Birthday Washing

For 50,113 miles of faithful service our trusty Gold Wing earned $2 worth of high pressure washing today. It had not seen any TLC since June in Houston and it was a bit embarrassing to be among 10,000 beautiful, spotless machines with a thousand miles of dirt and grime on mine. I was starting to feel like the biker from hell in Raising Arizona. She did clean up very nicely though and as an additional reward for good service I will award her a waxing with the latest high tech products, a treatment of windshield cleaning, and a spa like day of rest for the 4th of July.


For those interested in the type of bike we ride, she is a 1993 Honda Gold Wing, GL1500. She was the top fashion model of the motorcycling world in '93 but at 16 is beginning to show her age. Nevertheless, she has aged very gracefully and has never uttered a single mechanical complaint. I use Mobile 1 Synthetic Oil whenever it looks tired and dirty. A Honda mechanic told me they can go 8,000 miles on regular oil, and more on synthetics but I err on the side of caution changing at around 5,000 mile intervals. I'm running on Metzler tires now but might switch to Michelins next time. It is the most near perfect machine I've ever owned. On the highway, a Gold Wing stands alone at the top of the motorcycle food chain. With 96 horsepower, this old bike would be competitive with most fast cars, corvettes and the like at a drag strip, but that is not the reason for the power. It is to accelerate quickly and gracefully, up any hill, pulling any load, in near silence, so as to not disturb the high fidelity music playing inside your helmet. Theresa has fallen asleep in the very cushy back seat which is more like an easy chair, armrests included. Raucous, it's not. Comfortable? Yes. The newer 1800 cc versions are even faster, quieter, and more comfortable.


At the Wing Ding today there was a show bike competition with many classes, 1000 cc, 1100, 1200, 1500 (like ours), 1800, Trikes, Airbrushed Paint Jobs, Custom Builds, etc. Of the hundreds of machines to be judged, I doubt there was a teaspoon of dirt among them, and there was pounds of wax, shining from every surface. We did not stay to witness the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. We had shopping to do and the clock and our stamina was running out.


One of the vendors, J&M, sponsored an evening show where a hypnotist put a stage full of people into a sleep state, then had them doing all manner of funny things. You can see from the photo that the audience was maybe 5,000 plus. Shy as I am, I was glad to not be on that stage! J&M donated some of their fine communications equipment as prizes and ended the evening with raffle that raised over $5,000 for the local Ronald McDonald House. Theresa and I did not win, but consoled ourselves, along with dozens of other Wingers at the local ice cream parlor where a tasty banana split eased our prizeless grief.


Do southerners revere the founding of our country more than the Yankees? Are they more patriotic? Or do they just like fireworks more? It seems that everywhere we go, there is a giant tent, boasting that they have the loudest, biggest, fizziest, or boomiest fireworks at the lowest price, and they all claim that they will not be undersold! The competition is fierce. If all the pent up energy of all of those tents full of firecrackers, rockets, fountains, and sparklers are released into the atmosphere tomorrow, Al Gore my go apoplectic! Surely he will find his evidence for global warming there, probably from altitude in his private jet, to gain a better view of the earth's imminent demise.


Have a safe 4th of July.