

Back to the Sexy Main Menu!