Welcome to my Motorcycle page.                              

Upcoming Rides My 2000 Royal Star Venture My Ride & Rally Photos Motorcycle & Riding Links Road Detours   &  Weather Rides & Rallies Forums & Chat Rooms Parts & Accessories News & Motorcycle Web Rings Tips & Techinques Manufacturer's Home Pages Clubs & Organizations The Season of the Bike Cyclegraphics Makers of the vinyl graphics on my Venture ;-)

This page is for friends & other riding enthusiasts.  You'll find photos of my bike, modifications,  rides, etc. as well as lots of links to motorcycle forums, parts, dealers, accessories, and everything else think might be of interest or help to fellow riders.  Please feel free to submit links that are not listed    This page is a work in progress.   Special Thanks to all the great people at -

My new ride - 2000 Royal Star Venture in Salsa Red

 
Velma & me - June 30, 2005

Cyclegraphics  Makes the re-useable vinyl graphics on the saddlebags (Old Glory) and on the trunk sides (American Eagle & Stars).  A quality product from a company that stands by what it sells.  Check out all the other designs they offer.

Bike and trailer on a 2005 day trip to Algoma, WI

  Pops and his Volusia, me and  the V-Star and my brother, Ed with his 1800 Goldwing 

My old bike - 2000 V-Star 1100 Classic











The  US states we've ridden thru (in red) by the end of 2004


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Team Winnebagoland Road Riders - our Thurs. eve rides in the Fox Valley area
Meet at Team Winnebagoland - We leave at 6:30 and ride for a couple hours to a different place in the valley.  Call 233-3070 for more info

MotorcycleEvents.com  - listings for events all over the USA

Bike Rally Online.com  -  More listings for rides all over the USA

Motorcycle Safari - links to rides all over the country

   The Venture Riders

  Technical info on Yamaha Ventures, friendly chat,Rides, Rides, etc.  The place to go for all Royal Star Venture owners.

Life's a Venture -  Get on and Ride!!

Classic Motorcycle towbars & Hitches - Austrailan company  - only one with a hitch for the 1100 V-Star
Trailmaster Inc.- motorcycle and auto products for touring and camping
Redline Compact Camping & Travel Gear, Inc.
Eagle Fabricating - They made my aluminum trailer
VentureDad - makes an excellent hitch for the '99- current Royal Star Venture

MS Group - Motorcycle tips, safety & an eclectic collection of information

Winter Storage for Motorcycles

How to stand up your bike if it tips over

Roadside 1 minute Trauma Check

will england :: motorcycle notes and tips

The VentureRiders
The best group for  info and fellowship for Royal Star Venture owners
The Venturers  For all owners of Yamaha Royal Star Ventures
The Motorcycle Tourers Association     A club for those that like to ride.
ABATE of WIS
STAR chapter #126 - Green Bay, WI
AMA
Iron Butt Association
ISRA - International Star Riders Association
Harley Owners Group ( HOG)
AMA Motorcycle Museum
Antique Motorcycle Club of America

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There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is
like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a
bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and
whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like
water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock
my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood,
but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for
highway speeds.

Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to
get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are
common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're
changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right
next to your sex and height as if "motorcycle" was just another of your
physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.

But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and
rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price.
A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a
car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and
actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars
are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to
work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air,
temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems
strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it
and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of
air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through
them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around,
wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or
dashboard.

Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the
shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking
signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on
a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's
voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.

At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the
individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like
chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke
memories so strongly that it's as though the past hangs invisible in the air
around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock
it.

A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume
and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical
massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of
me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two
wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face,
billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is
only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of
wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny
and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of
grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.

I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a
handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of
bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery.
Learning to ride was one of the best things I've done.

Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The
air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep."
Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and
probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy
every minute of the ride.

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