I was going through some old computer data CDs and I found this.. Originally written for the Central Midwest HOG (Harley Owners Group) Newsletter called HOG TALES, I thought I would just post it here. I wrote this before I knew I had actually come in first for the ABC's challenge. ------- Crista, I wrote some thing up for the newsletter. Well I have had a great year of travels and I thought I would just write up a summary of my experiences. Odometer wise, Effie, my 2005 Sportster 883 Low, tells me we went just over 42,000 miles in 2006. When I was trying to put it in a frame of reference that one of my younger friends could understand I found that it is almost 3,000 miles from New York, NY to San Francisco ... read more

16 December 2006 was forecasted to be a warm Saturday. Correction, make that an unseasonably warm December Saturday. Any December day that is above 60 degrees F yells for a motorcycle ride. I heard the call and started making arrangements on Thursday for the up coming Saturday. This wasn’t going to be an ordinary ride, this week I had been entertaining Santy, an associate from our sister company in the Philippines. This was his first trip to the US and I was trying to show him as much of it as possible in the 2 weeks he was going to be here. When I am in the Philippines, Santy and the rest of the staff there go out of their way to make sure I am comfortable. I try to make their trips special when they ... read more

This weekend was one of the last ones for my ABC’s. Thats the ABC's of Touring a challenge that Harley has for its HOG (Harley Owners Group) members. You accumulate points by finding a town and county for each letter of the alphabet, you get points for each country, state, HOG Rally or other defined locations. Harley Davidson sends you free stuff depending on how many points you accumulated in the year. Members taking up the challenge send pictures that verify that your bike reached the locations. I really enjoyed participating in the challenge in 2005 and decided to pour all my efforts into the ABC's for 2006. The goal for the 3 day weekend was to leave Kansas City, hit 3 HOG Rallies (MO, KY, GA) pick up my last continental state FL and get ... read more

This is the 16th part of a series about my trip on my 2005 883 Low Harley Sportster ‘Effie’ from Kansas City to Nova Scotia and back. This was part of my vacation from 4 to 20 AUG 2006 Sat 19AUG06 Yesterday I passed a caravan of 10 new school buses traveling in the slow lane. They were not letting any one in the line and thus were playing havoc at entrance ramps. They were not loaded with kids and looked like new buses being delivered Laidway or something like that was painted on the buses. Well today I passed school buses again. These were older and were in pairs. One would be towing second one. One of these buses was pulling a flat bed trailer, that had a panel van and a trailer on the ... read more

This is the 14th part of a series about my trip on my 2005 883 Low Harley Sportster ‘Effie’ from Kansas City to Nova Scotia and back. This was part of my vacation from 4 to 20 AUG 2006 Thursday 17 AUG I wake this morning to Dan back out back again working on his wood project. Up and gone by 7AM, I am still a half day behind the plan, so I need to keep pushing. I really wanted to spend time at the PA rally, don’t want it to be mostly over by the time I get there. There is also a day ride I want to take in the surrounding area getting some IBE pts. As soon as I cross into the US I stop to get some gas and turn on the ... read more