On evenings like this nothing matters but the sky and the road…

A long week, the kind thick with action and thought, wrapped in speed and seasoned with perplexing ideas and behavior.  The kind of week that can make a person scream just to release a bit of the tension built up in gut, spine and eyes.  At least that’s where it gets me.  A nice evening ride into town is the perfect restorative prescription to herd life back toward a gentle landscape, one where the world feels full of wonder and opportunity.  Seeing this mural painted on the front of Uncle Eli’s art supply store in State College, Pennsylvania seemed the perfect icon then and now.

Have I said it’s been a hectic week?

Evening rides are luscious.  An encompassing warmth that makes it difficult to determine where your skins stops and the universe begins.  Air dripping with summer fragrances, honeysuckle and warm asphalt topped with streams of cut grass and automobile exhaust.  Standing in the grocery store parking lot I’m content to close my eyes and breath in the world.  I’ve beaten this theme to death — I would never have these experiences in a car.  Engineers surely have programmed the contraption to appeal to a genetic predilecton to be methodical and business like when in a cage.  Get from point A to point B as quickly and efficiently as possible.  Perhaps it might be different if I was driving a 1968 Sunbeam Alpine.  

Right now I am alive and in the world with a Vespa.  Another 60 miles today.  Perhaps more over the weekend.

Oh, what fun.  A colleague referred to cranky old white men today.  I asked for the parameters of that assessment.  Whatever it is, the Vespa is an effective medicine for that and other maladies.  

As Nina Simone might say, “Feeling good!”

View from the inside of Ken Hull’s Moto Shack and Lounge in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania.  Took this a couple weeks ago at the first Piston and Pints event of the 2013 season.  The pictures below will give you an idea of the event.  Pictures were made on May 2nd and May 16th.

If you haven’t ventured into Boalsburg on the first and third Thursday of the month to join the Piston and Pints crowd you should at least think about it.

Without further ado I’ll share some of the pictures I made.

Just one of many vintage machines that appear at Piston and Pints.  I could covet one of these if it had disc brakes.

Dave Dix and his BMW GS.  Great bike.  He had to leave early.  I think he was heading to Antarctica or something like that.  Those BMW riders…

Mike Mohney, faculty member in Penn State Ag Science’s landscape contracting program, surprised me by showing up on a cool, two-stroke, Yamaha cafe racer.  Those tires are fantastic.

Camera optics are funny.  I think.  Either that or Ken is really tiny or that fellow is really big.

I think it’s the lens…

Robert eats salad and rides a Harley.  I should have told him it doesn’t fit the image HD works so hard to develop.  Salad seems more of a Vespa thing.

Paul Ruby on May 2, 2013.  He bought the Ducati jacket from another rider attending the event.  Ken’s Moto Shack and Lounge building makes a good backdrop for a portrait.  Thinking I need to start making portraits of everyone who attends.  A new photo project perhaps…

The Piston and Pints Library.

A Honda CB cafe racer conversion.

Ken Hull took time from his busy day to demonstrate the correct way to apply condiments to a hot dog.

Paul D. Ruby, Ducati, BMW and Vespa rider, Ferrari owner, and recent acquirer of a Nikon D800.  That’s why he’s smiling.

More than one Vespa at Piston and Pints on May 16.  Still rare though.

Last week, a foggy morning on the way to work, a nice little ride across the far east end of the Penn State campus at University Park.  On days like this a Vespa makes life a little sweeter…