8.19.2014

Awash in Nostalgia and Wood Badge


Cold, early am start, but the QM had HOT Cocoa!
Well, the time is fast approaching for something I've been doing the last couple of falls.... And yes, it has cut into my fall riding time, but it has been important.  I've been going to Wood Badge.  It is the Boy Scout's Leadership Training - for the leaders.  This will be my third year at Wood Badge (second time as staff).  It takes a lot of planning and work through out the year and then two really long weekends in September or October (last year was October and it was C-O-L-D).  I know it was cold, because I was out in a tent!



Right now we are in the final push and I am on the Scribe Staff with Newsletter duties this year.  So I am working hard to get the newsletters ready to go. I have multiple presentations I'm giving.  I even have to bone up on my acting and oration skills for a couple of campfire skits.  From now until the the bitter (hopefully not that cold!) end of September, I am over engaged! (Yes, unless I get some articles pre-set up, there may be a few missing over the next month - but I'm working them too!)

So, my fall rides have been a bit lacking for the last couple of years.  Wood Badge is also why Moto-Monday has eased into Two-Wheeled Tuesday again.

These are the kind of people who give hours each week to work with your sons & daughters in scouting & give up a week plus of time to become better leaders on top of it! Thank a Scout leader!

I was born in Utah, so I have been to and know about two of the big motorcycle events that occur there - land speed record runs on the Salt Flats and Hill Climbing (which we might look at another day).  I also have lots family out there and well, I love the desert.  I'm a bit of a desert rat.  I miss the warm, sun soaked sands of fall.  I am also a Great Basin, Southwest Archaeologist by training and love.  So I try to get back out that way every chance I get.  Well, it's been about three years now.

I started to get excited to see some progress and notes on the Bonneville Speed Trials Week activities out on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.  It's that time of the year that people take their best or hardest worked on vehicles and vehicle designs and let them loose on the open salt, to see if they can get to a new land speed record (or at least a new high speed for themselves). 

I found this great pic and article on MotoLady on the world's fastest woman- Gina Morill Olson.  This is a pic from a current article on her by Phil Hawkins.  (The MotoLady website is awesome in itself and I highly recommend it!)

Gina Morill Olson
The "Greasy Gringo" @alineinthesalt on Twitter
You also might remember me mentioning  A Line in the Salt  a few weeks ago, with Dan Daughenbaugh, who was going to film his Speed Weed run and journey, turning it into a movie they were calling  A Line in the Salt .

Well, I saw a follow-up article on MotoLady a little over a week (Aug 8) that rains had cased things to be postponed for a few days (probably that same storm that nailed us here in Michigan last Monday). 

Usually the salt flats are well - flat, and hardpacked with dry salt.  When it's soggy (check out the pictures in the follow-up article), it's more like sloggy through nasty, salty, sand.  They would have to re-name it Sloppy Slow week.  Apparently things did not get better.  The "A Line in the Salt" crew with Dan, posted this video yesterday.  Everyone is heading home, their dreams postponed until next year and the week's activities went from postponed to canceled. 

I saw this article on Sacajawea today, which brought me to the last time I'd been out west, cross-country on my bike - about four years ago (went out to the east coast and a few places in between - but I always feel the call to head out west). The same website talked about one of my favorite scenic bypasses - Wind River Canyon.  Now I want to pack up my bike and leave.  Here is my post on Wyoming from a few years ago.... with Wind River Canyon. I think I may need to make plans to go visit a kindred sister spirit - Sacajawea soon.  I may be "delayed" a bit, but I am definitely planning to go back out.  I miss the desert and I miss enjoying it (and the mountains) on my bike.

Have your motorcycle plans gone awash lately too?  What is your new plan.?




No comments:

Post a Comment

Please leave a comment, it will shoot me an e-mail and then I can "allow" it. This keeps spam down (the evil web sort - not the canned meat variety). Thanks.