——

This morning I got an important phone call. It was a job offer from Razorfish — arguably the pre-imminent company in my field. It’s something that’s been in the works for a few months, but was never any kind of sure thing. When my wife and I were first considering Chicago, it was because this opportunity, among others, was in play. While it was ultimately a job for The Mrs at another world class agency that brought us here to the windy city, I came knowing that I’d have an interview waiting for me when I arrived. I didn’t know what to expect, but was very pleased with the outcome.

That is, I was pleased until I started passing along the good news to my friends — my friends back in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Through this whole process of packing up, saying my goodbyes and hauling out to Chicago, the whole thing felt very gung ho. It was an adventure and I was glad to be on it. I still am, but it’s on the bitter side of bittersweet as I type this. I sent text messages to a handful of friends back (I almost typed “back home” right there) in Minneapolis, and with each one, it hit me harder and harder. I miss the Twin Cities. Well, I miss my friends in the Twin Cities. I didn’t before, at least not this painfully. It hadn’t hit me yet, but now it just aches. This downtown apartment feels very dark, a little cold, and really, really empty. The triumph of getting called up to the big leagues is tempered heavily with the solemn sadness of homesickness.

It will pass. Chicago has been a great experience so far and I haven’t even gotten to do any motorcycle riding yet. But right now, on this triumphal day when my career is likely to take off in a really big way, a big part of me is wishing I was back in Minnesota. I’m feeling homesick. I don’t actually want to go back, but somehow, I wish I was back.

Thing is though, that phone call this morning is why I’m here. It’s the choice I made: to take a chance and catalyze my career. I don’t regret it, but right now, it feels like I made that choice at the expense of something really really good. Better? Time will tell. Definitely good, though. Definitely good.

——

I’ve since started at Razorfish, and so far, it’s been fantastic. Hands down the best job I’ve ever had. I love doing meaningful, interesting work surrounded by smart, talented people.

It seems like with most things, I never know it’s the last time until long after. Today I knew it. I knew today was my last blog visit to BCM. Sure, I’ll be back in the spring to get my Honda CB450. I’m planning to ride in for Bearded Lady in July. It’s not the last time I’m going to see this place ever, but it’s still the end of something really special to me. Writing the BlueCat blog wasn’t just throwing together a few hundred word each week. It meant being around — being involved in their business and plugged into the lives of the people who worked there. It meant learning more about bikes and more about the quirks of vintage machines. On the other side of my writing bargain, Jeff and Robb have made a mechanic out of me. Apprenticing under their misanthropic instruction has been as entertaining as it’s been informative.

When I arrived today, I was sad to see that both Robb and Ryan were out of the shop. Robb’s apparently been ill and Ryan is gods-know-where. It was just Jeff and Jeff (aka Rumpal) doing their normal Saturday thing. Rump was putting in two new shaft seals on a Honda CB350. Jeff was handling business stuff and researching oil certifications. So for the last time, I did my normal Saturday thing. I took photos. I asked questions. “What’s the story on this bike?” I must have asked that question 200 times this year. “What’s going on?” being the other one. Finding 52 stories to tell wasn’t hard. Staying interested in the comings and goings of the shop wasn’t hard either. There’s always something fun on the lift or something interesting happening around the shop.

Truth be told, I didn’t actually need to be there today, but I couldn’t not go. I wanted to be there. It was my last chance. Next weekend is Christmas, and two days on we’ll have moved to Chicago. This was my last chance to stand in the middle of the shop with a camera as part of this year-long thing I’ve been doing. I wanted to be able to have one last look around — take the opportunity to try to soak in the feeling of that place as much as I can. It was my chance to say a proper farewell to the guys. To somehow, even in that manly, side-staring, let’s not actually talk about it sort of way, try to express how much this year at BlueCat Motors has meant to me. To learn what I now know — to have experienced the naked livelihood of these people who became my friends — it’s an experience I’ll carry with me for a long, long time.

As closing time approached, I started walking around the shop trying to soak it in somehow. It had finally hit me that this was my last chance to really see this place — to take it all in and try to remember it. Memory is like the after-image of a really bright light. Close your eyes and you can still see it. I wanted this place burned into my brain. So I looked. I looked hard at the place that’d become so familiar — my garage away from home. I wanted to remember every smell, every shelf, every tool. I wanted the savor the feel of cold steel on my fingertips and the smell of carb cleaner on my hands. It was sad, but sad in that good, deep way. Sad because it’d been something good. Sad because this is a place worth missing. Sad because these are people worth missing.

There is simply no good way to end these things. There are no grand speeches to make. No hallmark moments to create. There is only the ending itself. It comes whether I want it to or not. I took my last looks. Jeff and I shook hands. That was that. That part of my life is now over. It’s an end, and it’s also a beginning. It’s the beginning of whatever’s next. It’s the start of a new life in a new city with a new motorcycle community. It’s the adventure of the unknown, and it’s escaping the peril of the familiar. But for all the things it is, it’s sad above all else. I’m going to miss this place.

_{Photo credit: Trey Ratcliff. Original here}

It’s as tragic as any death, but even today I’m learning from Steve Jobs. The video below, his Stanford commencement speech, has been circulated like crazy, but it’s no less profound. Watch it. Think about it. Evaluate your life, as I am now doing, and insist upon doing exactly the things you’re passionate about doing in your life. Do those things. Do only those things. That terrible “agent of change” is coming for us all. And though I do believe in some manner of something out there — something beyond us, beyond this life — we’re all fools if we don’t live the life we have to it’s utter fullest. It may very well be the only life we get. So I’m going to make damn sure I live the life I want to live. I’m going to stay hungry, and stay foolish. Thank you Steve.

But first, some critical background. For those who aren’t aware, this isn’t the only place I write online. I write MINI news and commentary over at Motoringfile.com, and I write the blog for a local motorcycle repair shop, BlueCat Motors. In return for the writing and photography I do for them, the fine chaps at BCM reward me with the gift of their time and facilities. More specifically, they’re affording me opportunity and mentorship in fixing old motorcycles and scooters. They’ve also opened up their shop as a place to work from time to time. So since January, I’ve been helping to rehab my own machines with their intrepid help. I’ve learned a lot from Jeff, Ryan, Mutt, Rob and Rumpal and every time I go over there, I get that much more capable. I saw this blogging opportunity as three fold. First, it’d be a lot of good writing practice and a lot of fun to chronicle their exploits. Second, it would save me a lot of money keeping my own machines operational. And thirdly, it opened up a world of opportunity where I could find older, neglected motorcycles on places like eBay or Craigslist and, on my own, do most of the work it would take to rehab them. This would first help me expand my own riding fleet, but in the long run, I’d like to make a little money at it.

It’s the latter two opportunities — the fixing of old machines, both for my own enjoyment and for side industry — that this series will focus on. I’m learning the art, craft and zen of motorcycle maintenance. Riding bikes has already changed my life in a really profound way, Working on them has taught me even more. The two practices — riding and wrenching — inform each other intensely. That’s what this series is going to be about. And for my non-moto readers, do please bear with me. I’m also expanding my recommendations posts, and as always, I’ll keep writing about things that really matter to me, regardless of subject. Stay tuned.

I hate seeing my machines go. They have souls, if little dim ones, and selling them always feels a little bit mean. It’s like giving away a litter of puppies, only somehow I’m both master and mother. This Vespa had to go, though. With my ’74 Honda CB450 almost reassembled, the time was fast approaching when this gorgeous machine would be destined for neglect. It’s too nice a bike and too expensive of a scooter to simply languish in my garage. Someone else needed to enjoy him (I’d named him Paulo the day I brought him home). I also needed to capitalize on the Vespa’s retained value, as that influx of cash would not only get my GL1100 roadworthy, but finance a really exciting CB750 custom project.

Looking at Paulo there in the driveway, it hit me that I’d been so busy prepping and preening the scooter that I hadn’t really taken him on any sort of ceremonial last ride. I hadn’t done anything to really say goodbye. My buyer would be there at any moment, but I’d already fired up the Vespa to make sure the idle adjustment was correct. He was just sitting there, puttering away, so I hopped on real quick and buzzed around our apartment complex. No helmet or other gear, just me and the Vespa. As I zoomed in and out of the little ant farm tracks that make up our complex driveways, I couldn’t help but grin like a fool at that brilliant little machine. I often thought of the GT as “Superman’s bicycle” — something that so perfectly captured that feeling of lightness, freedom and exhilaration I felt as a kid on my bicycle, but with more power than my feeble earthling legs could ever dream to muster. Without my helmet on, the wind rushing by made my eyes water, but that was pretty appropriate to how I felt with such a short, improper goodbye to a scooter that had served me so well.

I pulled back in front of my garage and had to get right back into scramble mode. I’d thrown in my mod-style flyscreen as a compromise on the price, but I hadn’t installed it yet. Grabbing a 17mm wrench from my tool box, I hurriedly tightened the spread fittings that held the windshield in place. It was the finishing touch for sale and it felt like wrapping a bow around a puppy’s head. It was out of place and out of character for the scooter, since I almost never used the windshield. I did one final adjustment to the idle and shut the bike off, just as Susan, the buyer arrived.

We greeted each other and she asked if she could take the Vespa for a test ride. I explained the “you break it you bought it” arrangement in the friendliest terms I could and gave her a quick walk around of the Vespa. I showed her the starting procedure involving the kill switch and the brake. I taught her how to put the bike up on its center stand in case she needed to park it during her test ride. She was nervous. A recent graduate of the MSF rider course, this was to be her first real two-wheeled vehicle. She’d been chauffeured by her best friend, whose name I’ve forgotten, and they’d taken the class together. With our encouragement, Susan fired up the scooter and rode slowly into the gray early evening.

Her driver and I talked about motorcycles and scooters in Susan’s absence. She’d yet to really ride her own first bike, though she’d already taken delivery of it. Her boyfriend had purchased her a Harley Sportster 883 — which in fairness is as close to a good beginner bike as HD makes. I chuckled at the thought of the two of them riding around together, Harley and Vespa as unlikely riding companions. We talked about the rider safety course and about the differences between big motorcycles and scooters like the Vespa. Then my iPhone range. It was Susan. The Vespa had puttered out on her at an intersection and she couldn’t remember how to get it started again. I tried to talk her through it on the phone, and thought she’d be okay once she hung up. Then a few moments later, we saw her pushing the Vespa ’round the corner. Turns out she was trying to start it at the ignition key, like a car, rather than pushing the starter button on the right-hand control. It’s easy to get confused on a new machine. It happens to the best of us.

I felt a bit sheepish myself, as I’d obviously adjusted the idle a bit too low. Thankfully, it’s a very quick fix. I was worried that such troubles would turn her off to the Vespa — that she might think it was mechanically unsound, even though it wasn’t. But to her credit, she trekked out once more into the gray unknown, this time doing some figure eights to get better acquainted with the Vespa’s slow-speed handling. She was the best kind of unsure, as far as I could tell. She had so many things to take in at once, yet was still having fun. It reminded me of my first motorcycle test ride on a Triumph Bonneville back in 2008. I was so nervous riding the machine that I couldn’t even begin to evaluate its merits.

With a much more successful neighborhood excursion under her belt, Susan returned to us and excitedly declared “I got it all the way up to 25!” She had only one nagging concern. She wasn’t sure she was ready to ride the Vespa all the way home herself. Her driver assured her that there were plenty of surface streets and backroads that she could take to get home. She also assured Susan that she’d be driving right behind her in the car, so she could feel free to go as slow as she felt comfortable. I also offered to ride the Vespa home for her if she’d give me a lift back. But to her credit, she went for it. She had some lingering ambivalence about whether or not she’d like the Vespa in the long run, but just as quickly declared that she could always re-sell it if it wasn’t her thing. I tried my best to reassure her that she’d not only enjoy the Vespa, but that in my own experience it has always taken some time to really suss out the character of a machine and whether or not I really liked it. We signed all the paperwork and before I realized the permanence of it all, she’d ridden slowly away with her wingwoman in tow.

As the Vespa puttered into the distance under its new owner, the driveway grew quiet once again. The Vespa was gone and I was left with a small stack of money orders and an almost empty garage. The Mrs’ Honda CM400 was tucked well in the back of my one-car garage turned shop. Just six months ago this space was standing room only. My Vespa and my Honda CB650 were stacked up panel to panel with The Mrs’ Buddy 125 and the CM400. So much had changed this season and the now comparatively cavernous garage contained the culprit: the CM400 — the motorcycle that’d evicted the scooters. The Mrs started talking about selling her Buddy 125 scooter the day she’d first ridden the CM400, and it wasn’t even healthy yet. It’d done the same to me. Riding the CM400 home from Bluecat Motors once it was finally healthy and revised had set in motion the sale of my own scooter. I was now sans-scooter for the first time in my riding career. And while I have no doubt that my CB450 will be a wonderful replacement for the kind of riding I used to do on my Vespa, my mind is already scheming about when and how I can have a scooter of some sort in that garage again. It’s only a matter of time. Meanwhile, Godspeed, my little Italian pony. Viaggio felice!

Yesterday afternoon, I met my dear friend Susan for an afternoon interactive marketing event in downtown Minneapolis. The event was unfortunately little more than a couple of sales pitches, so once the final speaker wrapped up, we headed out to grab some food. What I had in mind was perhaps a burger at one of the 1st Avenue bars. Susan had a better idea.

“Have you ever had sushi?”

As is always the case with me, I couldn’t give a simple answer. I have had sushi before, sort of. I had what I was told was sushi in a fusion restaurant in Seoul, South Korea. My entire Korean escapade is very blurry. Between the jet lag, the soju and the culture shock of being a 24 year-old white kid on another continent, I couldn’t fully appreciate everything I experienced there. I couldn’t remember the sushi I’d had in Seoul other than knowing that it was one of the many foreign things I ingested during my weeks in Asia.

Thing is, I’ve been wanting to try sushi again. There’s a chapter in Kitchen Confidential where Bourdain describes his time as the guest chef for Les Hales in Japan. One of his friends takes him to a back alley, hole-in-the-wall sushi joint with a mythic reputation. There he has what he describes as the best meal of his life. Often on No Reservations, Bourdain will encounter amazing sushi in other places and describe a transcendent food experience. I’ve been increasingly jealous of those experiences lately. Not just with sushi, but the whole notion of food so sublime, it doesn’t matter what it is. I’ve long wanted to cross that bridge where what I’m tasting transcends what I’m eating.

There’s a complication, though. I have what appears to be an allergy to tuna. It feels kind of like asthma — like I can’t get a deep breath. If it’s really bad, I’ll get pretty nauseated. I’m even now still trying to work out of it’s tuna specifically, or fish as a category. I’m hoping the former.

Wanting partly to explore that possibility, and partly longing for a Bordain-esque food experience, I asked Susan to lead the way. She brought me to Nami, a lovely little place with a wonderful interior dichotomy. On the left, a bustling bar full of thirsty sophisticates. To the right, a serene arrangement of tables bathed in the lingering blue light of early spring sunset. We took our place at a lovely window table.

I placed myself completely in Susan’s menu care. She started us with a bowl of edamame — boiled soy bean pods topped with sea salt. I thought they were snap peas at first, but turns out you don’t eat the chewy outer pods. The edamame, like the rest of the meal to be, was wonderfully refreshing. Susan gave the waiter our order proper. We ordered a tiger roll (rice, salmon, tuna, yellowtail, caviar), nigiri-sake (rice, salmon), nigiri-hamachi (rice, yellowtail) and nigiri-toro (rice, fatty tuna).

I started with the nigiri-sake — a lovely slice of pink salmon on a small bed of rice, with a smear of wasabi in between. The blend of textures and subtle flavors was a revelation. Until then, my favorite culinary experience had been the Korma dishes I’ve found in quality Indian restaurants. Where the Korma is an explosion of spices and flavors, the nigiri-sake was all subtlety. The mixture of textures and the overwhelming freshness of everything was so unlike what I’m used to eating. It wasn’t salty, it wasn’t sweet. My brain had nothing in its library to catalog or reference what I was tasting. The flavors were the epitome of freshness — not quite plant, not quite animal.

Next came the nigiri-hamachi. Like the sake, this lovely cut of fish lay atop a dollap of sticky rice with just a dab of wasabi between the two. My natural instinct was simply to cram the whole thing in my mouth. Thankfully Susan was there to show me the way. I bit through the first half of the nigiri-hamachi and still don’t have the words to describe it. Each chew meant a new explosion of flavor and texture. This was beyond food. This was getting exciting. Susan watched my face and laughed delightfully at me as I lost control of myself. A great mystery was being revealed, and Susan was as excited as I was to not just be eating this wonderful food, but to have brought a new soul into the sushi faith.

The last thing on our plate was the tiger roll. This colorful row of mysterious content was what I’d always thought of as sushi. This mix of salmon, tuna, yellowtail, rice and most importantly, caviar — another first in a meal full of them. Susan checked in with me, wondering if I’d be weirded out by eating tiny black and orange fish eggs. With what I’d already put in my mouth, I didn’t care what anything was anymore. Tell me it’s squirrel. Promise me it’s the ass end of a seagull. I didn’t matter.

The first slice of tiger roll was a revelation — definitely the best so far. The combination of flavors, and especially the texture and saltiness of the caviar, made each bite an adventure. With my last slice of tiger roll, I dipped a corner of it in a small bowl of soy sauce. I thought this would be but an incidental difference. I was wrong. I don’t know how to properly describe that bite of sushi without using sex as a measuring stick. Let’s not go there. It was good. Very good. That’s all I’ve got.

In full-on food adventure mode, I was ready for the final course. Before we ordered our first course, Susan had given me the rundown on her favorite sushi dishes. We’d already sampled most of them, but one remained: eel. Yeah, eel. You see, I’m not allowed to have eel (at least, I think I’m not allowed to have eel). Though I didn’t grow up jewish, I did basically grow up kosher. It’s a long story, and not the point, but it informed my hesitation. Had I been offered this caterpillar roll (eel, rice and avacado) at the beginning of our meal, I just don’t think I would have gone there. By this third course, however, my mind was all Peter, a blanket full of forbidden foods, and a simple command from God Himself. “Eat.”

Susan was definitely excited now. Our excellent waiter brought us yet another rectangular plate of beautiful food. I didn’t need a prompt. I didn’t pause to think about what I was cramming into my mouth. I was in the throws of a true gastronomic experience. What I’d eaten to up to then had realigned my entire perception of food. The eel, however, blew all of what preceeded it right out of the sea water. In-fucking-credible.

“I want to sit here and eat this until I die.” I told Susan with absolute, iron-clad sincerity. Susan clapped and laughed her boisterous, terriffic laugh. We high-fived and set about enjoying the rest of our eel. Magnificent.

Sitting at this lovely table, with one of my favorite people, having the best meal of my life, I felt a wonderful sense of the present. It was so eternal. I had nowhere I needed to be. Nowhere I was anxious to get to. Nobody needed me for anything. The Mrs was at the gym and we’d meet up at home later. I was there, in that meal, and its moments of serenity and ecstasy had unfolded in slow motion. The closest thing I can compare it to is the feeling I get when I’ve been on a motorcycle for a few hours — long enough to let go of time, to let go of all those things in modern life that don’t really matter. That night, Anthony Bourdain had nothing on me, but just like he says in the intro to his show, I’m hungry for more.

1. The Mrs

Granted, we’ve been married more than three years now and together even longer than that, but no list of things I’m thankful for could start anywhere else. She’s amazing and we’re amazing together. She’s the best part of my life every year, and this year was no exception.

2. The dogs

There are critters living in our home. They’re adorable. They’re energetic. They’re even pretty well behaved. I’m a dog person for life. Domesticating dogs has got to be the best thing we’ve ever done as a species.

3. The job

I’ve had some good jobs, and I’ve had some horrible jobs in my design career. Now I have an awesome job. I basically get to invent things for a living. Plus I get to do it in a cool office with smart, talented people. I think only Adam Savage has a better job than me.

4. The motorcycles

If you’ve, well, ever read this blog before then you know I’m a scooter enthusiast. I’d been somewhat prejudiced against motorcycles previously, but this year I actually bought one. I wanted to be able to wander the tri-state area the way I can wander the cities on my Vespa. When I first got my CB650, I didn’t really like riding motorcycles. That quickly changed though. Riding my bike has awakened a passion for motorcycles that just can’t be denied. Now I all but eat, drink and sleep bikes. What’s more, riding has forced me to have real dark-night-of-the-soul conversations with myself about risk, death and what living life really means. I’m better for it.

5. The games

I didn’t have a game system growing up. Now that I design interfaces for a living, I took that as the perfect excuse to purchase an Xbox 360. This year I’ve played some amazing games. Mass Effect 2, Fallout: New Vegas and Bioshock to name a few. I know that a lot of people don’t get the appeal of video games, but for me, it’s the storytelling. A game like Bioshock is a movie I get to participate in. In titles like Mass Effect 2, I get to steer the story with my choices. It’s not just fun to play. It’s fun to inhabit the worlds the game creators have made.

6. The Doctor

Ever since we ditched cable and started getting our entertainment exclusively through Netflix, Hulu and iTunes, I’ve been introduced to some amazing programs and films that wouldn’t have otherwise been on my radar. At the top of the list by a mile is the 2005 reboot of the iconic british sci-fi series Doctor Who. I’m going to write a longer recommendation post in the future, but for now I’ll just say this: Doctor Who is like candy for my soul. I couldn’t possibly love it more. I’m half way through season four and by most accounts, I’m not even really to the good stuff yet. I can’t wait.

7. The Streetliner

It’s been right at a year since I conceived of Project Streetliner. In that time, exactly what I’d hoped would happen has come to be. Not only has the idea evolved, but people from around the world have gotten involved. The concept is approaching finalization and most of the big decisions have been made. I’m at the point where I’m actually taking a serious look at how to finance the project. Why I’m thankful for this is that it’s been such a great mental exercise. It’s so much fun to pour myself into something of my own creation. It’s going to happen, and that’s exciting.

8. The MINI and MotoringFile

I’ve had my MINI since 2006, and I feel like it’s taken me that long to really learn how to drive it. I was raised to be kind to machines. And while I’m not mean to my MINI now, it took me all this time to learn that if I’m not driving it at least a bit aggressively, it’s actually a tad unhappy. So this year I started pushing the car a little harder — revving higher, shifting later, heal-toe downshifting, braking later — and I’ve fallen in love with it all over again. Just in time too, as I’ve become the day-to-day editor at MotoringFile.com. It’s strange and wonderful to add “automotive journalist” to my life’s resume.

9. The iPad

While I still think it’s bad marketing how Apple continues to call the iPad “magical” in their advertising, the thing is bloody brilliant. Thing is, it’s brilliant for reasons that none of us could have ever appreciated upon first seeing the iPad debut. Bottom line, the iPad is the most fundamentally extraordinary computing experience that I’ve seen in my lifetime. So much so, that it can’t fairly be called a computer anymore. This isn’t just a laptop without a keyboard. The combination of form factor, interface experience and available content gives the iPad an experience that completely transcends anything that’s existed previously. It is a completely different animal. I can now literally hand someone a YouTube video. The difference is subtle, but profound. It’s no longer “Here, watch this video on this computer screen.” Now I can effectively hand someone that video, or a website, or a document — a virtual thing — as tangibly as I would hand someone a book or a piece of paper. It also doesn’t hurt that the battery life pushes almost 12 hours.

10. The people

Three years ago, when I moved to the Twin Cities, I knew two people outside the office. While the number hasn’t grown exponentially or anything, the quality of people we hang out with regularly just floors me when I think about it. Smart, kind, fascinating people who have made Minnesota feel like home. We’ve had so much fun this year on motorcycle trips, new job celebration parties, poker nights and motorcycle events. The fun has been in the people though. Good friends, good company and great times.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. I’m also thankful for your readership!

Post photo from Flickr user AlyssssylA