HAPPY NEW YEAR FULL OF WONDERFUL MEMORIES

So here we are at the end of a decade.  2010.  Geeezzz... when I was a kid I thought I would be in an old folks home or dead.  2010 wasn't even in my reality.  It was visualizing the Jetsons and commuting through the air on Disney like rides.  Lucy & Ricky were the ultimate couple.  So what happened?  Did we not meet our childhood expectations of the future?  Did we not see that we would still be enjoying the control of the marriage of rubber and asphalt?   How freakin' lucky are we!?  Pretty damned blessed!  That's what I say.

However, at the end of this decade, I can still say I really miss the gas stations of the past decades.  Where my Dad sang "Kakoline like in Gasoline" to me every time we stopped for gas.  The men working wearing their little hats coming up to the car window and my father saying "Filler up with Supreme".  I still dream of  the Mel's Drive-In in Oakland where the perfect chocolate milkshake was served by girls on roller skates to the car window's tray, I so much wanted to wear that red lipstick and skate like that.  The Sweet Shoppe in Alameda next to the Alameda Theatre, is one of my favorite memories from my first year in high school.  It was the gathering spot and listening to the Doors, Cream, Iron Butterfly, Eric Burden & The Animals was normality.  The Sweet Shoppe was where all the Rosie The Riveters hung out in Alameda during WWII...she just left this earth the other day.  The Alameda Theatre was the place I saw Easy Rider... Dennis Hopper now past this last year.  I still cherish that album and have the picture I took sitting on one of the Captain America's from my first ride to Laughlin in 2006 sitting in front of it in my room.  I still have my A-1 film camera... just yesterday the last developer of film went out of business yesterday.  Prings in San Leandro was a place where choppers and cars cruised to on Friday and Saturday nights.  When my cousin went to Viet Nam he let me take care of his MG and I cruised that strip dreaming of owning a bike one day.  Of course, I can never forget seeing The Beatles at the Cow Palace and just watching them on Ed Sullivan was enough to put me under.  Paul McCartney just was awarded the Kennedy Honors this week.  When The Rolling Stones came out I was already sneaking out to Filmore West for concerts in S.F...now I'm reading their memoirs.  I still don't know why I am alive after all that.  Hitchhiking was a way of transportation back then... not a way of death like today.  Somehow I made it through all this, and more.  I could write a book, but I think it would be about many lives who lived the same crazy life.  So what happened to all those "things" we were told was going to be part of life in the 2000 decade?

I really don't have an answer for that except that I believe its getting back to basics.  People want basics.  The economy of the last few years have taken us back a bit, by force for most.  But most have cherished that spot of holding on to what we have right now.  To a spot of memories, of home and of just enjoying life as it is.  Being grounded.  Back to a way of togetherness and listening to the past that forged our future.   Back to the asphalt to the dirt road.  I think this is why I don't feel like an old bag...even though the number is there, I'm not that 56 year old I thought I would be when I was a kid.  The life of riding has actually given me youth...with greying hair. Its given me freedom.  Its torn me out of the "cookie cutter" group of my mother's generation.  Its given me the road of life.  The basics.  Something I hope the kids of today can recall when they are my age.  The wonderment of it all to feel the way I did when I saw The Beatles in 1964 still overcomes me when riding from 2010 into 2011.

So, my wish to you for the New Year, is that everyone grasp the next decade with a zest for life to make those precious memories of today last into decades of the future...just like those extinct gas stations and rock stars past.  Tell the future why the existence of  two wheels and the road will prevail.  In any way you want.  Its different, but the same, for all that ride, but I believe its because there is nothing like it in the world.  Absolutely nothing that can replace the feeling (except of course, seeing The Beatles in concert once again).  But again, that's MY feeling.  YOUR feeling will go down in your history too.  So with that....

Wishing you all many future decades of making motorcycle memories.  Cheers to the future!

Happy New Year!!
KT Did