2025: A Girl, a Motorcycle, and a Gypsy Soul

Meet Lemon: My Dad’s 2019 CanAm Spyder LTD           Summary : 6/21/19   Bought new  Over $26,000 6/27/19   Excessive oil leak - back to Dealer-  new engine needed      7/24/19  27 days later, gets bike back with 2nd engine at 218 miles      7/27/19   Check engine light on      7/30/19   Bike died. Left stranded 4 hours from home       8/27/19  Went to pass, went into limp mode. Check engine, etc.    9/7/19  Excessive coolant leak, etc. Back in the shop. 4,753 miles on 2nd engine.     Coming up next-  a detailed timeline of being stranded, breakdowns, and time in the repair shop.    BRP CanAm Website    https://can-am.brp.com/  Disclaimer : *Lemon is MY name for his bike.* My dad has been incredibly patient with Moon Motorsports and BRP. He wants to love CanAm. He wants t...

I don't know about you, but when I have a long weekend... aka 3 days off of work... I like to GO. Go travel, go do something fun, go visit people... just go. And when there's high's in the ZERO's forecasted, well, my get up and go gets frozen in place. And then I get bored after about 6 hours of nothing going on. And then I go on Pinterest. And then I go to the home improvement stores... unsupervised. I have a big 'want' list for my house - cupboards, flooring, vanity changes.... but I would much rather spend money on riding, traveling, and having experiences that spend money on my house on something not NECESSARY. So when my neighbor showed me his updated kitchen over the summer, where he ripped out all of the ugly oak in the place and put in custom white cabinets.. I had big dreams and ideas. Until he told me that it cost over $20k. I thought that dream was completely dashed... until!!!! This one day I was wondering around and found a magical transformation ki...

When going from Point A to Point B, with not a lot in between, Roadside Attraction is my favorite website to go to find quirky photo ops en route. That is how I stumbled upon Cadillac Ranch, near  Amarillo, Texas. In the middle of a field, alongside a busy freeway, lies a brightly painted group of Cadillac's, face down. There are no signs indicating its existence. Blink, and you will surely miss it. We parked on the side of the gravel frontage road, walked thru the ditch, squeezed through old cattle gate (size matters - its a tight squeeze), towards the ever present spray paint fumes, through an old farm field, and thru a sea of paint cans as you reach the cars. (Spray Painting is encouraged)  A sea of cars and paint cans! Each car has layers and layers of spray paint collected over the years. Each car is a unique masterpiece.   There's basically no rules at Cadillac Ranch - you can paint, you can use permanent marker, you can climb inside of the c...

If I had to pick between taking a planned vacation or just winging it, I choose winging it, hands down.  Last summer, I really wanted to go to West Virginia and  some the fun corners. I recruited Stiffy to go with me, literally days before - told her the plan was leaving at 6am, heading east. We met at the gas station and I check the radar... 70% chance of heavy rain and high flood potential every day for the duration of our trip. Screw that. I don't mind riding in the rain, but I don't want to spend 5 days in it if I don't have to. We gas up and I casually mention the sudden change in plans - and off we go west. Without even a hint of shock, Stiffy reached in her bag, and laughed as she handed me a plastic bag with papers inside. Iron Butt paperwork. Well, that upped the game - can't just let perfectly good paper go to waste! We hit the road at 7am - destination: East . West. There is NOTHING exciting, interesting, or fun between Minnesota and Montana besides tornado ...

A lot of people hang up their motorcycle keys once temps get into the 40's. Those people are kind of smart. I, however, choose to ride until Mother Nature makes it physically impassable to do so, aka snow falls and stays on the ground. In order to ride when its in the teens, 20's, 30's, or even 40's, there is some gear that is a necessity to try to keep remotely warm while riding. And thanks to this gear, I have only gotten frostbite once while riding motorcycle. And to be honest, I doubt ANY cold riding gear would have spared my fingers from riding 70mph in temps of NINE (9) degrees. Yeah, that was stupid. But I was on a mission..... I WAS going to ride to Daytona!! (NOT this year!!) And naturally, it had been in the 50's the week prior, aka when I decided I was going to ride there. Anyways - here is my GO TO cold riding gear!  <--- In Iowa, on way to Daytona. It warmed up to 24 degrees!!! There is no solution for frozen eyeballs. Tour Master Synergy 2.0 El...

I live life on the edge. Figuratively and literally, most days. My mom and I recently had a discussion on where this fascination may have come from (DAD).. when I was a kid, we went on road trips every summer, usually heading west. One year, when I was roughly 11 years old, we went to Washington State to visit family. Family who, like me (now), live for adventure. They wanted to show us a cool trail - all I remember is that the trail came up to a STEEP ledge, barely wider than the length of my foot, and had a cable screwed into the rock so that we could hang on and not fall off the trail, down the steep cliff, never to be seen again. She remembers is more like this, "We went on this TINY narrow trail, with two kids who HATED each other. All I could picture is (my brother) pushing you off the edge with one swift movement." My rebuttal, as an adult, was of course, the fact that there was a safety device well drilled into the earth to keep us all alive and on the path. She stil...