Happy Thanksgiving to all the IAATB readers. You know who you are. All 9 or 10 of you. I regret to report I haven’t been doing much moto riding lately, but I am thankful for all the great times I had this year with my riding mates. I am going through some video clips from the past couple of years, working on a little piece made up entirely of my favorite 5 second clips. It requires discipline to chop clips down to 5 seconds, but it’s going to be worth it as an exercise.

The BMW F800 is currently proving to be a hell of thing to lean my cyclocross bikes against in the garage. Sad. The tension between the two. After a season of racing the UTCX series, it has come down to just 2 races left: the State Championship and the series finale which is a double points race. Fall moto aspirations were put away on the shelf. I’ll never lose the inspiration to ride the moto, especially when Darth or another member of our posse start talking about the “next” trip. Maybe it’s my turn to suggest a destination, after seeing this photo from Mark Johnson. I thought it was from some far away country. Two Canadians on a round the world adventure. But no. This is the Anza-Borrego desert, in California’s Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, just a couple hours from San Diego. Let me tell you a little bit about Mark: Mark and I spent some time together in Boston back in the early 90′s at Boston University, while both pursuing graduate degrees in the English Department. Mark is a writer and photographer, living in the Sand Diego area with his wife Melinda, and their boys. Surfers, cyclists, writers, world travelers, they are. Kindred spirits. I appreciate it when out of the blue, Mark forwards on a moto-related article he saw somewhere, or better yet, a snap from his own camera. I’m just throwing it out there. But maybe if we get a moto trip together to the Anza-Borrego Desert, Mark will meet us out there with camera gear and document the adventure. Sounds fun to me. Check out Mark and Melinda’s work on their site, www.ironstring.com.

Photo of Dragon in Anza-Borrego Desert by Mark Johnson/Ironstring

It’s about that time of year, every year, when my brain starts to switch over to snow mode. I squeezed in a ride last weekend, because, you know, everyone was saying “this might be the last weekend to twist the throttle for awhile.” Next comes cold weather, snow, ski season, battery tender, and looking back on not enough trips taken, not enough things done on the bike that I wanted to do.

Another perspective is to stay positive and be thankful for the riding that was done, trips taken, accidents avoided, friends made, places seen. One of my goals for this post was to comb through all the photos of the season and try to narrow it down to the top-ten, and I may still do just that, but right now, I couldn’t even narrow it down to the top 100. So I leave you with this:

It's been real, boys. Hey, are you going to finish that?