With so many roads and highways and different sorts of riders and machines, there’s something for everyone. That’s part of the fascination for me — you never know what you’ll hear from another rider. What they do and how they do it — always seems like an adventure to me.

Absolutely. Wandering…

Some people are masters at connecting with people on a journey. It’s never been my strong suit but I try and be more open with people. I marvel though at the ability to engage strangers. It’s an art and well worth the investment from what I’ve seen. I feel invisible a lot of the time and that’s probably leads to missed opportunities.

Here’s hoping for more experience as I ride through the retirement door…

My pleasure.

I enjoy traveling too but the nature of it has changed over the years. Mostly in pace. When I was younger it was an activity to collect experience. Now it’s more often a means to let go and slow down and disconnect from the noise of day-to-day living.

I’ve had many opportunities to travel at work and turned almost all of them down save for ones directly related to photography and video production assignments. When I was Penn State’s representative to a global educational organization I was pressured to travel to their twice annual meetings. Those were in Rome, Vienna, Madrid, London, San Francisco, Dominican Republic and other places. The organization touted two-way video as a way to connect classrooms around the world. I didn’t attend a single face-to-face meeting but always joined by two way video. My feeling from the start was that the members were wasting the organization’s funding by traveling that way and were not much more than boondoggles and excuses to travel. I was fully able to participate in the business by interactive video. And the networking part was manageable by email.

And of course I absolutely passed on winter semesters in Moscow…

Once I retire, I’ll have a different regular commute. Just not sure to where yet.

When you write straight through late at night stuff leaks out of your head…

If I could, I would ride a silent machine. An electric scooter somewhere in my future may provide that. I’m mesmerized by the movement and flow of machine and air. The sound, it’s something I try to mute with earplugs. I’ve ridden a few really loud motorcycles where I could feel and hear the machine in my bones. It wasn’t a bad thing but I couldn’t escape the machine reality. And when you turn the engine off it’s like your floating in some different world. Really odd stuff.

Maybe I need to ride a motorcycle more to see what happens.

There are rides where the camera really slows things down. Even on sparse photo rides I still stop way more than most riders. It in part accounts for my reluctance to ride with others. I don’t want to inconvenience them, and I don’t want to feel pressured not to stop or ride faster.

The sun is shining again today. Even though it is slightly chilly it’s a welcome day.

Thanks for your kind words Will. Glad I could supply some sunshine!

I feel the same about the Vespa. It has been, and continues to be and important “thing.”

“Vroom with a view” — love that idea.