Open Road Biker

CVMA is an organization that officially started up in May of 2001. They have members from all walks of life and services. I am planning on looking into riding with them when I get back to the states. I am not sure about joining because I am in a club right now but it is based in Belgium. I am not sure of the protocol for being in more than one club I know we wear a three piece back patch and the CMVA wears a one. The main reason I am thinking about it though is because of the mission that they undertake. They raise money for homeless vets and raise awareness on issues dealing with vets. Why wouldn’t a vet want to be a part of something that not only helps others but may some day help him or her? If you are interested check them out at the CMVA website.

From now on I will try and search the web or other sources for interesting news to post on Thursdays plus do a wrap-up of the week. The following story is about a preacher that is also a member of the Boozefighters MC.
The story was removed from the website I had linked to.

A few other points to tie up, I didn’t ride this past weekend because we are getting ready for a move but the guys that I usually ride with went to Flanders Field American Military Cemetery in Belgium and paid tribute to our Veterans that made the ultimate sacrifice. DZ is supposed to get back with me when he writes out the details for the trip. For the time being here is a picture;

After my post on Bikernet I contacted Bandit about it. He responded and allowed me to view the rest of the site and I must say that it is worth the extra dough. There seems to be more inside The Cantina than outside or maybe it was just all of the pictures of women, whatever it was it is certainly worth the price of admission. My hat’s off to Bandit.

Until tomorrow keep it upright and between the lines.

In my efforts to make my sites better I scour the web looking for web sites and try to determine what they are doing right or wrong. Early on I ran upon Bikernet.com. This site has been around for quite some time and seems to be very popular. Founded by Keith “Bandit” Ball, a name you may have seen in copies of your EasyRiders magazine, who has went on to create a website that is a storehouse of Biker fact, fiction, and rescources that are beyond comprehension. I have explored the website and found some of the best Biker lore stories that I have ever read and trip tales (both fact and fiction) that are in depth and drive a person to feel a desire to ride continually. Only one part of the website remains that I have yet to visit and that is the subscription only portion dubbed The Cantina. I am not a fan of website subscriptions, mainly because I am poor but also because a lot of web sites abuse it. I think Bikernet may be the exception though. The subscription is fair and the content provided in the free section is high quality so I can only imagine what I would find in The Cantina. One example of a fine article is this noise study about motorcycle noise levels.

Only a few things stick out in my mind that they could improve on over at Bikernet;
1. The site navigation is a little sketchy. There are so many articles and stories that it would help if they were categorized a little more other than the long list of stories that they have.
2. Over in the forums it seems no one is minding the shop. I registered over a month ago and I still have not received my account activation.

I know those are a couple of petty points but even awesome sites like Bikernet could use some improvement. As far as Bandit goes, well you will probably read some fairly strange stuff about him and I am sure most of it has to be true. Tune in to some of the stories and you will find out what I am taking about.

This article is part of a new section that I will be doing every Wednesday where I will do a small review on a motorcycle related website. Web site Wednesday will be a weekly effort to bring you some of the best websites out there. Stay tuned because I have found a whole lot of great sites and I plan to share them with you in due time.

How many of you know something about them? I think we all know what they do; they attend funerals of veterans at the request of the family for various reasons. They essentially started because of a group of anti-homosexual protesters from a Topeka, Kansas church called The Westboro Baptist Church. The church was protesting veterans funerals because they say God is punishing America because of it’s tolerance of homosexuals. The PGR essentially runs interference at the funeral to keep the protestors away from the family. They also see troops off to battle and perform various other activities to honor our veterans. You can read a little about their history over on the website at www.patriotguard.org. I guess the reason I am bringing this up is because I will be back in the states in July and I am hoping to become involved with the group and I encourage any other biker out there to show their support in honoring our American Heroes. That is the least we can do for those that go into harms way in support of America and sometimes make the ultimate sacrifice. Go ahead and get involved for a good cause.

Know a little about the PGR? Want to talk about the mission or anything else in this article? Head on over to the motorcycle forums and discuss it.

My information came from the following sites;
PGR wiki
WBC wiki
PGR.org

I went up to Amsterdam yesterday and toured the city a little. It wasn’t a bike trip, but a family one so I had the wife and two kids with me so I didn’t get to pay tribute to some of the things that make Amsterdam famous but thats okay I still enjoyed it even though we walked all day long. We got to visit a few museums like the Torture museum, Anne Franks House, and Rembrandt’s House. The Torture museum was interesting to say the least. Some of the forms of torture we have all seen before but one was particularly painful looking to me. It is seen here on the Medieval Torture Museums site. Some were put on it with weights tied on the feet, can you imagine the pain? The Rembrandt place was neat. we got to view some of his work and tour his house. It was a very nice place and he had an extensive collection of art and artifacts. The Anne Frank house was the most sobering. It is said if we refuse to learn from the past then we are doomed to repeat it. Well I think that every one should be required to at the very least be required to read about her. Maybe one day we won’t have to worry about things like this happening but while we still have hate groups worldwide and people oppressed then we are still in danger of things that horrible happening again.

This is all from my trip for now, maybe a little more later.