Thursday, November 3, 2011

The end of 2011 (as far as mopeds go)



















2011 has been an interesting year for mopeds. I left Seattle and my daily moped commuting, and returned to Indiana to find my old friends still wonderful and interesting. The distance has been overcome many times this summer, to Louisville 4 times, Nashville via moped, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor and Detroit, Goshen 3 times and Seattle for a great weekend. The Brat has been my steadfast transport, racking up about 6,000 moped related miles, carrying a personal best of 6 mopeds at once. My long running blog seems to be dying out as it heads toward the inevitable fate of all moped blogs, but the moped adventures keep happening. The forming of the LafaYetis has been great and exciting, and while our Moped Mondays don't really hold a candle to Mosquito Fleet's, a regularly scheduled moped event is always a good idea and gives you a great way to start your week. I've purchased and sold close to two dozen mopeds this year, bringing my career long total to somewhere in the low one hundreds. I acquired two German imported only bikes at separate occasions, and put over 2,800 miles on my Derbi this summer, riding it at every rally. I fixed a moped for my Grandpa with which he promptly rode my Grandma doubles on. My new garage is a great space in which to work year round, and with the prospect of next years rally goings, the Yetis are starry eyed dreaming at the tales I tell of the glory of Awful Hen. Saturday is BombBourbonRun, a great end to rally season and a chance to see everyone one last time until the next last time a few weeks after that, and so forth and so on until before you know it, somehow it's rally season again in California so off we go for another year. The cycle of cycles.




"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. ... And one fine morning ---- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. "