Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?

It's been a long dark road with blind corners and hairpin bends and, while I can't say I'm not glad that it's over 'cause I sure as hell am, I wonder where it's going to take us next.

Like rolling the Blue Ridge, tossing it side to side and throttle rocking down the straightaways, life ain't nothing but a backroad. Sometimes the road is wide and the corners sweeping and sometimes it's narrow, the shoulders pure rock or drop off and the asphalt crumbling.

2011 was the latter. We lost folks. We lost clubs. New ones formed. People moved out, moved up and moved on.

Too many of us died. Too many of us were drinking and riding and colliding.

Some of us died a couple of times and, thanks to medical magic, came back to us.

Bike night, which once flourished, divided, sputtered and stalled.

Dealerships have had to work hard to survive as the economy continued to reel like a teenager on a first drunk.

Hell, riders have had to struggle as employers and governments hire, fire, slash and burn their human capital (it's what the pointy-headed pencil necks with MBAs now call human resources which is what was once known as personnel) like that drunk teen driving daddy's Buick down Garth Road at 3 a.m.

R.P., the web magician who cobbled this site together with the cyber equivalent of strings, wire, chewing gum and duct tape, moved on to swank digs in RVA.

Rainman, Kim and Ray-Ray at Flippin-Seaman (giggle)

What was once being written in the basement of my house is now written on the kitchen table in my apartment as I went from one bike in the carport to two in the driveway.

So where to Jeffersonia? Where do we go from here?

Beats the hell out of me -- there are some people out there who would love to do just that -- because I can't see all the way through the curves.

Folks are still riding, though. There are a variety of riding societies, riding clubs and organizations from Southern Reapers and Jokers to HOGs and packs of lone wolves that form here and there. Maybe we can get together on occasion, hit the road and, once safely parked, maybe enjoy some of the fine beverages produced in the area.

If anyone still reads this site, we'll crank it back up and see what help we can give. Don't know how it will change, but I'm sure it will.

And we'll start today, 1/1/12, the day my debit card expires, a day with temperatures expected to be near 60. It's a day to take both bikes for a ride -- good god, man not at the same time! -- and burn some dinosaur bones.

To quote Freddie Mercury: Get on your bikes and ride.