The ride.

Webster defines genealogy as “an account of the descent of a person, family, or group from an ancestor or from older forms.” Older forms, indeed.   June Lofgreen is the mother of a few of my closest friends and the grandmother of some of my other closest friends. I became a semi-adopted grand-dude of Grandma Lofgreen in the late 80s (that’s the 1980s for those of you born in this century). While some grandmothers bake and serve cookies for their grandchildren and grand-dudes,

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns or rejoice because thorns have roses.” ~ Alphonse Karr   Millions of kids have been raised on Sesame Street. My childhood was highly influenced by this fictitious and mysterious thoroughfare of puppet friends, children, and racially diverse adults. Grover (Muppet) and Gordon (adult) were my favorite characters. When I was a kid, I could sing every song, and I enjoyed just about every aspect of the show, but especially the short

Last September, I had to be in St. Louis to manage a video shoot for work on the last Friday of the month. It’s only about 300 miles from Chicagoland, or about a five-hour drive, so it didn’t make any sense to fly. I made plans to drive down with the video team Thursday, returning Saturday or Sunday. Wednesday morning, I woke up with a thought… what if I rode my motorcycle down instead? Stupid, right? Crazy. Last-minute and dumb. I mean, I’d never taken the bike anywhere but