So, here’s my story in life right now. My business failed about a month ago. well, crashed and burned to be honest. Perfect storm. My 2 biggest clients who I sold for crashed the same weekend, and brought me down as well. I hoped it would be for 2 weeks. That was over a month ago. I haven’t recovered. I still owe people on that deal. It’s been the biggest bitch of my life.

Learned alot. It’s the crashes you survive that maybe teach you how to ride. I’ll survive this. Went from shock, to massive depression, to lucidity, to determination yet again. We’ll see where it goes. Life is a fight, and I’ll keep swinging.

So trying something totally new now. It’s a balance between paying old bills and people that relied on me, and moving forward to my family. I have a wife that is patient. A wife who understands, but doesn’t control our destiny. Hell, I do. I gotta make the right calls, and I think for all the problems, I have. Time will tell.

I live in a small town, in an incestual business community where blood in the water bring the sharks, and the sharks have circled. I’m learning to kill sharks. It’s the one behind me that will kill me, but I’m spinning in the water and looking for fins, while looking for flotation, while keeping my eye for the ship. I know i”m in the shipping lane, because I’ve done my homework. It kills me to see others tread the same water while I was in the captains chair. They all have their opinions on why I didnt have enough life vests, why my ship sank but at the end of the day only I will sleep at night knowing how I kept this ship afloat as long as I have. They will recover, as will I. it doesn’t make it any easier, but you gotta keep treading, and keeping your eye on the horizon.

when it’s all over, I may kill a few sharks. thats up to me what I do. At the end of the day, I gotta get on that ship. I got a good one I know about.

Thats my update. It’s been the hardest and bloodiest days of my life. Scar tissue is tougher than regular tissue. Tomorrow is another day. Man, it’s going to be good.

There’s a moment in time
And it’s stuck in my mind
Way back, when we were just kids

Cause your eyes told the tale
Of an act of betrayal
I knew that somebody did

Oh, waves of time
Seem to wash away
The scenes of our crimes
For you this never ends

Can you stay strong?
Can you go on?
Kristy are you doing okay?
A rose that won’t bloom
Winter’s kept you
Don’t waste your whole life trying
To get back what was taken away

Though the marks on your dress
Had been neatly repressed
I knew that something was wrong
And I should have spoke out
And I’m so sorry now
I didn’t know
Cause we were so young

Oh, clouds of time
Seem to rain on
Innocence left behind
And it never goes away

Can you stay strong?
Can you go on?
Kristy are you doing okay?
A rose that won’t bloom
Winter’s kept you
Don’t waste your whole life trying
To get back what was taken away

Oh, clouds of time
Seem to rain on
Innocence left behind
And it never goes away
It never goes away

Can you stay strong?
Can you go on?
Kristy are you doing okay?
A rose that won’t bloom
Winter’s kept you
Don’t waste your whole life trying
To get back what was taken away

Don’t waste your whole life trying
To get back what was taken away

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul

William Ernest Henly

My love is in league with the freeway
Its passion will ride, as the cities fly by
And the tail-lights dissolve, in the coming of night
And the questions in thousands take flight
My love is a-miles in the waiting
The eyes that just stare, and the glance at the clock
And the secret that burns, and the pain that grows dark
And it’s you once again
Leading me on – leading me down the road
Driving beyond – driving me down the road

My love is exceedingly vivid
Red-eyed and fevered with the hum of the miles
Distance and longing, my thoughts do provide
Should I rest for a while at the side
Your love is cradled in knowing
Eyes in the mirror, still expecting they’ll come
Sensing too well when the journey is done
There is no turning back – no
There is no turning back – on the run

My love is in league with the freeway
Oh the freeway, and the coming of night-time
My love is in league with the freeway

The hard-living screen star died at his home in the coastal Los Angeles suburb of Venice at 8:15 a.m. PDT (1515 GMT), surrounded by family and friends, the friend, Alex Hitz, told Reuters.

In a wildly varied career spanning more than 50 years, Hopper appeared alongside his mentor James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant” in the 1950s and played maniacs in such films as “Apocalypse Now,” “Blue Velvet” and “Speed.”

He received two Oscar nominations — for writing “Easy Rider” (with co-star Peter Fonda and Terry Southern), and for a rare heartwarming turn as an alcoholic high-school basketball coach in the 1986 drama “Hoosiers.”

“Easy Rider,” regarded is one of the greatest films of American cinema, helped usher in a new era in which the old Hollywood guard was forced to cede power to young filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.

The low-budget blockbuster, originally conceived by Fonda, introduced mainstream moviegoers to pot-smoking, cocaine-dealing, long-haired bikers.

“We’d gone through the whole ’60s and nobody had made a film about anybody smoking grass without going out and killing a bunch of nurses,” Hopper told Entertainment Weekly in 2005. “I wanted ‘Easy Rider’ to be a time capsule for people about that period.”

Hopper and Fonda were joined on screen by a then-unknown Jack Nicholson as an alcoholic lawyer, but it was not a harmonious set. Hopper clashed violently with everyone and Fonda later described him as a “little fascist freak.” Their friendship was destroyed.

Hopper fell ill last September. He continued working almost to the very end, both on his cable TV series “Crash” and on a book showcasing his photography. But his final months were also consumed by a bitter divorce battle with his fifth wife, Victoria Duffy.

Indeed, his private life was never dull. His marriages included an eight-day union in 1970 with Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and Papas, who later told Vanity Fair that she was subjected to “excruciating” treatment.

Hopper is survived by four children.

Went with my bro clint and my wife.   We had a great time.

When I first got involved with BACA, I was pumped.   Good guys vs bad guys.   Bikers against Perps.   Save the kids, They know who we are and the kids move on.

Then I started going to court.  I started seeing lying parents, making up stories and custody battles to protect their own interests, not so much their kids.   I gotta say, any parent who uses their kid as a poker chip in a custody deck of cards?  thats Taliban shit.   Thats putting your WMD’s in a school, because you know NATO can’t bomb there.   Thats the biggest pussy of all.   You’re barely better than a perp to me.    The whole point of this mission is:  Let kids be kids.   Don’t put bullshit pressure on them while theyre trying to grow up and figure out who they are, and who they want to be.

But heres the biggest problem:   It’s damn hard to prove child abuse, and the perps know it.

They know if they leave visible bruises, teachers will see it.   they hit below the belt and shirt lines.

They know how to find weak parents, or struggling kids who need something.  the watch, they learn, they infiltrate.   They are the most worthless, cowardly fucks in the world.     They are the flotsam and jetsom of society.   They hide in shadows, and take advantage.     They also know what they are doing, and how to do it.    The bold ones tell little johnny or suzy that they will kill them if they nark.   This shit gets buried deep, and its all on the backs of children.    They strip cogs in these kids brains, and sooner or later it changes them.   Some, end up thinking its actually normal.      The cycle continues.     Consider the average perp gets over 100 kids, and you’ll see this is nothing short of an epidemic, and getting worse.

So the ones we get, are the obvious cases.

Then they go to court.   YOu have to understand, that you need evidence to prosecute.    You need witnesses at least.   You need something.   When I was a  young kid, my father’s lawyer told him something that I over heard and its always stuck with me:   The law isnt about justice, its about order.     There can never be justice for what happens to these kids.   All you can do, is round em up, and put em in prison or put them in the chair.  Even putting a bullet in their head, It doesn’t level the field for a kid who’s had years of secret abuse.     It just doesn’t.   Its damage control.     We’ve all got scars, but these kids bear em way too early, when they’re not ready or capable of handling it.    Our job, is to help them overcome it.   Protecting them helps that.

Back to court, and evidence….    How do you prove it?    On the word of a 5 year old little girl?  of a 10 year old boy?    You need a witness, or evidence.     I’m not going to go into evidence, because I barely know shit about it and don’t want to think too much about it, but a doctor can tell when a child has been raped.      You get the drift.   Whats it take to get to that point?    It takes a mother who is willing to throw a marriage away, has the financial or family resources to move to somewhere else, and the courage to put up with the threats from the perp who will do anything to stay out of prison.     So many women have been conditioned to do just the opposite from years of their own abuse, and sometimes selfishness.   Face it, life is tough.   it goes back to the fact that some people are willing to sell out their own kin to find some ease in life, or save their life.    Man, this is a tough gig.

Filter it all down, and the ones we get are truly special.  Timing, the family, the situation are all right.   Sometimes they’re not.

My chapter had 2 cases of sexual abuse of a child today, and the judge sentenced the pricks to 3 years of probation, and 90 days in jail on weekends so the abuser could keep his job.    his boss even came out and plead his case.

I don’t mean to get you discouraged.   Man, you CAN’T GET DISCOURAGED.    It means you have to be wise, and swing harder at this problem we have, because we’re the only guys who can fix it.   We need  to write more letters, raise more awareness, Ride to more kids,  not ignore any sort of abuse, and be stronger than the perps are sneaky and the courts have sympathy or lack of evidence.

Wear your patch, and shout this shit from the rooftops.    You’ve earned it.   A BACA member doesnt get that patch easily.   In my state, its a 2 year commitment at least, and a FBI background check saying you’ve never abused kids or women.   It’s also a unanimous vote by a board who has been watching you and your family for 2 years to feel good that you’re BACA material.

It means we need to do more.   Goddammit, the innocent are depending on us.  the only real innocence in the world:  our kids.

Also know this:  My whole life is worth one or two kids we save and empower.       Most of us have helped way more than that.

Rob Dale is a guy I follow his blog. We couldnt be more opposite: he’s a christian preacher, and I’m an atheist. He’s a Canadian, I’m an American. He’s a senators fan, I’m a penguins fan. But at the end of the day, we both love riding. I’d like to meet him some day and buy him a beer.

Anyway, his blog post today got me once again wondering why we do it.     Seriously, I have no fucking clue why I’m so drawn to 2 wheels over 4.     I can’t pin it down, other than a few reasons:

I watched an old Hells Angel Documentary from the early 80s that had an HA member saying “there’s that one kid in every school, who never fit in, who couldnt be told, and he’s the guy that ends up a hells angel.  He fits here.”.   I’m not 1%  (maybe I’m 2%), but I get that.     I’ve never struggled with popularity that I cared too much about, but I know I don’t fit in the standard hole of a standard peg.   I’m good with that.   Maybe that has something to do with it.

There’s something about the road that just resonates with me.   My dad loved to fly.  had a plane.   He found peace in the sky.   I liked flying, but I remember tracing the roads from the plane through the clouds, and imagining myself on them.     Who knows where that came from, but its a real memory.

I also remember my first real street bike.  It was 1988.   I’d had a dirt bike since I was 11, and I remember heading back from living in Long Beach CA on it, and about the time I got out of Cajon Pass it hit me:   Holy shit, there’s  peace out here.   Something happened.

I remember getting emotional as I pushed that bike off the back of my truck at the dump, and thinking it was like an old girlfriend:  If I cant have it, no one can.   It had given up the ghost.   I didnt have the money to fix it anymore, and I’d thrown 2 engines in it already.
So here I am, wondering if bikers are born, or they’re made.   Maybe I was made, but I think Bikers are born.   I have friends who own bikes and barely care.   I know if I go 2 days, no matter what the weather I start going nuts.   I need to see the world from that bat wing faring.

So the question is:  Are bikers born or made?    Are we a dying breed?   I’m not talking about the guys who own a bike and love the occassional freedom of a saturday ride.  I’m talking about the guys who have to ride.    I can tell you, I know I have to ride.

But thats just me.  What do you think?