Scooter in the Sticks

Exploring life on a Vespa Scooter and Royal Enfield Himalayan motorcycle.

Church Riders

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Keith Diehl and his red Vespa GTS scooterSunday Ride

I don’t expect to see another scooter or motorcycle at church but it was nice to see another Vespa GTS this morning.  Keith is filling in for the regular organist this week and rode his bright red Vespa GTS 300 to Boalsburg.  With the sky blue and temperature rising it the bright red scoot was like a spring flower.

Church riders.  Perhaps there are more.

The thermometer should approach 60F this afternoon — with a breeze it should help dry out the muddy yard and keep the dogs relatively clean.  Wish I could take advantage of the break in the weather and take a long lazy ride but duty and responsibility beckon.

I should be caught up in about two years.

Making a Life vs. Making a Living

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Vespa GTS 250 scooter in a field under a blue sky with cloudsMaking a Life

I need to be reminded sometimes that work, my professional life, is not the same thing as my LIFE.  Learning to differentiate making a life vs. making a living is a lesson that, for me, came late.  While I’ve always considered myself fortunate that I’ve always loved the work I do and the challenges it presented.  Riding the Vespa added a point of view from which I could see the difference between the energy invested in making a living and what I did making a life.

Family and friends — they’re components of a life that are like treasure.

blogger's view across a computer screenLife Within Reach

Just a few feet away my wife writes a text message to her sister about our dog Lily becoming a woman — her first heat.  Life is always spinning and calling, sometimes at a distance and others right in front of me.  When work is added to the mix it can grow more complicated.

outdoor photo shootOnce a Photographer, Always a Photographer

When asked what I do for a living I almost automatically think first — photographer.  That answer is fueled by a desire for something easy to understand and long years of use.  But the reality is I’m not a professional photographer anymore.  Just an enthusiastic amateur.

This picture was made a couple years ago on assignment — an environmental portrait of three students who were building a portable food production system out of old truck bodies. I can always gauge whether a photo shoot was successful if I can get the art director to buy in enough to hold a reflector.

magazine spreads on an office wallMagazine editor

Until the end of December I was also the editor of Penn State Ag Science magazine — a twice a year publication of the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State.  It was one of the more enjoyable aspects of my professional life affording me exceptional access to a wide range of people and projects and creating what I would offer regard as being a professional tourist.

I pasted the spreads of the first issue I edited on the wall of my office at the insistence of the art director.  As each new spread arrived from design I stuck it on the wall.  As he suggested, I was able to recognize a rhythm from page to page (or lack of one) and begin to see how content work together across the entire issue.  I’m fortunate to have always been able to work with people who knew more than I do.  Makes learning fast and fun.

Not long after becoming editor I was also made Associate Director for Public Relations and Marketing.  A position I held until the end of December 2015.

Steve Williams portraitEnter ATLAS

This morning a colleague made this picture for me.  There are large posters in our conference room of some of the products produced for the college — magazines, advertisements, posters — things that reflect the public relations and marketing activities of our unit.  Products I had the good luck to be part of.  Looking at the magazine cover I recall two goals I set for myself — be a representative for our readers, not the college.  And always surprise people with the depth and breadth of agricultural sciences.  It’s not always what you think it is.

For the past couple years I’ve been doing two jobs.  The PR and marketing tasks, and overseeing development of a new, non-credit online course development team for Penn State Extension.  And that bit of business grew from an idea of a colleague that has become what we call the ATLAS Project.  At the end of December I shed the role of editor, photographer, and leader of the PR and Marketing team to become the Assistant Director for Digital Education.

Expanding Access and Reach to Information

ATLAS is a complex project conceptually and technically.  The video helps explain the scope.

ATLAS reaches across a wide range of people and processes to do one basic thing — expand the access and reach of the educational resources and opportunities of Penn State Extension.  Traditionally, extension engaged people in face-to-face interactions — in workshops, during farm and home visits, and a range of other personal connections with customers. But as expectations grew by the legislature and others that model wouldn’t be enough.  The online experience had to be added to the mix.

Think of ATLAS as an umbrella under which lives CRM (a massive new database for customer relationship management), digital strategy (a customer focused web experience including marketing automation and e-commerce), and product strategy (the educational product line by which we’ll connect with customers — face-to-face or online).  That’s where I come in.

My new position, aside from a role in the overall development of ATLAS, is focused on online course production.  My team consists of twelve people working hard to transition educational opportunities that exist as face-to-face courses and workshops to an online experience.  There are 26 courses in active production, about as many on deck, and almost 130 total identified for production.  Later this summer when ATLAS is scheduled to launch our goal is to have 50 or 60 courses complete and in our edX learning management platform.

Makes my head itch thinking about the work left to be done.  Like a ride on the Vespa in winter weather, it’s an exciting challenge.  I’m lucky to have the opportunity to participate in something like this and be able to say, “That’s my job”.

And that’s the challenge to — balancing making a life vs. making a living.

It’s a full time job…

Riding is the Spice of Life

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Vespa GTS scooter along US Route 6 in Potter CountyEmbracing the Senses

Many neurologists believe there are 21 senses, not just the five we learn in school – touch, taste, vision, hearing and smell.  Riding a scooter or motorcycle embraces the five and I expect a great many on the longer list.  On a beautiful summer day riding along US Route 6 fires the nerves and ignites the brain.  Riding is the spice of life, the additive to a day that makes life a feast.

measuring spoonSpiceless

Thoughts of spices for many raise ideas of food and culinary adventure.  In the kitchen this evening I thought about the spice that has the most influence on my life and a way to reduce it to a photograph.  I come up empty with spices unless, perhaps, I should have filled the red spoon with salt.

Instead I moved past food and on to the Vespa.  Riding is the spice of life.  In this life at least.

BMW F800 GS motorcycleMotorcycle or Scooter

Makes little difference what you ride — any machine adds spice to existence.  Looking through my photos I came across this one of a BMW F800 GS motorcycle made during a ride some years ago. I still remember the route through the forested hills south of home and the open stretches of highway to the west — that motorcycle spiriting me away physically and emotionally in an experience that lives today.

That’s spice.  That’s what riding is about for me.

A few days ago I read something about arriving at the end of life and not regretting that I didn’t go to one more meeting at work.  I understand what that means.  At the last breath I imagine I’ll be thinking of spices — one last embrace of my wife, a smile from my kids, a look from the dogs.

And one more ride.

Stupid, Weird or Silly

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Man lying on the roadPlodding Along

My friend Paul stretching his back during a ride some years ago…

This is my day today.

Life can plod along, quietly stacking one day among the next in a relentless engine of eternity. Like an airline pilot describing the job as long periods of boredom interrupted by occasional moments of terror, so life seems today – the boring part.

Aside for a few minutes while shaving this morning I didn’t see anything stupid, weird or silly. Haven’t heard a joke, didn’t see anything slide along on the morning ice, the dogs didn’t do anything cute.

What does it mean?

man and dog at cafeExistential Boredom

I’m not living on the bleeding edge of life. No UFOs, lottery ticket winnings or coincidental run ins with Vespa riding celebrities (there are some). Just the drudgery fueled by too many long, cold sunshine free days. Sitting in a waiting room the headline under a magnificently chaotic graphic announces, “Multiple Tornadoes Hit Gulf Coast”.

That would be weird.

Choices have dwindled to a struggle to not pierce my eardrums to avoid the agonizing drone of a programmed music assault from the overhead speakers or closing my eyes and trying to sleep in a chair without drooling or falling on the floor.

That would be stupid.

Watching people exit from the medical cavern behind a smokey glass door the first thing they do is reach into their bags and pockets for their smartphones to record, announce or schedule another moment in medical paradise. I try to be grateful for having the opportunity to be here, to have a little plastic card giving me admittance to a privileged world of medical magic and chicanery. I consider announcing to the bored throngs how wonderful it is to be here.

That would be silly.

portrait of steve williams with portrait of steve williamsEpic Failure

In a world of consumption and personal goals and achievements I have failed, utterly, to live the good life. Instead I pound the keyboard and surrender my mind and soul to Calmly Writer. I’m on the boring train, traveling to Boredomtown, wishing something would happen but content to accept the comfortable embrace of absolutely nothing of interest happening – just a patient wait for stupid, weird or silly to come my way.

That would be life.

Riding and Writing

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Whether you’re keeping a journal or writing as a meditation, it’s the same thing. What’s important is you’re having a relationship with your mind.
— Natalie Goldberg

Vespa GTS scooter and Mount Nittany on Christmas morningChristmas morning, a short ride through the valley, alone on the road with my thoughts, an experience I’ve come to call meditation.  Lest the word become off-putting I have to say those meditative experiences range from quiet reflection to exhilarating thrill with great measures of fun stirred into the mix.  I find both riding and writing play an important role in how I wrestle with the sights and sounds of the road I travel — literally and figuratively.

I keep three journals.  One, a small Moleskine journal which travels with me almost everywhere to dump noise and fear, frolic and joy as needed.  Another larger plain, black Moleskine classic notebook that I sketch ideas for blog posts and riding dreams and nightmares.  And the third is Scooter in the Sticks where many posts take shape from a blank screen as I push my fingers over the keyboard with undefined need.

In each case, riding and writing often play a role in sorting out what’s moving through my head.

Standing alone in a field and gazing across the valley I call home is common.  Sometimes it lasts only a moment while I make a photograph. Others are a more extended visit while I engage a larger conversation with the universe or as someone recently suggested a conversation with God.

Vespa scooter on a winding forest roadEveryone has limits — real and imagined.  For riders it might be weather, location or time of day.  Riding through a little gravel track in the woods on a Vespa scooter may work for me but rise toward the top of the stupid list for another.  Regardless, for every rider the important part is to ride and for many that act is a challenge with so many competing demands for time and attention.  Sometimes it’s just hard to make the choice to go for a ride.

The same applies to writing. Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within is perhaps the finest book on writing I have read and helps move from a few scribbled notes on through doubt on to something called writing.

For me writing has been a faithful friend through joyous and troubled times alike.  It requires little more than a willingness to invest myself with time.  Most of what I write is never seen by anyone and I seldom look back at what I’ve written.  The act itself is the end much like riding — the movement through space, physical or mental, is its own reward.

Vespa scooter on a misty morningIf pressured to describe myself I’ll say I’m alone in the world.  Many of my photographs are probably a reflection of that feeling.  Perhaps I see myself as the Vespa.  That idea isn’t important.  What is important is how I’ve come to know myself.

Riding and writing open doorways to access what otherwise may remain hidden — thoughts and feelings bubbling below the surface yet animating actions and behaviors.  Finding those tools along with others has been a gift.  When asked about Scooter in the Sticks I tell people it’s a blog about riding a Vespa scooter.  And while that’s true it’s more than that for me — it’s an opportunity to sift through experience and hold onto the little lessons that are easy to miss.

Standing in a field on looking out at the world I see my long dead parents and the Christmas mornings we had.  I see my heart attack and physical life beyond.  I see my family and their hopes and dreams.  I see myself as an old man riding a Vespa.  And without writing I would be blind to those lessons.

Riding and writing — the gift to myself on Christmas.