Tulip Ride 2008 recap (with pics and video!)
We had a pretty fantastic ride today. In fact, it was the best Tulip Ride ever by any measure. The turnout was amazing: 40 bikes in our pack by the time we made it to the tulip fields! It was a wonderful group of people, too, with many riders returning for the 3rd or 4th time.
Our postponement from last weekend turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Whereas it was snowing last Saturday, today brought 70+ degree temperatures under sunny skies all day long. The tulips were just now blooming, so we picked the right weekend. The delay also allowed many more people to join us. In fact, most of the RSVPs came in Friday evening after work.
Our pack of 40+ motorcycles was quite a sight to see on the road. Some of the veteran riders that joined us did a great job of keeping the pack together.
All of the photos have been posted to a set on Flickr, and I’ve included a few highlights plus a slideshow here:
Invitation: The 2008 Annual Tulip Ride
See the TULIPS
It’s officially springtime here in the Pacific Northwest, and the tulips will soon be blooming. That can mean only one thing: It’s time to saddle up and ride North to the tulip and daffodil fields of Washington’s beautiful Skagit Valley! The 25th annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival takes place from April 1st through 30th. This year, our pack will head up on Saturday, April 26th.
The Tulip Ride has grown from a small group of bikers from the Xbox team to include the greater Puget Sound community at large. Each April, we assemble a large pack of bikers and spend a day riding through the fields of [hopefully] blooming flowers.
A conversation at the bagel shop this morning
Every Friday, the team at work has bagels for breakfast and today I picked them up on the way in. It was sunny and warm out, so it was a motorcycle commute day (the bagels fit into the saddlebags). The cashier at the counter noticed the Harley outside, and the conversation went like this:
Her: “I sure wish I was outside riding my Harley today!”
Me: “Oh yeah, what do you ride?”
Her: “I have a brand new Sportster 883 Low. I just got it and it only has 6 miles on it. I can’t believe it. It’s so cool.”
Me: “Well tomorrow some friends are meeting up for a little group lunch ride. Wanna join us?”
Her: “Oh I wish. But my mother-in-law is coming into town so I can’t get away.”
The the guy in line behind me interrupted and said:
“Lady, the reason that I got my motorcycle was so that when my mother-in-law comes over, I can ride far, far away.”
Saturday meet-up at Eastside H-D plus lunch ride
From the Willow-Bay Manufacturing crew:
“[we] will be at EHD in Bellevue Saturday [April 12] at eleven AM. After a bit of grousing we will ride out for lunch and ride up back roads to Monroe. Join us if you can.”
Here’s the exact location of Eastside Harley:
It’s supposed to be sunny and in the low 70s on Saturday, so it’s the perfect chance to get out for a ride.
Video chat is amazing when it just works.
Most everyone with an Internet connection is text chatting these days. It has been around for many years, and texting has found its way to mobile devices like cell phones. Beginning a few years ago, I found that audio or video chat would, at times, be a much better medium for communication. Sometimes it was because I wanted to see my kids’ faces as I chatted with them before bedtime when I was on a business trip. More recently, video chat has played a vital role in managing a multi-location startup business.
While text, and to a lesser extent audio, will always provide a welcomed anonymity to communications, video has its place. But it isn’t as heavily used as I would hope or expect. Why not? A couple of events happened recently that highlight why video-based chat isn’t something people default to when the think about online communication. Those events seemed worth highlighting here.
The first one happened when my brother and his family where visiting the Philippines, my sister-in-law’s home. They had my nephew with them and really wanted him to be able to see and her his grandparents during their extended vacation. Most of my family uses Google Talk for their online chats. Google Talk also works through iChat on Macs. But Google Talk and iChat exhibit two incredibly difficult problems for people to cope with:
Puget Sound Ride for Kids
Sunday, September 7, 2008 marks the annual Puget Sound Ride for Kids. We join this group ride every year that we can (2007, 2006) because it supports such a worthwhile cause: the Pediatric Brian Tumor Foundation, which is working to find the cause and cure of childhood brain tumors. Here’s a bit of history about this annual ride that involves thousands of riders across the country.
Copyright © 2008 Jeff Henshaw. All rights reserved. 