Alone in The Rider's Workshop

Dedicated to The Prince of the Parkway

by Jim Ford

Whenever I conduct The Rider’s Workshop, I stress the importance of creating memorable riding experiences for oneself. You decide what’s memorable. By doing so, you will always have motorcycle memories to recall and share with your friends. Decide to ride this way and make it a habit. Otherwise, if what you normally do is mostly “ride around,” then riding around becomes your habit, and, like the saying goes: “Habits are too light to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.” Since riding around is mostly what you do, and since this usually means riding around to the same places, before long you’ll get bored with motorcycling and (pardon the pun) cycle off toward something else. I’ve seen this happen many times.
So get in the habit of pulling out your maps and/or firing up the GPS and create some interesting motorcycling for yourself. That‘s how you’ll keep in the game, and that’s how you’ll continue riding.
I have always admired the Iron Butt types. It takes a tough guy (or gal) to muscle a motorcycle through one of their sanctioned endurance tests. Imagine compressing a coast-to-coaster into 50 hours or less! I know I am not that tough. But I have always thought that riding 1000 miles in less than 24 hours would be a memorable motorcycling experience to undertake.
At the Wisconsin BMW National Rally, I gave my seminar called “The Art of Riding Smooth.” Among the many faces looking back at me was John Zurawski from Long Island, NY. His buddies call him “Z.” Both Z and I shared a friendship with a wonderful fellow, Dan Rodriguez. Z grew up with Dan. They went to grade school together. After the seminar, we chatted and he told me of a recent and quite awesome 1000/ 24 Iron Butt type ride he finished. While Z didn’t say it outright, I think his ride was partially to pay tribute to our friend Dan. You see, Danny Boy is no longer with us. Sadly and tragically, he was killed in a motorcycle accident on Father’s Day 2003.
The seeds of my friendship with Dan were planted one January morning in 1999 at Bob’s BMW where I had worked in sales. It was typically cold and wet outside, and sales were correspondingly slow inside. I saw this nice looking fellow browsing around the showroom. Dan was six feet tall, handsome with dark wavy hair, blue eyes, and an engaging face. I walked up, introduced myself and naturally started talking motorcycles. He responded in kind by introducing himself as Dan, disclosing that his bike was in for service. Before too long it was clear that Dan was an enthusiastic high-miler. There was a certain something in those blue eyes that spoke of many curves, and this big grin saying he’d like to see more. And, like many high-milers, he knew it’s all about curves. Warming up to him, I knew I’d met a junkie like myself -- a fellow curve junkie. Our conversation ramped up animated and lengthy.
Not long after, his bike was rolled out. It’s a clean enough ’78 R100S. I saw it had some 8000 miles on the meter so I gave Dan the benefit by saying, “Wow, you’ve got 108,000 on the bike?” He smiled and said, “Naw, that’s 208,000.” Big Grin.

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