RIDERTORIDER Send your letters and comments to:
editor@bmwmoa.org
Why we ride Quiet exuberance. It’s the feeling most
riders of the marque experience when they get just a short distance away from home. Being outbound on two wheels is special. No doubt about it. It doesn’t mat- ter if it’s only to run errands or to steal an hour or a day and just ride. The only thing better is if your bags are packed and you face the open road with a journey mapped. For riding near home, there’s the men- tal list you keep of fun routes, and then there’s that favorite stretch of road we all keep in reserve for days when conditions are perfect and resistance is futile. In the warm comfort of your winter
abode, you close your eyes, remembering your last ride of the season. You eagerly wend your way along a road so well laid out that it seems to have been designed exclusively for two spirited wheels. The gravitational pull you feel drawing you down the road epitomizes and comes from the spirit of adventure. Your hungry machine devours each successive mile and begs for more. The miles slip by effortlessly, and the only things you hear are the sound of the wind and sound of freedom heard in the note of the exhaust. You relish the sensation of a deep lean
angle at the apex of a short radius curve. The zen of an asphalt slalom dance, the execution of a well-polished repertoire of riding skills and the satisfaction you know at having out-maneuvered the mundane tedium of household chores. The exuberance builds and infects you with a hard-to-contain smile. It’s why we ride and what makes us tick. For many, it’s as elemental and as necessary as oxygen. It’s simultaneously a passion and a pur- pose. It’s a well-built machine, a map and a destination. And it’s also a brotherhood. Few things
are better than a moto-rally. The camara- derie of a bike club, the meeting of new friends and the reunion of old ones. And
16 BMW OWNERS NEWS March 2016
although any rider gathering will do, this is our bike club. We are the quietly exu- berant. We are the BMWMOA, and we are family. See you in Hamburg.
Bob Barnett #157735 Sagle, Idaho
Too expensive to ride I agree with Steve Shauger (BMW Owners
News Rider to Rider, September 2015): After almost 900,000 miles on Beemers, I can't afford them any more. In spite of many thousands of dollars trying to get them functioning again, final drive prob- lems killed my bikes and my bank account. The dealer didn't care to keep me riding so now I can't afford to.
Steve Hymes #61604 Golden, Colorado
Garden State gems I read with great interest the article by
Brian Rathjen about the New Jersey Sky- lands. The Skylands hold a special place in my heart as the place where I spent many happy days of my youth camping with friends and where I took my first ride on a motorcycle. Prior to this I was limited to riding on dirt camp roads and on private property where no license was required. I still prefer riding in the Gap region to any- where else in the Garden State. When I first started going to the Gap,
the Federal Government had just taken over the area and still intended to build the Tocks Island Dam project. Most of the original occupants were renting back their property from the Feds and trying to live their lives as normally as possible. This included the proprietor of the Cop- per Mine Inn, which was located just across the Old Mine Road from the Dutch Copper Mine that gave the road its name.
Back in those days, you could simply walk across the road from the Inn and swing open an iron gate to go into the mine. Today, the road is closed altogether in the winter due to erosion and lack of maintenance. Visiting that area about a year ago, I found the Inn permanently closed and shuttered, a victim of one of the spring floods on the Delaware River. Rather than repair and restore the historic structure, it appears the Feds will just let it rot and collapse. The
federal picnic area that has
replaced the campground of my youth had a sign posted “No Swimming Unless Lifeguard on Duty.” Of course, this being a beautiful Friday in August, there were no federal park personnel on duty there which meant that I could not legally take a dip in the Delaware where I had swum, carefree, many years ago. I believe the ghost town Brian referred
to is Millbrook Village. It is mostly a re- creation of a typical New Jersey, mid- 1800s farming village, using historic buildings that were mostly relocated to Millville from other areas which would have been flooded had the Tocks Island project gone forward. The village has fallen into disrepair, however, and although there were several government work trucks parked there, there were no workers. The recorded narrations that used to explain the purpose of each building no longer work. Another nearby village, which barely has any population left, has fallen victim to local drug addicts who break into unoccupied buildings to steal copper pipe. There are stories of arson in the area, and those historic, unoccupied
properties that are not
burned down are simply left to fall down, the victims of benign neglect. I don’t know about the national parks
out west, but it is pretty obvious that not much of the Park Service budget is being spent here. You would think that there could be some sort of active federal
▼
▼
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124