New Profile Picture

I finally got around to getting a picture of me on my new Road Star. You can see it on my blog photo, which if you click on it will take you to my PicasaWeb photo album for the Road Star.

It's tough finding good help around the house to take digital pictures! My kids are always busy, and mrs. jss tends to cut off my head (or other parts!).

Helmet Decal

For some reason, I took a picture of my helmet decal for the Beehive social network at work. Figure I'd post it here too! I'm looking for patches for my black leather vest too. Right now some of the stuff I'm looking at is from Xpressmart.com.

State Fair

Hit the Minnesota State Fair today with my neighbor Mitch Oyen. We rode our matching Yamanha Road Stars up to combine riding and fairgoing! Beautiful day in the high 70's with a packed fairgrounds. Wander over to my PicasaWeb for a look!

Birthday Cupcakes

My daughter made some cupcakes for her ex-boyfriend, with whom she's going water-skiing today. Seems like this kind of effort rated a picture and mention...it's so cute!

Gas Efficiency

Here's what my current gas economy on my Yamaha Road Star looks like. I think I have some bad data where the mileage spikes to either side of 49 mpg...go figure!

Patriot Guard

My latest motorcycle run was for the Patriot Guard. It was on par with The Cruise as far as size and organization goes, so it was quite enjoyable. We had all the intersections held up to keep the riders together, which was impressive. Lots of veterans in dress gear and families lined the route and saluted, with some holding American flags. I would guess there were around 500 riders for this one!




The backpatches for Patriot Guard riders is very cool. It got me thinking about whether to start putting some patches on my own rider vest. I have a few pins from various rides I've done, but no patches. Guess I'll ask Harley Springer for some ideas!

I did the ride with Jim Soppa and Bruce Timmerman, but Bruce and I had to drop out at the Wabasha stop since we had other commitments. Here's some of the pictures I managed to get in Pine Island and Wabasha before I dropped off.

Skid Plates

I was leaving the local Kwik Trip when I had what was, for me, a new experience. That is, I leaned my Road Star over so far in the parking lot a loud metallic scraping noise grabbed my attention. What was it? I got my first introduction to the Skid Plates on my floorboards!

Skid plates are meant to take the abuse from contact instead of your actual floorboard. Notice the part of the floorboard that is lowest - it's a replaceable part! I suppose you can wear these down and need new ones!

Olmsted County Fair

The fair ran from 7/23-8/3. I wound up going as part of IBM day at the fair, where we time off to take our families. But the wife was away for work and my teenagers would rather commit seppuku than be so uncool as to "hang with Dad". So, I hit the midway alone...


Food is always an attraction for me, but after that are the animals. So I got into the Belgian and Percheron horses. You can see more shots here.



They had a competition with carriage and stagecoach, which was cool to watch. Riders have to demonstrate ability to go around the track in both directions "walking" and "driving" the horses and also being able to back them up.